today's facebook posting ...

"The reality is that it is 2 yrs 3 mos ... I still have not opened all the condolence cards & letters as it hurts too much ... I still have clothes in the closet that I just hold & smell ... how does one mend a very broken heart? Thank goodness breathing is a reflex".

End of posting.

Listening to Steely Dan on Spotify. It's been a while. It still works upon me as a musical balsam.

So, yes, it is still very much about the grief. I gave up several dedicated years of anti-depressants & anti-anxiety meds just in time for the holidays. Timing sucked but all my reading has made the distinction between grief and depression very, very clear. Grief cannot be treated with anti-ds.

If that was the case, why put my body through all the additional stress of processing unnecessary drugs?

Accupuncture has been working very nicely for my migraines. They are now less the norm than they were, a predictable and unwanted, painful presence just the turn of my head away.

Jon has been working on accupuncture detox points as well. Perhaps they are helping. I certainly did not go into full blown withdrawals, which was anticipated. Far from it, much to my doctor's great surprise. I will give 50% credit to Jon's healing needles & 50% to the power of my will.

Or won't. As in "I won't have a problem", "I won't give in".

It is hard enough to experience the death of a loved one, a spouse, but painful issues like single parenthood, financial insecurity, isolation, all becomes dominant players in the grieving process.

I know they are with me ...

Something about Vic's passing has overly sensitized me to people's pain & suffering, particularly the illness of cancer & all that it entails ...

Reading that Joe Paterno's family were making a decision about his ventilator threw me into a mini breakdown. It reminded me so vividly that my last decision made on Vic's behalf was not to put him on a ventilator as I was advised that once on it, he would never come off.

So to have him hooked up to a breathing machine, to feed him through a tube in his stomach ... not an option he would have wanted anymore as the quality of his life would have been completely compromised & he would have been helpless & dependent, two things that were unacceptable.

I miss him ...

Moving out

For the best part of the past two years, I spent my home time in my room with ventures into the kitchen for sustenance & into the den to keep the bills paid.

Actually, that has since changed as I finally discovered online banking! Now the den really serves as the custodian of the family paper trail, the bane of my organizational existence.

When Vic died, I made a couple of very subtle changes to the bedroom, a place where so much time was spent during his illness ... the changes included emptying out his bedside table drawers, moving my "stuff" over to his drawers in the bathroom, strange things like that. I had given Shay & Angie a lot of his clothing immediately upon his death so I took over more closet space even though there remains a number of Vic's items that I cannot touch, move, look at still. I want them there, I just want them there.

My room has served as my womb room, the place I feel most connected, most protected, most safe, most detached from the world.

I have everything I personally need within a few feet of my bed, which serves as my hq. Comfortable beyond belief, totally inspired by the incredibly luxurious bedding in Miraval, my room is often referred to as my own hotel suite.

My room has nursed & nurtured all my emotions these past years have evoked. My billowy pillows are piled high, downy & soft. I have buried my face in them, the sheets over my head, more times that I care to admit, let alone share.

I have candles of all types everywhere, mainly inside an assortment of crystals, salt lights, etc. I have a lifetime of photos in multiple photo frames & I like to look at them.

Some people tell me I should not have them around. That's it is not good for me to keep looking at the past.

But I like it. It gives me great comfort. It reminds me of just how fleeting life is & how many wonderful moment we all shared.

Our living room is the central point of our house. A large, high ceiling, you walk through it to get to all rooms. It's a fabulous room, focal point being the fireplace that we all love.

But it is a room that I rarely frequent. It is the place where the Xbox was played, where football games and "Hillbilly Fishing" is watched. It is not a room that I use or have ever used, to be frank.

The only time I really come out of my room is to enjoy the fire but that was always quite short lived. For some reason, I always liked it most when everyone was sleeping & it was just me, the sound of the wood charring & the smell of oak burning.

Here it is winter again and the fire has been roaring away.

There have been small, almost imperceptible changes that have been insinuating themselves into my life.

One of them has been a very conscious effort on my part to spend more time in the living room, in the center of my home as opposed to sequestered in my "suite".

Those friends who come over all "get" why we always end up in my room. It has a really, really good, soothing vibe.

However, the seguaying into the living room is quite symbolic for me.

It represents a part of me that is getting ready to come back into the world ... it is a very slow process for me.

I have finally made the distinction between being depressed and the state of grief.

I am very jealous of those people for whom the grief process was a one, two, three event. I am more curious than envious about those people who became widowed who are right there, wham bam, back in the game.

I am questioning as to when I go from being "widowed" to being "single" ... being widowed still makes me feel connected to the relationship, as in we didn't want it to end. Being single seems overwhelming to me as I really never expected I would be that again. Even as we learned the true nature of Vic's illness ... death was not an option for him & we operated from that mind set ALL THE TIME.

I am thinking that the word "solo" does not present me with such angst, like I am "out there" ...

So there it is.

No rush. No pressure. No hurry.

And ...

Moving out of the bedroom into the living room.

Moving out of widowed into solo thinking.

From my heart to G-d's ears ...

Le roi est mort ...

Vive le roi. "Le roi" being the old.

"The (olde) year is dead. Long live the year".

I gave up on resolutions many lifetimes ago. They just set me up for failure as I simply put too ridiculously much on myself.

Now, decades later, I am happy to say that I have simply resolved to keep moving forward.

That's it. Just keep moving onwards.

The past couple of months, although at times
rocky, have all brought me to what I am perceiving as a new state. A new stage of my life.

One of my favorite Van Morrison songs ended with the haunting line, "the best is yet to come".

May it be so.