getting worse

I don't know if it's winter, or the living in an open to-the-world-house , but I find I'm missing you more and more as the days go

I miss watching tv with you.
I miss sitting in the room with you while you watch tv and I write.

I miss talking to you, laughing with you, worrying with you, arguing (or debating) with you. I miss managing life and its turbulence with you.

Every day, even here with Tammy and the babies, it seems to me more and more that you are just NOT HERE.

NEVER HERE.

Never again.

How can that even be real?

How can it be two and a half years later and I'm still struggling daily with facing the knowledge and lack of presence ? Shouldn't I be "used to it" by now?
Shouldn't I at least know that this is how it is?

Why is it still so hard?
Why are you still so gone?

Our Car is dead. Like You.

It's been horrible. First it broke (got sick), then it got fixed (got better), and then it went out and up and died on us, too many miles away, five days before payday. (too far from home; too soon.)

Actually it isn't as dead as you are. It's motor will still run, just like your big ol' loving heart kept going, even when every other part of you was giving up.

But to me, it is. I'm done with it. What  good is a heart with no body or soul?

And that grieves me.

It's one more, one last thing that was mutually ours (outside of furniture and children).
One more shared-with-you that has Gone from my life.
One more step into Life Without You.

And I don't like it.

I don't like this life without you, and I sure as hell don't like the loss of things we shared.
I don't like things that seem to take me a step farther or further away from you.
I just don't like it.

And if I should cry for our car, I hope someone will know that it isn't the car.
It's still you I'm grieving for.

Thinking of You

Haven't posted lately, but it doesn't mean I don't think of you.
I think of you at random times.
I think of you in random ways.

I think of you, and Clyde, and Little Bit.

I think of you and Charlie and Cecil.

I see you in Warren's eyes . They are a grey blue in color, but the shine and the shape of the eyes and the sweep of the lashes are you.

Today I thought I would finally take the time to put my pictures of you into a new album  -- only to find the pictures aren't with the other picture. I must have put them away somewhere more special -- but I have no idea where that could be.
 I still try to tell you things that have happened at work.
Things the kids have said or done.
Our problem child and our children's problems.

And then I realize that you aren't there.

Sometimes I tell you anyway.
I wish I knew if you heard or care, but there are some things you have to take on faith, I guess.

Marking a Milestone Unmet

Yesterday would have been your 60th birthday.
If you had stuck around for 60 full years.                    

But you didn't, so it wasn't, and yet -- it WAS.

Yesterday was your 60th birthday, and we who love you remembered it and you for the day. Me, Tammy, Tracy-in-New York, Hailey, and Warren went to the cemetery and then I took them to the park in Bethel for cake and ice cream.
I invited others to join us, but casually, and you won't be surprised that no one did. Acting like they actually have their own lives and all, y'know.

I was going to get a German chocolate cake, one with the fuzzy frosting, because those were (at one time) your favorite, but neither Tammy nor Hailey liked the look of it. Tammy said the cake looked like something had pooped on it.
So we got a chocolate pudding cake. I think you would have liked it. It was flavorful without being rich. I was surprised.

 The kids had a blast at the park, which is vastly different from how it used to be. It's different from even when Tammy and Tracy were the young'uns.

Afterwards, I took them past the house where I grew up -- it is vastly different also, but I was glad to see the mini jungle in the front side yard has been cut down. But not the lilac bush. And I drove home so we went past where we lived in the trailer here in Mt Orab.

A pilgrimage of sorts, I suppose.

Anyway, we marked your day with remembrance of you

I'm Not Me Without You

***language warning***

Since you have been gone, I've become possessed by a demon of mean spiteful hatefulness. One that calls names (and NOT only in my head), cusses, and flat-out hates.

I do not like this person.

It seems unfair somehow to lay the guilt for that at your feet, but so much of what sets me off could be eased if I could just talk to you. You were always such a good listener. And you could make me laugh at my own frazzledness.
It's also true that many of the things that set me off would not exist had you just continued to exist. No necessity for a job, no homelessness, no car falling to pieces -- you'd have figured out a way to get it fixed, or helped me figure it out. You would have been more on top of the transmission fluid situation, that's for sure.

Rex, you would not believe the frequency with which I use the f word. I've probably used it more in the last two months than I ever did out whole lives together, And I call people retards in my mind, and you know that I have never used that word that way -- that I have been extremely upset by and with people who do. I've even called them fucktards, and you know how I despise that word. (While still admiring it, in a professional sort of way. It says what it means and means what it says. No one has ever needed to have it defined for them, or explained.)

I am hateful.
I am angry.
I am childish.
I am spiteful.
I am malicious.
I am ungrateful.
I am humorless.
I am negative.

And I do not like this person.

But I don't know how to find me again, anymore, ever.
I don't know if that me exists, or even if she ever did.

I kind of liked her most of the time when I thought she did exist. There were negative things, but they were all softened and leveled out by a sense of humor and a sort of loving kindness that could see the silly side and laugh at it.

I miss her, but she is so lost; so far away.
How do I get back to her?

Is That You?

Last week, I had a spate of losing things and then finding them exactly where they were supposed to be. Freaky to say the least. Most of the stuff was relatively minor -- my new pay card, my wallet, some cash, bank papers; things of that ilk. (The pay card was minor because it had not yet been activated.) The big thing was my teeth.

Through it all, I could hear you nagging, fussing, cussing -- just giving me hell for not keeping better track of my things.
Heck, you (and your mouth and opinion of me) were the reason I made myself learn to be so otganizes. A place for everything and everything in its place.

But what do you do when you've put everything in its place and it disappears then reappears exactly there?

I then had the misfortune -- or maybe good fortune -- to read a list of signs that a loved one could be letting you know they are near. The number one item was the disappearance and reappearance of significant items.

Except that I can't really see you doing that, especially not with my teeth. I even had to work all night one night without them. Just doesn't seem like something you'd do. (Charlie might, but he can go haunt someone else. You can tell him I said so.)

I have mixed feelings about that. I wish you were here; I like the idea if you being near; but I would so much rather think of you being off somewhere, just being. No work, no worries, love and joy and peace -- all that good stuff.
Yeah, I want you to help me with all my little problems but don't want you to kn ow about any of them. Especially not the ones I keep talking over with you.

Yeah,

Well, anyway, if it's you, send me flowers, okay? Like you did when you were first  gone. Please don't hide things from me.
It's hard enough living every day without your help.
Without you.

On My Mind; In My Heart

I've had you on my mind a lot lately. Actively, awfully, achingly on my mind. I suppose it's the weather. The horrible hot humidity that was always so hard on you. (And it's just now the middle of June!)

And having to work and no one to decompress with afterward. Work has been really tough the last three weeks or so. I'm trying to do three people's work -- which is my usual job -- but now I'm having to be at all three parts of the job at exactly the same time! And stay on them. It's just too hard. And I can't do it, but then I go on and do it anyway.

You know.

No luck finding my own place. Who knew it would be so hard. Part of that problem is the working, and the third shift working. I'm not "in place" to get the new newspapers every week, or to make the phone calls bright and early in the business day.
I have lots of family and friends who are trying to help, but they can't help much with the timing thing. That one is all on me.

I think of you when I have a hard time breathing every time I open the drive thru window.
I think of you when I wake up gasping for air because the room is so hot.
I think of you when I have to choose breathing or sleeping. (Or standing, or sweeping, or moving.)
I think of you when I hurt, because I think that you would be unhappy to see me this way.

And then I am glad you are not here to see it, because you deserve your hard won peace.

I thought of you Memorial Day, but I may have been the only person in the entire store who worked all four days of that holiday weekend. I want to take Hailey to your resting place. She has asked about you/it. Just haven't made it  yet.

Rex, I wish you could know how grateful I am that I had you for so long. And for the way you let me be me, even when you couldn't understand where that me-ness was coming from. (I hardly know myself, sometimes.)

It's such a horrible aching loss not having you. Not having that.

I can only hope -- since I can't change anything now -- that I let you be you in the same way. And I hope you know how much love there was for that you.

I miss you.