How Can Beauty Still Matter Now?

(Doing it for myself)

My face is looking old. I observe this in photos more than in mirrors. 

I tell myself, 'You can let yourself get old now. He's not here to see.'

Perhaps he would have continued to see me as beautiful, as he always did. But I still would have worried about turning old and ugly in his eyes as well as my own ... even though he still looked beautiful to me, no matter how aged he also looked. 

Now, though, if I turn into a wizened old crone — as I suppose I must — who cares?

However, I still put on my make-up (albeit minimal) when I'm going out. I still dress nicely, and take an interest in my clothes. It's not just for the sake of keeping up appearances — I'm far too nonconformist for that — so it must be for me. I realise it must always have been for me, even when I hoped it would please him too.

It's the same with things in my home. (How readily now I say 'my' instead of 'our'.) Today, when changing the sheets, I started thinking about the way I always tried to match blankets to sheets and quilts. Now I feel less inclined, although I still do it. It struck me that this had been a foolish practice all those years, as he didn't seem to notice such things anyway. 

But then I remembered when Bill (previous husband) and I bought our first house, and lived in it some months with horribly garish walls until we could afford to repaint. Only after we had done that did we realise the source of the stress, poor sleep and irritability we had been experiencing. One's environment really does matter, even if it seems to be just a background. It's subliminal, and it does have an effect. 

So it was important for Andrew that I did those little things to make our home aesthetically pleasing. It was important that I did them for both of us, and it's still important that I do them for me.

As for the face, perhaps I can't do much about that. Age will happen! But I can still enjoy colour, texture and style along with comfort. I can still adorn myself with my bold, exotic jewellery which gives my own eyes pleasure. (And perhaps, wherever he is, he smiles to see.)

I Must Have Been Quiet Enough to Hear Him

Had a bit of a weepy time today — though sort of in a good way, realising how much he taught me.

At the computer tonight, pausing to ponder something, my mind quiet and open, I heard, as from a long way off, him calling my name, 'Rosemary', as if to get my attention. When I listened, he called again: 'I love you.'

It was always his way of reassuring me, his ultimate, when-the-chips-are-down message, and he always meant it.

I took a moment to digest it, then I said out loud, 'I love you too.'

Inheritance

Except for some family heirloom type bequests to his offspring, he left everything to me. I still find it hard to think of some things as mine rather than his, e.g. his iMac. 

However I am glad to have them. 

I decided not to sell the iMac. It has a great screen for watching any TV shows which I happen to miss on TV; also I like to play my music on it, rather than the laptop, which I work on. 

I took his files off it, transferring them to the laptop, because I did at first think of selling it. That was easy. Removing him as a user/admin was harder — not difficult to execute but difficult emotionally: so final. 

There are various things like that, which I have to remind myself that he no longer needs. Some were his, some were ours; it's hard to think of them as simply 'mine'.

But, had it been the other way about, apart from a few family bequests of my own I would have left him everything of mine. In fact, I did. We both made wills at the same time. I need to make a new one now.

Stages of Grief: Depression, then Acceptance

As I said in my last — and excuse me for getting a bit repetitive here — I didn't recognise depression when it arrived recently. I don't think I've ever experienced it before. (Lucky me. I know people who suffer from it frequently, and 'suffer' is the word.) I was calling it things like 'emptiness' and 'pointlessness'. Eventually it occurred to me that there was a pattern happening, so I looked up the 'Stages of Grief'. Oh. Depression. Yes, that description fitted. 

'It can't be very serious,' I thought. 'I haven't been having suicidal thoughts ... oh, hang on, yes I have.' I was so deadened that I didn't experience those thoughts as dramatic, so I wasn't paying them any attention. 

'What if they're insidious?' I asked myself. So I decided I'd better see the psychologist Andrew and I used to go to.

Then, just when I'd arrived at those realisations, the next stage came along. I had some strange understandings — I might even call them epiphanies — one after the other. 

The first one came to me as, 'I'm where I've always been headed.' 

Andrew and I always knew that, barring accidents, he'd go first. He was nearly 11 years older than me, and he had quite serious health issues, albeit well controlled most of the time. 

And it came to me that I had been waiting all my life for time to myself. Well, this is not quite true. In the brief period between my first and second marriages, I was hellishly lonely. Nevertheless, I am — fortunately, in present circumstances — essentially an introvert and have usually enjoyed my own company. In fact, in the past I often craved solitude. I experienced it as a need.

If ever Andrew was away for a few days, which sometimes happened, I loved it. It's the permanence of his absence and the lack of choice in the matter that has made it so hard to bear now. That and the fact that I have been releasing much grief which was, of necessity, bottled up over the last months — even years — of his life. 

Before his final hospitalisation, knowing the end was inevitable, but not how long it would be in coming, I prayed that he would have as long as he needed and that his quality of life would remain sufficient during that time — but I also prayed that it would be soon enough for me to make a life for myself afterwards. 

I was very clear, however, both before and after his death, that the said new life would not include a new partner. I wanted time with me.

All these factors added up to the conclusion that this single, solitary life is exactly where I was always headed. Another way of putting it, I decided, is that I'm exactly where I'm meant to be.

I was settling into that realisation when I had another. I'd been slightly pissed off for some time that, although I kinda knew Andrew was still available, I hadn't experienced his presence very much. Then, suddenly, I had a vision of him up in the blue sky (where we always mentally locate heaven) happy and joyous, dancing. It hit me that instead of him coming down here to be with me in my gloom, I should be going up there to join him in his joy — not by dying, but raising my vibration, putting my consciousness there. And indeed, I can do that. I've had years of training.

All that created a big shift, emotionally. I'm not doing anything different, but I feel different. It dawns on me that I've arrived at acceptance. And here I appear to be staying.  

It is punctuated by moments of intense grief and tears, still, which can be triggered by all sorts of memories. And I have it on the good authority of widowed friends that the stages of grief don't go through a nice, neat, linear progression and then finally stop. Oh no, they can get all mixed up together, as I've already experienced; and then, after you've been through them all, they can return without warning, any old time, for years to come. Oh well. The present position is still a big improvement on what went before.

I kept the appointment with the psychologist. 'I've just reached acceptance,' I told her, 'And at this point I come to you.' She said she thought it was probably a good idea, with the anniversary of his death starting to loom close. Then I wept for an hour, telling her the whole story. 

'Each time you tell it,' she said, 'Or part of it, it becomes ...'  Well, I can't remember what she said it becomes, but something useful. Integrated, perhaps.

She thinks I've reached this point quite quickly, and that it must be due to all the ongoing support I've had from friends on and offline. I couldn't agree more! You've all been amazing. Being responsible for two cats has helped too, and so has the writing.

People have started telling me, in some surprise, how well I'm looking. And I feel well! It feels as if I'm no longer just marking time while being without Andrew, but that I am living my life again.

Dismantling the Business

Cross-posted from LiveJournal

Andrew and I had a business partnership under the name Life Magic, an umbrella for our various activities: writing, publishing, healing, teaching, and psychic research. It ran at a loss in recent years, and at some point last year I changed its status to 'not trading' as Andrew was far too ill to conduct any business activities, and I was far too busy caring for him.

Business names used to be handled by the Department of Fair Trading, which has a branch within easy driving distance of where I live, and staff I always found helpful. Transactions were smooth and straightforward. Shortly before Andrew died, however, responsibility passed to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, with an administrative centre in another Sate and no local branches. Transactions must be done online.

After Andrew died, I went online to change my registration from partnership to sole trader, i.e. removing his name from the business, preparatory to changing the status back to 'trading'. I found the website complicated and intimidating. I attempted to make the change from partnership, giving as my reason that Andrew was deceased. I didn't think I'd succeeded. I eventually found a phone number, but was placed in a long queue at a time when I couldn't wait.

A few days later, to my surprise, letters came for both Andrew and me, acknowledging an 'incorrect transaction' attempting to make the change, and informing us that the only way was to cancel the name online and apply for it anew during a period after which it would become available to the public. So I made the cancellation. Andrew and I were both advised that had been successfully completed. (What part of 'deceased' did they not understand?) That was late May. I had until 5th July before it would become generally available.

I admit, I procrastinated. That website! Also I had one cold after another for a few weeks. 'Plenty of time,' I told myself. At the end of June, I thought I'd better pull my finger out. Oh-oh, I very soon discovered that I needed to state my ABN (Australian Business Number). Then I discovered that the one I had was for the partnership. I would need to apply for a new one of my own. I couldn't see where to do this, so I phoned the Taxation Office. I knew, during the recorded message, that the buttons I was hitting would not lead me where I wanted to go — no provision for that, as far as I could interpret the instructions — but hoped that once I reached a real live person I could be redirected. As indeed happened. A very helpful young man redirected me; another sent an email with full instructions on where and how to obtain my ABN online.

Problem — the site was closed for maintenance. This continued for a couple of days. Time was now getting very short. What would I do if I lost our business name? Hmmm, did I really need it? I realised there were options. I started to wonder if the Universe was blocking me for a reason.  So I pulled some Tarot cards and got a very clear message that to go ahead with the business name would involve me in struggle, for no real benefit, whereas to simply use my own name for any business transactions would be good in all sorts of ways. Among other things, I'd save myself the business name registration fee and a lot of ongoing red tape.

Finally I found the ABN site up and running. In fact, it seemed it might have been so earlier than I thought, and that I had been getting a cached page. But, 'no accidents', as both my last two husbands, Bill and Andrew, used to say. I had been delayed for good purpose, to get me to question the need for the name.

I was asked to verify that I was entitled to a personal ABN. I was directed to a page where I could check my entitlement. Yes, I probably am entitled, if only just, but it's clearly not mandatory. I asked myself, 'Do I really need an ABN? Am I in fact running a business?' I double checked with my pendulum. Both logic and intuition answered no to both questions.

I am semi-retired. I run a writers' group in a voluntary capacity, and do psychic readings at one Sunday market per month. Otherwise I see clients and students only according to the infrequent demand and my own inclination. I never stand to earn more than I am allowed to by Centrelink to augment my Age Pension. Even when I was doing three markets a month and declaring the takings to the Housing Department, I never earned enough to affect my rental payments. In the eyes of the Tax Office, the things I do would in fact be classified as hobbies.

So — no business name and no ABN. But what if I want to republish Andrew's books some day, not to mention publishing some of my own? Well, I can get a business name and an ABN then if it seems necessary — but in fact, people do publish books privately, under their own names. In any case, no need to decide just yet.

New problem — the Life Magic website. What should I do about that? Well, when I first set it up, I was unable to register Life Magic as a business name online; it was taken. The website is in fact a blog set up to function as a website. Life Magic is simply the name of the blog. I did get a domain address. The one I was able to get was www.nissen-wade.com — which of course will be perfect now for operating under my own name.

But hang on, I just had all these new business cards made! 500 of them, to a new design. Semi-retired as I am, I'm not going to get through them in a hurry. Well, luckily I used very cheap printing (yes, Vistaprint, and a darn good job they did). Then I looked at them again. The design has been revamped to give prominence to my name rather than Life Magic, now that there's only me involved. The Life Magic name appears, quite small, directly above the website  URL. I can argue, truthfully, that it's simply the name of a blog, not a business name.

So that is how things are. I spent much of yesterday making alterations to the Life Magic site, facing the fact that I must remove Andrew from partnership there too, reframing it as my own: Life Magic, the website of Rosemary Nissen-Wade. I had to delete and/or rewrite various bits of it. This felt quite confronting, for sentimental reasons, as it had been OUR site. However, he is no longer here. There is still some reference to him, as appropriate, but not in any ghoulish or disconcerting way, and he no longer appears as the joint owner/author. The truth is, I had been running it more and more, albeit with some consultation, as he became less and less able due to illness. 

It has a different email address from all my other blogs. I have now brought Andrew's personal blogs into my own list, under my email address, for easier management. (I plan to use them for his writings, and some day they will become archives.) I could do the same with the Life Magic site, but that could be a bit tricky due to the domain address, and after all it's no big deal to leave it where it is, with links to and from the other blogs.

That leaves our joint blog, The Truth About Fairies, which can't be de-Andrewed in the same way, as much of the material was written by him, or jointly. It must accommodate the fact that he's no longer with us, but address the practicalities more delicately. It's in serious need of updating anyhow. I'm working on it. I'll probably move that one to my own list as well.

What a rigmarole! But it was time. And so I take another step forward, out of a partnership which was both personal and vocational, into my own, single life.