kvetching up

 Entry 1     12:13 a.m. 28 Days Later  The day I tried to move out in 2021.  I am scattered. March has 5 Thursdays in it this year. Tomorrow   Today is 28 days later. I am absent-minded like some German physicist in a Looney Tunes cartoon.  I walked into the office 4 times to turn the lights off and three times left without doing that.  I am just lost. Experiencing grief is like being a sponge. You just keep soaking up and soaking up the pain, and even when it wrings out, you are still wet to the core with sorrow.  Yesterday, Jenny's sister told me a story that I hadn't heard before about Jenny and Jason, which explains why Omi suspected there was an affair happening. The incident took place at a YTN play in which Abby or Leiney was performing, likely in October of 2011, when I was three months into my new California job. Omi and Moni had come to see the play and were sitting with Jenny and whichever non-performing kid came, when Ja...

 Entry 1   7:19 a.m.  Amelia, Jenny's best friend since birth, came over last night for dinner with the kids and I.  Having people over the kids know and who were close with Jenny is really helpful as we go down this road. Entry 2   9:47 a.m. Riding with Abby, with whom I am attending a vinyl record sale at the Seattle Center Armory, the same place where Abby attends school. Whenever I try and go out, I am crushed with loss. Abject. Stark. Complete. These roads I traveled so often with Jenny, this place where we met and built our lives together, and then left only to return to raise a family. I ache. And then Leavin' On A Jetplane comes on, John Denver's voice coming out of Abby's stero system to reminded me of Jenny and all the times we sang this together.  The world conspires to force me to grieve. Success. Entry 3.   9:49 p.m. I scored at the record sale too. When I was a kid, every Friday night from 3rd grade in, I would stay up late...

Abby and Jenny, late February of 2022. Entry 1   9:34 a.m. I have diverse taste in music. Most of my baseline favorites arise from my childhood, despite my best efforts. Jimmy Buffett, which was played on the AOR stations, for inexplicable reasons since its faux Island country pop, is among the guiltiest of pleasures.  We used to go to Westport, Grayland, and Shoalwater Bay, Jenny and I pretty routinely when we were dating and when our kids were small. Jenny and I loved to sleep at the Shoalwater Bay Inn, an old boarding house converted into an Air B&B. It's on a forlorn sand and beach grass covered spit, the ocean breeze cool and constant, the mystic smell of the sea ever redolent.   We would beachcomb, go to the sparse and largely ignored beach-adjacent tourist trap stores (slim pickins since the 1970s when sport fishing went belly-up) Grayland, which inexplicably had shells from all over the world, but few or none from the beaches just behind the stores....

 Entry 1   6:00 p.m. I am still in my pajamas. I haven't shaved in days. I barely move. The sun helps, and I am looking forward to the weekend. I have to mow the lawn, scoop poop, do laundry and various and sundry other things. The new treadmill will be delivered and assembled on Saturday, as well as the new television.  I am looking forward to this. Hopefully I can mount the smallest of the televisions in the garage on Saturday as well.  I had my first meeting with the probate attorney. 3-5 k to handle probate.  425 an hour for the atty, 200 an hour for the paralegal.  FFS. I am in the wrong line of business. Frankly, I find such prices obscene, and would never charge such rates unless you happened to live in Broadmoor, Denny-Blaine or the likes. Then, I'd charge you double that. We are going to California with an achin' in my heart, to look at schools with Abby. Occidental, Scripps and some Los Angeles art school whose name escapes me are on her list...

Entry 1   7:45 a.m. Having regularly maintained this journal over the last year, I am curious what readers think. If you haven't commented on the content in the comment section, before, I am hoping you will comment below, offering what your general impressions or takeaways are, however much you have waded through. Whether one post or 200 that you have read, I am curious about your thoughts. I am not seeking any specific discussion, just overall thoughts. Entry 2   5:15 p.m. Loving kindness. I am no saint. I am not a martyr. What I am is a man who was in love with a woman who no longer loved me and who was mentally ill. At the beginning of this journey, I spent many sessions discussing how I could never leave Jenny. [To be clear, the foremost reason is because I couldn't put the kids through that. One would have stayed, the other left in an instant. We even talked about getting an apartment on Queen Anne Hill, found some very nice places that took dogs, even. The toll on t...

 Entry 1.   5:49 p.m. I texted Jenny's principal today. I told her I am not able to help plan the event and that I do not intend to attend the TOPS memorial for Jenny. I can't do it. She is smart enough to plan on not having the memorial in the gym. She expects more than 500 people to attend the event.  I also told her the girls will not attend if Eric is present. She understood both positions, and will reach out to Leiney.  I also learned today the school intends to create a mural, a park bench or some other permanent remembrance. I asked that they not use the same muralist that painted Eric. The principal agreed. Dog walkers came today. That was a pleasant happenstance. The dogs are always much happier after a long walk.  I am sinking, I can feel it pulling hard.  Hard. I am experiencing lethargy. m Simple movement takes effort. I am incredibly low. I can't say how long it has been since I have felt this way, but I would guess it is more than 20 year...

 Entry 1     7:30 a.m.   I start work this morning. I look forward to trying to return to the rhythm of work and life. I am sure I am not well equipped to handle this, given it has only been two weeks, but I feel the need to do this, as best I can.  We used to be so in love: The summer of 1999 was one of the high points in our marriage. Just married over a year, we packed up the small Toyota pickup truck with all the things we would need in a family dorm, along with all our camping gear, and spent 30 days driving across the country. The truck had no air conditioning, so we would frequently use 2/60 air conditioning when it got too hot. We would roll down the two windows and drive 60 miles an hour. We saw the deepest cavern in America in Montana, cowboys and buffalo in South Dakota as we drove along BIA dirt roads. Skinheads and Lincoln's home and law offices in Springfield. People so poor on the reservation that it beggars my words to describe the livi...

Entry 1    1:42 a.m. I was sitting alone late tonight watching a show that had a man on it who was a recent widow and was struggling. I began to sob. Buddy, sitting next to me, continued snoring.  Willow jumped up from across the sectional and hurried to me. She licked the tears off of my cheeks, put her paw on my leg, then my shoulder, and slightly whined. She looked at me with eyes full of empathy. It was just what I needed. Entry 2     6:28 a.m. A mutual friend of Jenny and mine, a fellow MDA camp counselor, stopped by to see me yesterday morning. Jenny has multiple factions or clusters of friends, and this friend is part of a group of 4 women that would meet every few months for dinner. We both have known this group of women since we were kids in the mid-80s. This cluster knew about el pinché, and had definitely been told all sorts of terrible untruths about me for a long time, per Jenny's distortion campaign. I don't know when it started, but I suspect...

Entry 1.    7:45 a.m. "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." - 1 Corinthians 13:12 If you are a person being prosecuted for a crime and are mentally ill, and a jury or judge determines you committed the act from which the charges arise, in some jurisdictions you may be found guilty, guilty but insane, or not guilty due to mental defect. The latter two will likely get you committed to a mental institution for treatment for some period of time. The more I read and reflect on the behavior that I have described herein, the more I am convinced that Jenny was mentally ill. I believe more than ever, as I have contemplated before, that she had borderline personality disorder ("BPD").  Having lived with her and experienced the bizarre nature of her behavior toward me and the kids, having read every text remaining on her phone thet she sent and received over the last several years, li...

 Entry 1.    9:19 a.m. Shelly believed that when passionate love dies, you move on and find anew that passion from someone else. He was in his 20s, obviously. I would probably have made the same claim at that age had I been brash enough, believing that we deserve to permanently have such intoxication as that feeling you Willow, as I write . get when you are with a new lover. I am not in my 20s, they may as well be as far as the dark side of the moon now. Passion has it's place, even now, and even if only in short glints. But there is for me, the understanding and appreciation now for the aged scotch, the fermented grape and the steady bough of a long standing oak tree that I didn't appreciate in my more impetuous, less thoughtful days. Longevity has it's place. There is something more tender and profound in a lasting love, of a marriage fired by adversity and struggle that still carries on decade after decade. I look at the love of my friends Aimee and Robb or Eachean and...

 Entry 1.    7:00 p.m. I struggle with the knowledge that Jenny loathed me. It's clear in her texts. She says different things to different audiences, but in essence she painted me as an uncaring ogre, unsympathetic to her need to continue her years long affair. Readers of this journal may be confused. I never demanded she stop. I only asked for honesty. I told her I would stay and care for her. I only asked in return that she tell me the truth about this. I've read her communications--if you are a friend of hers and texted her--I have read everything that passed between you the last two years that still exists. It was eye opening. Jenny would describe me to her friends as angry and unaccepting of her and rage-filled. Mean to her.  She never was honest about how I treated her, how she treated me or what the issues were. Nor did Jenny divulge that when there was anger from me it always arose because she was lying about Eric which she promised not to do.  She didn...

  Entry 1    2:55 a.m. I am wide awake. Yesterday was sad. Leaving Bellingham with Leiney, we stopped by Haagen's to buy the Sunday Times, which has Jenny's obituary. Wracked with grief when it showed up as a link in my Gmail this morning, I don't intend to ever read it. I miss her too much. My sleep has been a challenge. Grief is a difficult to manage, and it's early yet. I just feel about as stable as a graham cracker dowsed in milk at times, and in other instances, I am numb. I hate this. Can't go over it, can't go under it, got to go around it. I wish it were that simple. I worry so much about the girls and my ability to do this alone. Leiney is adultish, but in many ways is still a kid. Abby's moods are indecipherable. I just don't k2now.   I'm taking this week off and returning to the fold next week. I am out of leave and need to have the time paid for, it's as simple as that. I am hoping it all remains the same, the work from home regimen....

Entry 1.    8:10 a.m. Ever allusive sleep, already annoyed by the springing forward, was further taunted by the bright sunrise pouring through the living room window this morning. I forget Jenny has passed some mornings. I realize I am expectantly waiting for her to call to me from upstairs.  Thus, the morning routine with Jenny began each morning. I would bring  meds, help dress her, make sure she has her phone, help her down the stairs and to the couch. Once there and comfortable, I would make her a smoothie, eggs cooked "over medium," Cream of Wheat.  Then, I would head to work, and she would plan her day. The dogs are restless. The morning quiet, broken only by the clink of the dog's tags as they shift in their crates, is the new normal. I miss the sound of her, the smell of her, needing me to help her. I miss her presence.

 Entry 1    7:41 a.m. The TOPS remembrance will be held in it's only appropriate location, the gym. The gym where every morning she would rush off to early in the morning to work out with coworkers, that turned out to be just one coworker. I can make a lot of snarky comments about what the two of them were up to, but no one had access to the gym but them at that time.  It's also his work location, the place she spent every day volunteering in September and October, where she would spend time whenever she could. So, that is where the remembrance will be. I don't know how I can do that. This is the second Friday of infinite Fridays that she is gone.  Everything feels completely normal and completely wrong.  I miss her.

 Entry 1     10:15 a.m. This is the day of my first talk therapy session since Jenny's death. I don't know what to talk about. I can't figure out the appropriate way of existing in this new world. Last night I found a podcast to listen to for widowers. As soon as the narrator said his wife passed from pancreatic cancer, I turned the motherfucker off. I want to run. I know we just bought the house, but if it hits a million, which will happen this year barring an invasion by Russia of Ukraine and the attendant nuclear apocalypse, I may sell. Sleep. It came late for me, rising was early. It's a pattern. Both girls are home, Abby trying to finish her history project for Running Start, Leiney existing, but just. I will get her out in the sun today. One of my dearest friends, the best man in my wedding, Aimee came to visit last night. It all seemed so normal, except that Jenny is dead. Which means nothing is normal. I guess it's good that I am riding a downward wave ...

Can't imagine losing a spouse? It will happen to you if you are lucky enough to be the surviving spouse. I'm just an early adopter.  In case you were curious, it is shit . I ache. My whole body hurts. I worry about the kids constantly. I want to make sure they are okay. It's only been 4 days, but the house is cold and empty.  The feeling of permanent loss I felt when Corey died, when my mom died, when Jason died, when Shaun died, when Brian died, when Loren died, when Kirk died, when Lance died,when so many others left is understandably more intense than all of those losses combined. It is, however, also different in kind, the loss of a spouse. The fellow traveler of shared experiences, the co-historian of my life is gone. I thought a piece of me would die when she departed. But it isn't just a part of me that is gone. I feel like I am in a malstrom, a hurricane gale has erased everything I thought was permanent and meaningful about my life, except my beautiful children...

 Entry 1     12:20 a.m. I am sleeping on the sectional. I ache. I ache so much. I'm hoping the dogs will cuddle and offer comfort. This feels insurmountable at night. I am at sea, trying to get somewhere, anywhere else really, without a fixed point for dead reckoning.

 Entry 1    11:41 a.m. Grief gives way to anger as I find more and more surprises while I going through her things. Cards from him. Money stashes, now at just under $300 socked away here and there. Another mystery debit card.  And then this, the digital equivalent of secretly sharing a housecleaner: T otwo bracelets. You tap on your bracelet and the other bracelet wearer feels a buzz, no matter where that person is. A nice little secret just between the two of you. She had it amidst shit for/from Eric, so one supposes she meant for each of them to have one. 

 Entry 1 5:37 a.m. Down after 2, up since 4. Sleep is a stranger to my grief.

The first time we woke up and she was gone forever. The first time we left home together after she died.  The first time we are alone as a truncated family. The first time they cannot find succor in their mother's arms. The first day I realize that I may truly never trust my heart again.

I ache. I miss her. I am incredibly lonely. Abby is preternaturally calm, Leiney the definition of grief. I am sad. My world has come to an end. The memories we shared died  with her.  I can't read the memorials, the testimonials, watch the videos. I am sure all that they contain are truths. That other truths exist is a trite observation and even so it seems as impossible to understand as strong theory. I stayed with Jenny nearly 6 hours after she took her last breath. I held her. I stroked her hair. I kissed her cold flesh. I napped snuggling up against her taut, gaunt, lifeless body. I didn't want her to go, but I did not cling to her when they finally came for the corpse. I did not beg for another minute of solitude. Solitude, that is such a terrible word, when describing time spent with your spouse.

 She's gone.

Entry 1     9:27 a.m. Jenny is breathing, seemingly more strongly and regularly than yesterday. I am spending time, a lot of time, looking at pictures of our family in younger days. I wish there were a better word than bittersweet to describe the taste in my mouth, the pain in my heart. I miss her gentle loving hug upon waking, an embrace I haven't felt in years. I miss the way she would look at me tenderly as I held our babies, or soothe me in my sorrow. I am living my life truly like a bird on the wire these days, and with all the precariousness that implies. I love Jenny fiercely, deeply, truly. I see things that we would want to talk about and we never will again. Things to laugh about bitterly-like the terrible idea of making Brent Jones permanent superintendent.  Instead, there is a vacuum. No shared experience, no one to confirm the reality we shared through it all. I have never yearned for someone so grievously, never felt so alone in all of my days. Entry 2...

Entry 1      7:04 a.m. Jenny is still with us. Fully non-responsive, her breath so shallow as to be almost non-existent, her heart as strong as her will, pumping on.  I slept yesterday, waking in the afternoon, awake through dinner and then sound asleep from about 830 on.  I took a half Xanax just before 2:00 p.m., and it made all the difference.  I am glad I did not miss her passing. The nurse, who arrived just when the Xanax was kicking in was thrilled I fell asleep, knowing how long I'd been awake. We have, per the RN's instruction, increased the morphine dosage. It has kept Jenny very comfortable. I haven't left her side, except briefly, for fear of my leaving her alone and her slipping away from me.  I cry often. And the garbage we, as a family continue to wade through is indescribable. Murray is one of the worst offenders.   Entry 2    5:48 p.m. Jenny is resting. The hospice nurse came today and, after examining Jenny, said it...

Entry 1    10:55 a.m. Her time is short. The nurse says a few hours to a day.  I am struggling. All the love, all the joy, all the pain, all the suffering and hurt we have endured or inflicted upon one another is now moot. She sleeps, seemingly endlessly, with real eternity just a few breaths away. I am without words. I am without hope. I am screamingly lonely, sad, bereft and bemused. I don't know up from down, or where my center is. I love Jenny. Our marriage has not been perfect in my estimation, but I didn't know how terribly understated my measure was. I thought Jenny loved me, and I am sure she did in ways that matter. Her own words (nevermind her actions), however, betray any belief that she truly cared for me for a very long time. And, goddamn it, I have been grieving her loss for 19 months. My only solace in her death is that she won't create any additional record of her intentionally and knowingly hurting me, lying to me, proclaiming her love to someone else, de...