Sitting here reading a paper I got at the spouse loss meeting last night
and the words "It's possible to take two to four years to recover..."
now couple that with going to bed last night feeling like my life, how I
lived it, and that I was comfortable with, is over. Trying to grapple with
these feelings this morning, feeling alone...feeling all the losses in
my life since a child beginning with my mother and not feeling very good
and started to cry...then the phone rings, and I th
ink
I am almost happy that I have been interrupted and can talk to someone...instead some one says
something quickly and where they were from...and a group of women just
start to sing and laugh through a version of Joy to the World and We
Wish You A Merry Christmas and hung up on me...as I cried through the
whole call, crying because of my deep reaching sorrow and that there is
no way to feel joy or have a merry anything right now and I needed to
talk, not be hung up on... The best wish I have received thus far is
that Christmas be peaceful and I will be thought of...that was honest
and heart felt. And the stinking splinter remains as a reminder that
all is not well. Off to pay a bill and leave this sad, quiet, empty
house for a while only to come back to it and trudge through another
night.
But before I leave there is this...I have been searching for a notebook I
was using last spring semester...seems so long ago. But anyway, some
things are in it I need but today instead came upon another notebook
from 2002. I write pretty random notes so as to not forget because I
tend to think pretty random thoughts...anyway looking through it I
found recipes, knitting directions, and list's of books to get or
read as well as other assorted stuff. One book was, 'Gwen John:A Painter's Life' by Sue Roe. Oddly, a year
ago I was in a class with the instructor showing slides with the subject being the life and work of Gwen
John. This week I stopped at a used book store, something I have not
done in a very long time. A year...maybe more. I had a book in mind
but it was not there instead though, were a few things I have had on
a running list in my head. As I perused the store to make my way out the door
empty handed I stopped at the art section and as I read the spines of
the books there was the Gwen John book I have wanted for what eleven
years? Also a biography about Lee Krasner, wife of Jackson Pollock by
Gail Levin! But to make the pot even sweeter was the two volume set
of Drawings of Rembrandt with commentary by Seymore Slive! I borrowed
those from my instructor and she let me hold on to them for a very
long time as they were wonderful to study. She had told me to try to
get them as one can always learn from him...and there they were! I
don't know what this post even means in regards to the sharing of it
but I guess I just needed to tell 'someone' of my finds and
excitement towards them as it told me I still care deeply, somewhere
inside about something I have cared about all of my life. This
awareness after an expressive dance rendering grief with my body in my studio that even Maggie
came in and participated in, and then falling in a heap on my studio
floor in deep wracking sobs...found the notebook not looking for and
you know the rest. Grief, what a bumpy, unsettling ride...
Maybe the point is the
routine of one's life and the picking up of that routine after a
loved one has passed away...I was reading this morning also where one
must slide back into one's life...I realized sadly on many levels,
Richard was my routine, my life revolved around him and his needs for a very long time and before that my children were my routine. So
then what? One is faced with the daunting thought of how to make your
own way, your own life, and routines...so were the books bread on the
path? Maybe...
