kvetching up

4:10 a.m.  The house is ridiculously decked out in Christmas decorations, but it needs more. I need more. I went shopping this morning. There were no hoards, no thronging masses. At Cost Plus, there were 8 or nine sales people and us, Abby and I.  I am a lost soul. I sit alone in the dark, listening to Yeats put to music by Mike Scott, an island of candles burning and making the house smell of Christmas. Tears are rolling down my cheeks, as I go to the well again and again for more strength, trying to power through. It's not working, I am simply filled with sorrow and ever more tears. The early dark doesn't help the situation.  I have turned to candles to make the house more festive, to perfume the air.   4:15 p.m. The girls and I have been out all day, shopping for Christmas items, after a hearty breakfast at the Pancake Haus. Small Business Saturday in downtown Burien and the holiday festival at the Piazza in Renton, both fell short of expectations. This is an us t...

Here we are. I held a crying Leiney tonight, who was cursing the holiday, cursing it coming without her mother alongside. Jenny was the holidays in Leiney's child's memory. Abby is mum. When I came in from the garage, where Leiney had been working out crying in my embrace, and told Abby that Leiney was sad and missing mom, not a word or response. Nada. This is troubling. Me? I'm still alternating between bitter and sad, can't shake the fact that her infidelity wasn't just with me, but with my kids with whom she spent such little time.  We are going to Jenny's sisters for the holiday dinner. My big sister is in Hawaii. It is going to be hard.

Early this morning around 3:30 or 4:30, depending on your predilection for moving clocks an hour back and forth, I woke up and realized that for the first time in 32 years, I will be celebrating the holidays without a partner by my side. This isn't breaking news, since Jenny passed it was always going to be so. But, I hadn't counted the beads on the abacus, at least not consciously. I started playing Christmas music on November 1 . I am decorating today. We have 10-12 or more Rubbermaid storage boxes full of Christmas cheer. We have lights to string across the fence, and others to hang in the house and on the tree. I've already declared Christmas Eve will be here, at our house. I want everyone here, Jenny's family, my family. We have all the accoutrements relied on every year. I'm buying a 12 foot tree. I'm decorating early, very early. Jenny was just inches from actively dying on Christmas morning, and I had to admit her that night and leave her alone--because ...

I have been awake for a while now. My head full of random thoughts, fragments of dreams and a yearning to find sleep again. It won't happen. Nerves? Probably that's a bit of it, as I have a job interview today. But, I have woken up early several times in the last two weeks. It frustrates me. Sometimes, as I walk around the house, I stop and think, "I am alone." I am traveling through this world now without a partner--not just a partner, but my life's partner. It's a terrifying admission, as I go through each hour pretending nothing had changed. It isn't that I feel I am without friends, given all the support you all have given me these last couple years. But, the way I define myself has changed. The decision making is mine alone. There is no one else to check in with, no one to disagree with, no one who will tell me my schemes are hairbraned. Mostly, as meager as it was in the end, there is no one to offer shelter, succor or simple reassuring company. ‐--‐...

The holiday season is upon us. I got a call from a dear friend last night, checking on on me. I'm fine, I told her. Then, "It's too soon to tell." Jenny's absence is a void, to be sure. And Christmas for us, probably because we are the youngest in our families, almost magic. When dating, all through the year we would look for ornaments to commemorate our lives together. This continued after marriage--until she died. This year the kids and I will forego Thanksgiving decorations and go straight to the 10 Rubbermaid storage boxes of Christmas decorations.