Personal Journal

Don't stop believing

It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn

I cranked up the tunes on the new computer to 100 percent power. Listening to Journey "Don't Stop Believin". Always loved that song. Neil Shon is a really underrated guitarist. If you listen to what he does in the space between the rhythm, if you listen to the way he can take a space for a guitar solo and make a completely exhilerating climax, you can't help but realize how tremendously good he is. Journey is probably the best 5-person band ever.

I hope my neighbors notice. I'll be disappointed if they're not. I didn't buy 550 watts just to blow my ears out. I bought it so they'd know that I like to jam, and I'm not to be disturbed.

Anyhow, that's just babbling.

I'm really interested in a woman for the first time. Or at least I think I am. I've been wise enough not to let my thoughts and feelings of temporary attraction get the better of me, since I'm at least aware that I could really just be tripping on my grief.

But this one, Brenda is her name, reminds me of feelings I haven't had in a long time. Curiosity. Respect. Stimulation, both intellectual and emotional (weak at this point, but there), and somewhat physical (though I've only seen photographs).

Odds are, of course, we aren't suitable. Hell, I'm not even sure she's interested in me as much as I am her, in fact, either I have tripped her off balance, in a good way, or a bad way. Because I can tell she's having a bit of a conscious reaction to my interest.

I have to relax. Isn't that true of life. You learn a bunch of things in life, and you start to see the threads that run through them all. I'm thinking of kayaking and mountain biking and women - relax. You're not going anywhere when you're tight.

One of my favorites, from both kayaking and mountain biking is this:

You look where you want to go.
You don't look at the obstacles. You look at the clear path.

I love that about life. I love that this approach works. It worked with Jean's cancer. It works with my job. It works with my emotional self.

I am an optimist.
I look where I want to go, not where I don't.

That's what I was writing to Brenda yesterday. Brenda's husband died in September. She confided that in me when I told her that before we kept e-mailing, she ought to know about Jean, because most women I talk to (10 of 12) have stopped communicating with me when they found out about Jean (that's their right - I don't begrudge them or judge them for it).

She asked me how long I was with Jean, and I answered, but I said that my talking about Jean seemed in conflict with my wanting to get to know her. That's an instinct you carry from all the relationships you have that end in a breakup. It's not really the same with my relationship to Jean. That relationship didn't fail. It succeeded. At death, we parted. For now.

But I said to Brenda that she knows from experience how this has changed my life. And I'm not going to be bitter about what I lost, because it's no way to honor what Jean and I shared. And it's not how Jean wants me to live the rest of my life. She loved my optimism. And I intend to keep it.

Friday.

Friday marks six months.
Six months ago tomorrow they told me she had 24 hours to live. I don't really remember how I reacted.
I remember I went to the doctor to get back pain meds, and I got anti-depressants. And I filled Jean's fucking synthroid prescription because she still needed it even in hospice. And I got home and the nurse told me the news. I remember being exhasperated that I paid for the synthroid. I focused on something absurd.

That must have been coping. Or else it's all I remember at this point. I don't really want to go back and remember the things my mind is drawing up now, the fevers, the sweats, the breathing. No, no thanks. I can say no to it now.

I loved her and I was her caregiver, and I succeeded for the vast majority of that process.

I think about her every hour. I have her pictures all over.

I still don't know what it all means.

Our relationship is over, actively, I guess.
But our relationship continues to influence me and recode my spiritual genetic code.

I'm kayaking Friday.
A private lesson with the really REALLY positive young woman, Maya, from my first lessons. I'm going because it's six months, and I need to make a statement with what I do with this day.

I promised her I would kayak.
I promised her I would be okay, and that I would live.

I don't know what I live for right now. I know I live for something. Maybe I don't get to know till it's time again. Time for me to rise to another occasion.

Six months.
January was a blur, and February was a routine. I was lost in March, and I started to move again in April. May I started rebuilding. June, I started to pick up momentum.

I look back over my shoulder, and there's so much distance between then and now, but still I feel her presence in my being.

I know I always will.


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn