"It's a Good Day to Die"

I've been pondering the phrase “It's a good day to die.” I've always equated these words with those movies having American Indian themes where this phrase is written into their scripts as the thing one Red Man says to another before they go into battle. Taken in that context, my perception is that it's a macho statement; conceited, warrior-like, and selfish. No matter what the squaw and her kiddos are going to do left back at the tee pee without their provider. No matter that these beautiful hunks of filmdom bodies will be destroyed on a battlefield.

My husband never used those words in his last days. What he did do was have me help him into his recliner draped with the hide of a young buffalo. He settled his beaver bag filled with his chanupa into the crook of his left arm and with a cup of coffee nearby. From this vantage point, he watched the Earth come awake. What he thought or what insights he gained there I'll never know. He was too weak to tell me. His consciousness wasn't in the realm of forming words or concepts. My guess is that he was just experiencing the morning, being in it, and relishing every second of the coming of the light. I was the one who thought the words as I padded back to bed.

So I tested these words out loud on myself recently. “It's a good day to die,” I said to all that was around me. My system shocked awake. Muscles grew taut. I instantly wanted to take the words back in case some force beyond me heard them and decided to take me up on my thought.

“Erase . . . Erase,” I said until I realized my muscles weren't frozen in fear. They were on an edge, ready for something.

Ready for what?

Not war or destruction, and definitely not dying.

But ready for life, for living to their fullest extent. To do whatever was in front of them, be it hauling in wood, writing the next novel, sitting in the warmth of the fire and listening to the rain on the roof.

Just ready.

My Choice In the Matter

A long time ago I learned how to wallow in the self-satisfaction of misery. When my Dad was overseas, I could use the emotion of missing him to get out of all kinds of trouble. The stance of shoulders bent forward coupled with an unsmiling face got me lots of attention from peers and teachers and fit right in with my mother's demeanor. We were a pair of martyrs; yes, we were.

We suffered through birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, while he was away; not quite letting ourselves enjoy our being together because HE wasn't there. The truth of the matter was that those events when celebrated with him in the house weren't that memorable either. Nothing stands out in my mind unless I review the photo album where a picture can bring a draft of a memory. Unfortunately, other memories around my relationship with my father arise, and I'd rather not go there.

I can also remember fabricating reasons to be glum. Face it, in our society, a Pollyanna is often outside the circle of individuals who would prefer to recount tragedies and fears rather than look at the positives in life.

Gradually I stepped out of the martyred role I shared with her. I'm glad now, because I could easily don the cloak of widowhood and let it suffocate me. Sure I cry and wail and rant when my body is so tight with grief I am sinking into despair. Expressing the emotions moves me onto the next plateau of recovery. If I held them in, I'd become numb to myself and to the world around me. That's something I definitely don't want to do.

I want to live, and live fully. If that means struggling through an hour or a day and night of tears and whining, I'll do it. In fact, I've done it already. When coming into the second day of it, I found I was almost bored. It was enough for then, so I stopped.

I found I have many decisions to make; I have to gather my wits about me to understand my options.

So here's the jist of it now! I could choose to be miserable every single moment of every day, OR, I can choose to feel my feelings, express them, move on to face the challenges I have of living alone in the woods and make the best of it. I'm choosing the latter.

A Little Adventure

The repetitious fog horn sounds in the distance. A Siamese cat surveys my invasion of his territory from the corner and swishes his tail in his own rhythm, quite contrary to the boom, boom, boom of the radios in cars passing in front of the pottery barn in which I'm am cozied up for the night.

I've gone on a bit of an adventure, to spend time with the friend who made Y's urn, to check in on my mom, and have an excursion to the Bay Area to play with Bella and make contact with my family there. I had to get out of the house in the mountains for September 27th would have been Y's 70th birthday. The way I was going alone there, the puddle would have turned into a pond, and I thought I'd do better out in the world for a change then struggling to find things to do at home.

There is no end to the list of things to do; sometimes I just don't want to do them.

So to go on this adventure, I had to get behind the wheel of the car again. I'm not sure if this phenomena was strictly my own, or if others in grief have a fear of driving. All I know is that my reaction time of moving my foot from the accelerator onto the brake had slowed down too much to be safe. I'd forget where I was going as I was driving toward town. I literally shook with anxiety. So, I had others pick up my mail, the prepared food left at the quilt shop, or do my shopping.

When I got this plan to leave home, I realized I needed to do something about my problem. I had to take small steps, so I drove to the post office and back one day. The next morning, I did a dump run and made a deposit at the bank. Then I tackled going 22 miles to Willits. I made it there and back with flying colors and only twice drifted over the center line. Thank goodness there was no one in the other lane.

Then I took myself 50 miles to Ukiah and made my two appointments, one with a counselor and one with a chiropractor. I did everything on the list, made all the required left hand turns, and got home without an incident.

It doesn't seem like much, I know. In fact, it seems silly in retrospect, but I did have a problem, and I had to solve it, all by myself. This set of tasks helped me pull myself together. Keeping to a schedule helped me keep the goal in mind. I don't want to be a recluse. I don't want to be a dependent old lady who has to live in the back room of one of her kid's homes to be able to survive. I can do this thing, called living alone, and I plan on doing it well. I just have to take it one step at a time and expand my confidence as I go.

I have a new prayer. “Thank you for who I am. Thank you for who I have been. Thank you for who I am becoming.”

The cat is on the bed now, accepting the inevitability of having to make friends with a new person for the night, and I am so new, even to myself.

Not Sure Why

I promised myself I would not 'set myself up'. I know what it means to pine away over such contrived memory land-marks as the first date, the first kiss, etc. I did enough if it when I was younger with teenager love-lost situations. I decided this kind of memory thing struck me as a form of self-persecution.

I also promised myself I would get busy, not so much that I'd get run down or sick, but enough to increase my activity and begin preparing the house, garden, etc. for winter. Having projects diverts my from focusing on what I no longer have to what I can create. They help me through the day.

What doesn't help are the moments when I expect something to be done by my absent partner and realize I'll have to do it myself. Having to take his fanny pouch off the chair and go through the contents of his wallet for the first time in our married lives threw me for a loop. The first smell of fall which always thrilled me because it meant football and popcorn and slower days made my eyes water until the sun went down.

So, I wondered why I kept his denim shirt out of the wash, separating it from the last batch of clothes he'd worn. His smell lingered on the collar. It held the last essence of his physical body. I tucked it away for at time and brought it out today. Pulling it on gave me a strange comfort, like reaffirming his life had been wrapped around mine as much as his shirt covered my arms and breasts and buttocks. It helped me know how much I was loved and probably still am from across this great divide separating us. I've hung it away again in a corner of his closet for some day in the future when I might need to be reminded of that love, or when I might need a good cry.

Surviving

What's inconceivable to me is how life keeps on going. Outside my bubble, my protected nest, all that was set in motion before Y's illness and death is happening. My novel is still getting published. His donated photos are still selling as a 2011 calendar. People are going to work and shopping. In truth, only my world, my day to day journey, has been affected. There are many who think of him and me, I'm sure, but they have to attend to their responsibilities. My son, Spence, admitted how easy it was for him to immerse himself in his job, his basketball team, and especially his four-month-old daughter's smiles; all of it easing his loss.

I learned something from him, and I tried this tactic yesterday. I made lists and chose one task, just to see if I could focus on something outside the pressure in my chest. I applied sealer to the deck railings. Sun rippled through the trees. A soft breeze teased the flowers blooming in the redwood planters. Blue jays cawed. At first I was only going to do two small outside sections, but, after accomplishing that small bit, I started the inside portion behind the planters which were the hardest to reach. I wanted to reposition the newly-planted flowers then redo the drip system, eventually.

I thought to stop there and do something else but decided to change my pattern of dancing from one project to the next. Instead, I painted until I ran out of sealer, a much different ending point for me.

When I was done, I was hungry for the first time in days, so I cleaned the brushes while my husband's voice whispered in my ear, “Not done until you finish the paperwork.” I could smile instead of cry and move on to the next task without being stopped in my tracks by a memory.

And so it went, one small job after another. I got through the day, until bedtime, when there were no diversions; where life stopped and past memories and future fears took over.

Laying in bed, I pushed my attention out the open window, into the night, and heard an infrequent croak of a groggy frog, the soft call of an owl, and I was reassured about life going on in a darkness which would only last until the sun came up again.

Another Change

The house is quiet now without the burbling humidifier on the O2 tank or the click of the on-demand oxygen concentrator. I can sit in his place at the head of the kitchen table and enjoy the full spectrum view of garden and trees from here. I can turn on lights and make noise in the middle of the night and throw away the old fashioned Corelware dishes we've had for 28 years.

And I can wail and rant because I have all the opportunities for changes and adventure I can create and do alone. It's just that I don't want to do any of them today.

In one short moment, in the early hours of 8/28, his life stopped. Our life together came to an end.

I never, ever, thought I would be a widow. In the middle of the morphine and tube drainings. . . while I was immersed in and focused on his needs and wants, I lost myself more totally than I had before his illness. I craved the proximity of his body, patting and rubbing it whenever I was near. A dose of medicine or a bite of food always concluded with a kiss . . . a hug . . . a meaningful stare.

On the day before he died, I began letting him go in a ceremony for myself where I regrounded thickly with Earth and Sky. On that afternoon, I retrieved the energetic cords binding me to the layers of his body and chakras. I feel those cords now, writhing like octopus arms, searching for a hand hold on something or somebody else. Each time I sense the grasping, I wrap my arms around myself and hold on tight to this person I think I am at this time.

I know I am not broken, only overwhelmed with an indescribable sadness for the loss of this man who shared his life with me and the daily opportunities we gave each other to do just that.

And Watching

What to say? Nothing bubbles from the well of numbness beginning to creep beneath my skin. My face feels dead, a mask with dark circles and sagging cheeks unable to lift into a smile unless a special moment occurs to warm my heart.

He is being brave and cracking jokes about his situation. Then he quiets, and we stare at each other. That's when I try to memorize the way the lines crinkle at the edges of his eyes, and how his mustached upper lip pulls back across his teeth, and notice his eyes glint with a shade of his old, merry twinkle.

To watch him struggle to breathe breaks my heart. To see his strong frame shrivel from lack of food that won't pass the pressure-filled sac around his heart makes me want to scream at this cancer, “Leave him alone. Let him die with a robust body.” But cancer doesn't work that way, and neither does death.

Dying in the prime of life happens by accident or design. For too many of us, we have to have our skin and muscles wither until they turn to dust or ash.

My only consolation with this anguish is that when he stops breathing, I will probably say, “Thank God.”