Solemn Anniversary

I intended to write Part III today.  I might still but it is getting more difficult–more painful–as the hours tick by.  As the level in the rum bottle gets lower.

The memories are disturbing; to be honest they hurt.  I have learned that one must pace one’s self in order to survive. In order to function. In order to stay out of the psyche-ward.

So I’m pacing myself today.  It is a bright sunny day with a slight breeze in the air.  A “real feel” temperature of 81 degrees.  Perhaps unusual for November but the clear skies, the soft warm breeze is EXACTLY the same weather conditions as the day Mike died. Snow is coming, will come but not today.  I notice that the weather today is the same.  Ironic?  coincidence?  Perhaps it is too much to expect of myself that I can write a painful memory without feeling it.  Perhaps I expected I would be able to without it affecting me.  I’m stupid that way.  It’s affected me.

I miss him.  I cannot tell a lie. I miss him a lot.  That I sit writing this alone with only my dogs who knew him and the cats who did not, for company, I think I am pathetic.

I am that stereotyped widow–surrounded by cats and dogs–and forgotten by the world; staring out the window at the leaves blowing in the wind.  I even have a clock ticking on the wall that chimes every half hour and on the hour that my grandmother brought from her “home country” which was passed to my mother and which is now mine.  I hear it ticking and once  upon a time it was a nice, comforting sound but now its a sound telling me I’m older than I am.  I am a widow.  But I don’t even have gray hair!  Its conflicting and confusing.

I have not yet succumbed to sitting in a rocking chair and knitting for the grandkids that don’t exist–so I think there’s hope for me yet.

The song/video posted herein is representative of the days later on in November.  I could not listen to music.  Every song, no matter what genre, rock, country, classical caused me to sob.  This song did too.  But I became addicted to it. It was the only song I could listen to.  Oh I cried–I sobbed–every time I heard it.  And I heard it constantly as I loaded it on my iPod and listened to it over and over and over and over again.  I thought I’d get sick of it.  But I never did.  I thought I had to find something to listen to but it took me two years before I was able to listen to music and be able to smile.

This song represents the entire ordeal from beginning to end of the Solemn Anniversary.