I am sitting at Swill Coffee with the girl, who is on spring break and working on some papers she has to get done by the end of the term. For some reason, we are more productive when sitting at a coffee place. It feels like we are here to accomplish stuff. I decided to finally upload all the photos from my back window that I've been taking every time I think of it. Right now it is partly sunny (cloudy, according to the weather app) and about 52° F. It's supposed to rain in the afternoon and snow tonight. It isn't supposed to drop below freezing, however, so I think it will be the typical Reno snowing where nothing actually sticks. I hope that is the case, since I have to take the other girl to the airport at 4:30 am.
Yesterday I sat down to write something that often comes to mind when I read things on facebook. But I was feeling angry and stressed, and decided that it wouldn't be prudent to actually post it...a friend posted a link to a John Pavlovitz blog that says Life is short, people are hurting, don't be a jerk. I told her I had just planned on being a jerk, but I'd stick it on my blog...my languishing poor excuse for a blog. It's probably more appropriate for Tumblr, but I've clearly stated that THIS is a blog and my Tumblr account is not.
Yesterday I was angry and stressed about a situation, and there seems to be no end of crappy young humans in the world. Shiftless young adults; I could be an early philosopher complaining about youth, for it's been happening from time immemorial: "I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint".
(Hesiod, 8th century BC)
I am from the Gen X generation, and being both an apologetic, passive fat female AND a person with some sort of slight learning disorder, as well as being from a lower income family, I basically just did the jobs I had to do to pay my bills. I was laid off from my first job post university at the medical center; 1988 was a constricting economic time, and it didn't get better right away. I worked as a waitress, then moved back in with my parents to work at a convenience store while I looked for other jobs. We went for 9 months at 7-Eleven with no turnover, and we had a nurse and engineer working the midnight shifts for awhile. When times got better and I finally thought I might establish a career, taking computer science classes after work at the local community college, then it happened that I got married and moved away from the DC area. So Cal was a completely different market, and just not as good for those of us trying to break into the tech field. I was offered a job managing a small office which paid $25,000 a year...they told me I was young and they wanted someone who didn't need as much money, but I was already 32 and having a baby, so I didn't feel I was that young, and $25,000 wouldn't go very far with childcare in the mix. The company I left where I was employed as a temp wanted me to return to work, but I was making $10 an hour with no benefits, and the reason they extended my 2 day assignment indefinitely was because I had experience in the field. $10 in 1999 in Orange County, CA? Nope.
But this is not my rant, it's just the unfortunate babbling lead-in, me trying to work up my head of steam once more so as to properly be able to form my words. I don't need to; I don't need to be angry to say this...I'm just trying to explain something I don't get, I don't feel the way others do, and it is this: parents brag about their children on facebook. Perhaps brag is the wrong term, but they proclaim how proud they are...how they couldn't be more proud. It's kind of the same way someone will post a photo, a brave photo, a photo that is real. And then people clamor about how beautiful the person is. I often don't find the person beautiful, and I don't think getting that the aim of the person sharing the photo was to be called such. I feel downright angry when I try to post a real or an ugly photo of myself, and people rush to tell me how beautiful I am. I don't NEED to be beautiful, I don't NEED for you to FIND ME BEAUTIFUL. Which isn't to say that when I find someone or something beautiful, that I can't help but exclaim so.
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
6 March 2019
10 am, raining or misty snow, I don't remember, but it was an interesting sky. Looking at other photos I took around then, it seemed to be raining, and that might have been one of the windy days. There were lots of white clouds with some blue sky at times.
21 February 2019
It snowed on this day, a Thursday. This was around 8 am, and school was not delayed. I worked that day, and it would snow off an on without really dropping much, but the kids had fun playing in it as they walked to music or had recess.
20 February 2019
This was taken around noon, and the sky is probably white because I focused on the darker mountain range.
17 February 2019
It's starting to snow again in the late afternoon.
And after 5:30 pm it seems to be coming down.
17 January 2019
This was around 9:30 pm. It's grainy, but I think I took it because of how light the clouds appeared that late at night.
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
9 January 2018
Today Philip died. I went to visit him and say good-bye. He was still alive when I left. I didn't want to leave when I did, but I felt like I should, and then I had an appointment anyway. I feel sad and tired, and my chest feels heavy, but every once in awhile like it is swelling up and it seems scary. I don't know why, honestly. Why grief is so strange and random. I met his friend who came to visit periodically, and was coming to visit. He was supposed to pick her up from the train station, but he wasn't there. She is taking care of his cat, Cooper, who is 23 years old and thin as a rail. Cooper didn't get to have Philip all his life after all. I touched his hand and said they were so gifted, they had so much talent. I brushed his head, and covered up part of his side that got uncovered. I touched his arm, and it felt warm and smooth. My mother's arm was very soft when I was sitting by her bedside.
When my husband's brother was dying, I cried for 3 days straight. It felt like this. He didn't know why it hit me so hard, but it did; I felt as sad as when my dad died. I didn't get to sing to Philip because people were in the room, but I did talk to him. My church bulletin listed the pieces he was supposed to play on Sunday, when he fell, and they were: How Brightly Shines the Morning Star by Buxtehude; Two Preludes from Bible Poems from J. Weinberger; Andantino by Cesar Franck. We will never get to hear them, but I listened to Buxtehude yesterday while writing that entry.
When my husband's brother was dying, I cried for 3 days straight. It felt like this. He didn't know why it hit me so hard, but it did; I felt as sad as when my dad died. I didn't get to sing to Philip because people were in the room, but I did talk to him. My church bulletin listed the pieces he was supposed to play on Sunday, when he fell, and they were: How Brightly Shines the Morning Star by Buxtehude; Two Preludes from Bible Poems from J. Weinberger; Andantino by Cesar Franck. We will never get to hear them, but I listened to Buxtehude yesterday while writing that entry.
Tuesday, January 8, 2019
8 January 2018
Right now I am sad. Right now I am wanting to say something, but I've already said it in my mind many times before I went off on a tangent. Right now I want to write what I was feeling half an hour ago, but I need a quiet place in my brain and, by extension, my home. Right now I want to write well, but I know I am already not writing well. So let me back up...
Do you remember when you were a child, and sad things seemed so sad that dealing with the feelings was insurmountable? But then maybe you learned to compartmentalize at the same time. Feelings were confusing. Sometimes I didn't know if I really loved anyone; I wasn't sure I knew what it felt like. I knew what love was supposed to be, but how do you feel this overwhelming explosion of warmth for people in your life? What I felt mostly, was fear, sadness and happiness, occasional hurt feelings, some envy or jealousy, insecurity, all variations on sadness and fear and anger. I don't remember feeling anger or rage as a child the way I do now. I think my anger was mostly fear and sadness. But the way I knew I loved people was to ask myself a question: How would I feel if that person died. I would be sad, I would cry. I knew I would cry. I knew I felt afraid because I didn't want to feel sadness. And later, when anger was a big part of my life, I hated it so much. I did not want to be angry, and it made me angrier.
Right now, I feel sadness, but in the way of all people, it is not overwhelming. It is easy to keep going past and doing what you have to be doing, and smiling and laughing because life is often smiling and laughing, even when it is at odds with what is happening. I am always trying to joke, and I am no stranger to gallows humor--it got me through my miscarriage and my mother's death.
People tell me I am hard-hearted. Sometimes I feel that way, but then other times I feel like I'm way too weepy over sentimental things. Things always end, so I always look to those endings and try to feel the enormity of it all instead of just living in the moment, because it is just so damn easy to live in the moment. We have to live our daily lives, always. There are times I wish I could wallow in the full enormity of grief, like I did at that one point when I was a child and the grief was so overwhelming that I couldn't deal with it, other than to draw a picture. I drew a picture. My heart healed. Maybe it has a scar now, many scars. Because sometimes the tears won't break through, they just sort of leak. The last time the tears were copious and free flowing was when I was keeping vigil at my mother's bedside as she was dying. It took a couple of days, sleeplessness, and then people were worried for me. They thought something was wrong. They couldn't accept my full-fledged grieving, but then they had a hard time coping later. I felt at peace.
I don't really feel at peace about my mother-in-law. There is more I wanted to do, wish I could have done, still feel sad about. Sometimes things just feel hard and tight inside of me, but not like I'm really sad when I know I should be sad. I go on living and think it will come out, but then the hard lump just gets harder and I go on, and maybe that is why the older you get, the easier it is just to get more pragmatic about it all.
My parents had a friend couple for most of their time together. Bud and Trixie. Bud died first. I thought my dad would have a hard time with it, and I wanted to see him just to see and understand the pain of that kind of loss. When his daughter died, he sat at her funeral with tears just rolling, and said she was not supposed to die before her parents. But when Bud died, of a lingering illness, my father said to me, "Guess what, I'm using the razor of a dead man." I felt sad, but it was like he took it in stride. Trixie gave my dad Bud's razor, and my dad was using it. His tone was odd to me, this mix almost of wonder and maybe a bit of pride in the fact...I don't know. It confused me, but then I thought that since my dad was old, maybe this was his way of dealing with it. Things are always coming to an end, and you have seen it so many times by the time you are near your own end. My dad didn't use Bud's razor for long...he died not long after.
I have long put my love into inanimate objects that I can feel at once a deep-seated attachment to while being able to detach emotionally from them. They are little emotion banks...I can't get rid of them because they are precious stores, but I don't have to carry them with me. I feel like inanimate objects have feelings and a soul of sorts, but they don't have a soul of their own, I guess what they really have beyond their own functionality and aesthetic pleasingness is my consideration of their worth. I still have a stuffed cat from when I was very young. I am old enough that I don't want anything else to come into my life that I could get attached to, and I want to break attachment to what I have. I feel sad, actually, when I look at all the things I haven't done with what I have, and I realized that time is past and I will never do those things, and what did I even do instead.
My biggest hoard of anything, though, is photos. I always wanted photos of things, even when I was young, and I probably have about 30,000 digital photos on my computer. I have a lot of video from when my mother was dying, and even if I never watch anything I record, it's more about the fact that I have some sort of record of it, however spotty. If I ever lost these things, I feel like all the emotions would come out like souls trapped in prison, and it would be a violent upheaval of emotion. My sister donated some clothing that I was specifically saving, and I had a lot of emotion over that that I still haven't overcome.
Today I found out that someone I value and like for is dying. It was a shock. I thought the person talking about it was talking about someone else. I thought it was sad for the person before I knew who it was, but then I found out it was someone I care about. And I'm sad, but I'm also restless. I don't want to be sad, I want him to be fine but if he is not, I want to be able just to sit and contemplate his life and the sadness of his departure from it. But then I feel restless and my brain moves on. I feel the turmoil of people I like dying and not being able to go back and capture the memory of the last time I saw the person. I only have a bad quality photo of him from behind. I wish I had a recording of his voice. Somewhere I have a recording of my dad's voice, even though I can't find it. I have a recording of my mother singing happy birthday to me on my answering machine. And, of course, I have all the regrets of things I could have done differently with my parents and my in-laws.
I want there to be a miracle and for him to recover. I want things to stay the way they are, for just awhile longer. Things always change, and I am always the one sitting and thinking about endings at the peak happiness of moments, just to remind myself not to be too happy. But then when sadness comes, I am always doing things that remind me that life goes on, and grief is not transformative for most situations. If my children died, if my husband died, then my life would be forever changed, but I keep living life even when I want to be able to feel sad.
I also feel this restlessness, wondering if there was something we could have done that would have changed things. Sunday morning, I was sitting outside my bedroom, singing a song, waiting. I felt a need to go to church early. I knew he would be there. I wasn't able to go early, and the song I was singing had the line We know that pain reminds this heart that this is not, this is not our home. It won't be my home after awhile. It won't be Philip's home for much longer, either, and that is a loss to many people who knew him better than I. I always have a hard time with those kinds of losses.
Do you remember when you were a child, and sad things seemed so sad that dealing with the feelings was insurmountable? But then maybe you learned to compartmentalize at the same time. Feelings were confusing. Sometimes I didn't know if I really loved anyone; I wasn't sure I knew what it felt like. I knew what love was supposed to be, but how do you feel this overwhelming explosion of warmth for people in your life? What I felt mostly, was fear, sadness and happiness, occasional hurt feelings, some envy or jealousy, insecurity, all variations on sadness and fear and anger. I don't remember feeling anger or rage as a child the way I do now. I think my anger was mostly fear and sadness. But the way I knew I loved people was to ask myself a question: How would I feel if that person died. I would be sad, I would cry. I knew I would cry. I knew I felt afraid because I didn't want to feel sadness. And later, when anger was a big part of my life, I hated it so much. I did not want to be angry, and it made me angrier.
Right now, I feel sadness, but in the way of all people, it is not overwhelming. It is easy to keep going past and doing what you have to be doing, and smiling and laughing because life is often smiling and laughing, even when it is at odds with what is happening. I am always trying to joke, and I am no stranger to gallows humor--it got me through my miscarriage and my mother's death.
People tell me I am hard-hearted. Sometimes I feel that way, but then other times I feel like I'm way too weepy over sentimental things. Things always end, so I always look to those endings and try to feel the enormity of it all instead of just living in the moment, because it is just so damn easy to live in the moment. We have to live our daily lives, always. There are times I wish I could wallow in the full enormity of grief, like I did at that one point when I was a child and the grief was so overwhelming that I couldn't deal with it, other than to draw a picture. I drew a picture. My heart healed. Maybe it has a scar now, many scars. Because sometimes the tears won't break through, they just sort of leak. The last time the tears were copious and free flowing was when I was keeping vigil at my mother's bedside as she was dying. It took a couple of days, sleeplessness, and then people were worried for me. They thought something was wrong. They couldn't accept my full-fledged grieving, but then they had a hard time coping later. I felt at peace.
I don't really feel at peace about my mother-in-law. There is more I wanted to do, wish I could have done, still feel sad about. Sometimes things just feel hard and tight inside of me, but not like I'm really sad when I know I should be sad. I go on living and think it will come out, but then the hard lump just gets harder and I go on, and maybe that is why the older you get, the easier it is just to get more pragmatic about it all.
My parents had a friend couple for most of their time together. Bud and Trixie. Bud died first. I thought my dad would have a hard time with it, and I wanted to see him just to see and understand the pain of that kind of loss. When his daughter died, he sat at her funeral with tears just rolling, and said she was not supposed to die before her parents. But when Bud died, of a lingering illness, my father said to me, "Guess what, I'm using the razor of a dead man." I felt sad, but it was like he took it in stride. Trixie gave my dad Bud's razor, and my dad was using it. His tone was odd to me, this mix almost of wonder and maybe a bit of pride in the fact...I don't know. It confused me, but then I thought that since my dad was old, maybe this was his way of dealing with it. Things are always coming to an end, and you have seen it so many times by the time you are near your own end. My dad didn't use Bud's razor for long...he died not long after.
I have long put my love into inanimate objects that I can feel at once a deep-seated attachment to while being able to detach emotionally from them. They are little emotion banks...I can't get rid of them because they are precious stores, but I don't have to carry them with me. I feel like inanimate objects have feelings and a soul of sorts, but they don't have a soul of their own, I guess what they really have beyond their own functionality and aesthetic pleasingness is my consideration of their worth. I still have a stuffed cat from when I was very young. I am old enough that I don't want anything else to come into my life that I could get attached to, and I want to break attachment to what I have. I feel sad, actually, when I look at all the things I haven't done with what I have, and I realized that time is past and I will never do those things, and what did I even do instead.
My biggest hoard of anything, though, is photos. I always wanted photos of things, even when I was young, and I probably have about 30,000 digital photos on my computer. I have a lot of video from when my mother was dying, and even if I never watch anything I record, it's more about the fact that I have some sort of record of it, however spotty. If I ever lost these things, I feel like all the emotions would come out like souls trapped in prison, and it would be a violent upheaval of emotion. My sister donated some clothing that I was specifically saving, and I had a lot of emotion over that that I still haven't overcome.
Today I found out that someone I value and like for is dying. It was a shock. I thought the person talking about it was talking about someone else. I thought it was sad for the person before I knew who it was, but then I found out it was someone I care about. And I'm sad, but I'm also restless. I don't want to be sad, I want him to be fine but if he is not, I want to be able just to sit and contemplate his life and the sadness of his departure from it. But then I feel restless and my brain moves on. I feel the turmoil of people I like dying and not being able to go back and capture the memory of the last time I saw the person. I only have a bad quality photo of him from behind. I wish I had a recording of his voice. Somewhere I have a recording of my dad's voice, even though I can't find it. I have a recording of my mother singing happy birthday to me on my answering machine. And, of course, I have all the regrets of things I could have done differently with my parents and my in-laws.
I want there to be a miracle and for him to recover. I want things to stay the way they are, for just awhile longer. Things always change, and I am always the one sitting and thinking about endings at the peak happiness of moments, just to remind myself not to be too happy. But then when sadness comes, I am always doing things that remind me that life goes on, and grief is not transformative for most situations. If my children died, if my husband died, then my life would be forever changed, but I keep living life even when I want to be able to feel sad.
I also feel this restlessness, wondering if there was something we could have done that would have changed things. Sunday morning, I was sitting outside my bedroom, singing a song, waiting. I felt a need to go to church early. I knew he would be there. I wasn't able to go early, and the song I was singing had the line We know that pain reminds this heart that this is not, this is not our home. It won't be my home after awhile. It won't be Philip's home for much longer, either, and that is a loss to many people who knew him better than I. I always have a hard time with those kinds of losses.
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