As time moves forward and the everyday considerations once again start to take control, I continue to try to work on the more practical things that have to be done these days, pay DJ's cell phone bill, (my excuse for keepping it is I might break mine and I need a backup), change X club's membership to my own name only, remember the city sticker is due on DJ's car by the end of the month...as I say, the everyday things...one of my more ambitious things I'm trying to do is incorportate two home offices into one, with all the paraphernalia that comes along with that, the reminders come also, simple things, forgotten things. The stuff from our two offices is a lot, 2, 3, sometimes 4 of the same items, staplers, boxes of paperclips, binders, labels, pens, pens galore....desk trinkets, hanging file holders, and even some books. As I sorted through this stuff to try and determine what to put in the new office area I began to look through the books...yes, Math for Idiots we keep, local zip code guide, that goes into the new office, binder with all the office equipment info, put that right in front of me, and my book of ''1001 Insults (Anguish Guaranteed!)'' is a must...then I noticed a paperback, it was Ayn Rand's ''Atlas Shrugged''. Tried to remember why that was among this office stuff...ummm...could not...but I did remember when I had bought the book, that was years ago when I use to hang with a group of people who could out talk me...The Saturday Review Crew that's what I unofficially called us. None of us could write, but we would sit around and compare rejection notices, and drink and lie, and dream; some of us actually did get to Paris, but by the time they landed on the left bank things had changed, James Baldwin was gravely ill and one of my favorite writers, John Williams had fled the scene. They found that our grand ideas of being expatriates and living there, drinking Pernod and discussing the value of literary pieces, existed mainly in our own minds, and I was told to keep my money and stay home; the illusion we had created in our minds was far better than any reality we might find there...I did stay home...all that occurred a some time ago. Anyway, I remembered someone had told me the book was of great social import and that I just had to read it, so I had hurried out to buy it...after reading a bit I remember putting it down, I realized I wasn't that sophisticated, at least not at that time, later, I did mange to read it...I continued to move on through the other office stuff, as I did, I looked back over at the cover; the title comes in various covers, the one I have has Atlas partially bent over, holding a globe of the earth above his head...studying Atlas there, arms raised above his shoulders struggling with the huge orb that sits in his grasp...the title stuck in my mind, I thought about it, thought about what that title really meant..what it would mean if Atlas really was supporting the earth, and he decided to shrug.
The resulting chaos would be unimaginable of course, with the results being felt across our entire world, every person, place, or thing would be affected right down to the tiniest creature or smallest item one can imagine. That's how I'm feeling about this grief...I have been affected right down to the molecule level; that is not an overstatement. All of us who endure this will probably agree with me that there is not one area of our lives or emotional being that has been left unaffected, life altering event fits in here somewhere. I had began to think that because I was able to start doing some of the ''old'' things that I had experienced all of what grief had to offer, again I was proven wrong...nothing new about that these days tho...some things are more familiar now, making the coffee is not as bad as it once was...and I can listen to most of our music with only a few tears here and there; some things, though painfully obvious and natural, can throw me a curve; DJ's Reeboks I sat by the salon chair in the basement, that long ago, last time I helped her up the steps (swollen ankles) are still sitting right there...I don't know why I am constantly surprised to find them that way, they should be there, no one else to move them...but at least I can make it past them without the tears threatening to flow.
For sure, many of us feel as though Atlas may have done much more than shrug...more like he decided to dribble the earth across our galaxy. The truth is our worlds have been shaken and everything is affected, in my own situation, I know Atlas did more than shrug, seems like he had an attack of the DT's. The resulting disruption was felt by every cell in my body and affected my life as nothing before has; it was total, complete. Fortunately it appears that the tremors are subsiding and calmness may soon make a much desired appearance...recently I have returned to some of the things I used to do before we received the diagnosis, and to some of the things I had lost interest in during the 4 years that followed; updated my phone, some may say a simple thing, but important to me, DJ called me a ''phoneslut'' because I changed phones so often, I even picked up my camera and tried taking a few shots...actually lost track of time while out taking pictures, that had not happened in a very long time, losing track of time. There are a lot of new names in my acquaintance list and few fresh ones on my ''new friends list''; in short, there is a different routine to my life that is not altogether bad.
Inside, deep, where there is no mystery, no hiding, I know that my life is continuing to be shaped by DJ's loss, but the idea of a happy future does not appear to be so foreign now. Maybe the ''different'' life is slowly taking hold...just maybe I am starting to feel o.k. with all of this...kind of a scary thought, becoming comfortable in the life without DJ, but the feeling isn't all that bad; not nearly as bad as the sheer terror and stifling fear I once felt would be my lot for the rest of my life. This is all coming without the pang of guilt I hear others who travel this road speak of as they move through grief and begin to re-enjoy life; I simply cannot feel guilty about feeling good about life...oddly, or maybe not so oddly, I find myself craving this new feeling, for me there's a certain tinge of excitement about it and I feel I'm prepared to experience it...not that childlike giddiness associated with many things, but an almost quiet, but steady sensation of the possible...I think it is bringing me some peace..of course there is still the missing of DJ, but that too has become somewhat ''familiar''...and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, after all, it is a fact. Having had my world not only well shaken, but for all intents and purposes, turned upside down, I need things to be in a good, safe and stable place once again, I just can't see how I can continue otherwise. For the most part, early on, I understood that I could not (would not) live in that place which presented itself so soon after the antics of Atlas first struck, that place of confusion and fear, place of quiet and sometimes not so quiet desperation...my problem was I could not see a way forward as I had no experience at losing the most important person in my life, and worse, for a while I floundered as I frantically searched for answers everywhere...this led to that desperation, which in turn led to dark thoughts about questioning whether life was worth continuing at all...
So I am taking these thoughts forward with me, slowly, taking time to examine them in the light of all that has happened, moving ahead with a bit more knowledge about life and death and the human spirit. Recognizing that no one has all the answers, understanding even better that I don't have to have them either...that there are some things that are simply unknowable...I like to remind myself also, that though I often seek those answers, I may not like them if they are really revealed to me...so DJ, we compromise once more and hopefully this one will be like so many of ours, where we both felt we got what we wanted anyway...we will take this different outlook and embrace it for all the best it has to offer, giving nothing away of our older, cherished and so damned loved selves, but integrating the surely different emotions about our reality today into the people we a slowly evolving into.
There is a picture of DJ which hangs in our house, I put it up the day after DJ was put to rest; for a while, soon after, I would be stopped by it, her looking right into my face and I would break into tears...I considered taking it down, but decided against that, It had to be there. After a while I would just walk past it, conscious that it was there, but not looking at it, at least not every time...it still produced a powerful reaction, but the crying eased and finally stopped altogether. The other day, after getting a lot of the office items sorted, what was staying, what was going, and looking at that paperback for a while, I purposely went and took another long and hard look at her picture hanging there; strong emotions surged through my mind and I know there was a physical reaction, but there were no tears, no uncontrollable crying and the thought of joining her was fleeting at best. This was a special moment for me and I may not be relating it well enough for others to understand the depth of the meaning it carried for me, but it was all there and I felt it...after a while I looked directly into her eyes and I shrugged; not a shrug of surrender mind you, no, this was more of an indication of resignation...a gesture to the popular phrase ''...it is what it is...''. I am resigned to the fact that I will live on, and that I will feel good about it too. Can this be the beginnings of acceptance? Only time will tell if that's so...after I had made this movement, this shrugging, I looked around the room...the glasses in the china cabinet were not clinking from shaking, and I saw nothing on the dining room table had moved; I think I'm starting to feel it's safe to come out again.
''on and on''
pax
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“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart) I am never without it (anywhere I go, you go), my dear…” -eecummings
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