There's No Logic To It

I have a comforting vision of him: an angelic version of himself, come to visit me.

I read my blog posts of a year ago and I'm reminded of how very difficult life had become for us both. I realise all over again that we simply couldn't have gone on. I confront what it would have been like if he'd lingered — the inevitable slow decline — and I'm thankful we were both spared that.

People tell me I look well, and I point out that I no longer have the stress of being his carer. 'I have grief,' I say, 'But not stress.'

I go out for lunch with a couple of women friends. I enjoy the food and conversation. We laugh together. We make plans to start a meditation group. I become animated, suggesting how we might go about it.

'I'm back in life,' I think. 'I'm moving forward.'

But it's not a linear progression.

Suddenly I find myself thinking about a night last year when I had a glass of wine, and he wanted one too. I was scared to give him a full glass because I'd been given to understand it was dangerous for him, what with his Alzheimer's, his high risk of falls, and all the medications he was on. I gave him half a small glass. He sipped it with enjoyment. Then I could tell, from the look on his face, that he'd have liked a little more. Neither of us said anything, but we didn't have to. It was on both our faces: his wish, my fear of granting it, his resignation. All very sensible. I didn't know that the following night he would end up in hospital, and in only four weeks he'd be dead. 

So I think guiltily that I could have let him have that extra small glass he wanted. It wouldn't have hurt. It would have given him pleasure in the moment. And so on and so on and so on — even though I know I had no idea at that point that he wouldn't live for years, and I was looking after his long-term health. I cry and cry and cry about that glass of wine I denied him. (I don't suppose he himself remembered it even an hour later.)

And all this after feeling really good, really together.

Well, that is, except for the moment earlier today when, contemplating the prospect of my arthritis getting worse with age, and my family all far away, I was suddenly overcome with self-pity and screamed at him in my mind, 'Don't leave me alone!'

And that's what it's like. Sometimes I cry for him — for things that were hard for him when he was still here, even so trivially hard as missing out on a few sips of wine. And sometimes I cry for me, for having to live the rest of my life without him. 

Either can hit me after it seems that I'm making real progress — a sudden relapse for no obvious reason. There's just no logic to it.

Nostalgia Trip

I'm in the Choux Box café in Kingscliff, looking across the road to the sunny blue ocean through the few foreshore trees. I'm having a mug of mocha coffee and a big slice of their amazing banana cream pie topped with toffee chips and macadamia nuts. Andrew and I came here a lot over the years, particularly the Pottsville years. It was one of our favourite places. I am trying to remember when the last time would have been. It must have been after we had moved back to Murwillumbah. He was already somewhat frail, I recall. 

We always had a mug of mocha and a slice of this very decadent pie. Today I am finding it a touch too rich, but I finish it all the same — a gesture to memory, and good times we shared. I am at the corner table we liked best. The breeze is just a little too brisk, as always; but, as always, the ambience is worth it.

I was going to visit a friend in Kingscliff after the Life Writing group today, but she texted me this morning to say she and her son have colds. I phoned another friend who lives in Cabarita, not far away, but she wasn't home. Somehow I was reluctant to leave Kingscliff today. In recent weeks I've been popping in and out to the Life Writing group, straight there and straight home afterwards, without any diversions. Today I finally did a bit of reconnecting, calling at the shopping centre, walking around and re-acquainting myself with it, and discovering some changes that make it even better than it used to be. 'I could shop here on Tuesdays,' I thought. 

That was before today's meeting, but I guess it set the mood for afterwards. I wanted to linger. So, when my friends weren't available, I decided to come to the Choux Box and have a little nostalgia trip. It's been nice, and so far hasn't made me cry. Instead I've enjoyed it, just as we both used to do. It's easy to imagine him here with me, as he was so often — every time until now. These are small, ordinary memories of relaxed pleasure. 

Lately I have found myself going over bits of our history together, my mind spontaneously summoning them up and running through them. Now it is bits of our history with Kingscliff that occur to me as I sit here. I look across the road to the right and see the little hall where our Reconciliation group, run by the indomitable Khani, staged an art show one year — a very successful art show. And down to the left is the market ground where Andrew and I often had a stall, and where we met Marieah, the lady who made me the purple goddess gown that I wore on my poetry tour of Texas.

I remember walking on the beach that last time we were here together, deploring what the erosion had done, and collecting stones to become the gratitude rocks which we gave away at the markets. No, that can't have been our last visit, because he stopped doing the markets a year before we moved to Murwillumbah. Also I remember him walking on the beach OK, which he couldn't have later — though impatient as always for me to hurry up and finish collecting the stones so we could get home. I wonder now if his legs were already giving him more trouble than he was letting on. But in any case, he was always impatient, always eager to get on to the next thing. Only in a few places, like this café, he could relax and enjoy some leisure. He was not a leisurely man. 

Familiarity

I realise my lifestyle hasn't changed that much. We had a lifestyle that suited us both — two writers in the same house. Of course, when we were younger we did more gadding about, and also ran more courses: Reiki, Tarot, Qabala, and writing workshops. As we got older we quietened down a bit, but only in the last three years really, as he became sicker. However, even in the early years, we spent a lot of time separately writing.

Now when I work at my computer, I still fall into a habitual mind set in which he too is sitting at his computer in another room — or perhaps lying in bed, reading or napping or waiting for me to join him. So the things I think about, I imagine telling him a little later. 

This no longer distresses me as it did at first. It has become, in a way, quite comforting. I guess I have become used to it, and while I really know all the time, underneath, that it is an illusion, still it is a pleasant illusion. I allow myself to bask a little while in the familiar warmth of his presence, glad I can still recall and recreate how that feels.

When I change things, I cry

When I throw away some household gadget that I got and used during our life together, or when I acquire a new one that he will never use or see...

When I gaze with pleasure at my newly-created sunroom where his dark and cluttered office used to be...

When I cook things he wasn't allowed to eat...

When I decide not to watch a TV show he liked, or one that we used to watch together...

When I watch something he would not have liked, and enjoy it heartily...

When I wear something new that he never saw me in...

... I feel the past retreating, faster and faster, growing ever more distant. 

I move forward in my life. I do the things that work for me now. (There is no more us.) And I am happy about the things I do to make my life work for me. They are all my choices. I like them.

Nevertheless I cry.