Crossing The River of Jordan

 Entry 1  

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."

                                                                                                              -- Psalm 23:4-6

 Two years and three days after Jenny's body was taken by the University of Washington to 

allow medical students to practice autopsies or whatever it may be that they choose to do, her remains are returned. As mentioned earlier, the forms to request the ashes were sent to me some months ago,  enclosed with a letter saying that the institution was done with her body and that she had been cremated. It put me over the edge for a while. It took me months to submit the form for the ashes, but as my head emerges from the sand I thrust it into some time ago, I made it a priority. I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself had I not gotten my shit together, thereby denying my daughters and Jenny's sisters the ability to bid her body, albeit reduced to ashes, a final fare thee well. She will be spread on the slopes of Crystal Mountain, left there to be set adrift by mountain winds and buried under deep snow. It is in the letting go that I am again embracing life and casting off this sorrow that no longer serves me.

Its a weird situation standing on the porch speaking with the special delivery letter carrier. Do such people drive around all day delivering ashes? I honestly have no idea. It wasn't my regular person though. When I told the delivery person that the remains were those of my wife, she gave me the compassionate look that presumably one gets from a  letter carrier delivering ashes when learning of your spouse's demise. She then offered condolences. I didn't know what to say. For me, initally, it was like receiving a package from Amazon, except the postal service wanted to be extra sure no porch pirates took the box--which I appreciate--so I made sure I signed for it. When I put the box down on the counter--it was extraordinarily more heavy than I would have expected--and looked at it, I began to cry. The tears lasted a minute and were gone.

Acts of love. I am surrounded by so many. I wrote a long post on facebook about all the support our family received during COVID, and how we could never thank anyone enough for all that was done. And I have written here about how indebted to my friends who knew the truth how grateful I am to them. I am, and will forever be. They kept me alive and sane.I am also, however, grateful to the betrayers, the bullshit artists, those who pretended to be my friends. The veil of each false friend lifted by the  tragedy, means they are out of my life forever. I will no longer be fooled by pretenders, by their honeyed words and deception. Absent the betrayal by Jenny, I may have never known who my false friends were.

=============================================================================

This different job thing may really happen. I am supposed to go to Richland next week for a


final interview for LR Director at the consortium cleaning up Hanford. They said they want me to come out next week--but I haven't heard from them since they said that, and am wondering when that will be. It's odd. 

More promising is a job for a power company down in Portland. I told them I wasn't interested some months ago, because the top of the scale was far too low.  A new recruiter has repeatedly reached out to me  in the last few weeks, I We had a long talk on Tuesday. The director wants to retire, and I would be the deputy, rolling into the director position, and she thought she could address my concerns about pay. She told me the director is in India on a bucket list trip and would be back next week. We would talk upon his return and see if we could set something up, she told me. Well, yesterday, I began to receive a flurry of texts from her. She had been in contact with the director and he wants to meet me next Thursday or Friday, The money is not an issue, they will meet my expectations, is essentially what she said. Moreover, the director is planning on retiring earlier than expected and, presuming I am a good fit in the position, that job will be mine sooner rather than later. 

The sun is shining through my window, as it climbs into the sky this morning. It's only 7:45, a full day ahead of me. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life, A Cascading Series of Disappointment

Image
Jenny has cancer.  Terminal cancer.  We learned that in late July. Jenny had  dropped 25 lbs. in the spring without trying.  She had been having vague stomach complaints since October.  As a balm for her concerns, her doctor agreed to do a CT scan for her, but told her they would find nothing.  Jenny wanted to rule out pancreatic cancer, which had recently killed her dad-in the spring of 2019.  Her mother had been sick with lymphoma since February 2020.  The day of the scan, the doctor told Jenny they would get results back in a few days. When Jenny's phone rang that same afternoon, I was in the living room with Abby, where I was torturing her by playing the Rapping Duke on Youtube. Jenny shouted from the room, "Geoff, get in here, the doctor's on the phone." "You have a four cm. mass on your pancreas,"  he said. Jenny made a sound like someone had punched her in the stomach.  "There is a spot on your liver. You have a necrotic lymph nod...
Read more

Don't Do It, Don't Do It, Oh, Lord

Image
It Hurts, It Hurts So Bad.  .  . 3:44 a.m. I walked in the door last night at just before 10 to find Jenny in a ball on the floor--between the giant ottoman and sectional--agonizing pain in her hip. I had ridden to acting with the student driver.  But, let's back up. Jenny had chemo yesterday.  Her friend Jennifer took her.  It was uneventful and she received chemo.  I, as always, prepared the house for her arrival to make sure she wanted for nothing and would be comfortable as she endures the aftermath of all that poison.  Sometime before she came home, she texted, saying the doctor suggested she try Aleve for her hip pain.  Aleve.   She asked me to pick some up for her while Abby was at acting.   During the text exchange I realized she would be alone after Abby and I left for acting.  Leiney was elsewhere and had therapy at 5 and kickboxing later, and her sister Moni had bailed on chemo because she had so much to do (Wit...
Read more

Still Muddling Through Somehow

Image
At the park, I walked my dog through the rain this morning— not really proper rain— more like air that has decided to shrug water at you out of habit. It suited my mood well enough. As I walked, my thoughts kept returning to the same small universe they often do. They are not new thoughts. They orbit the same losses. They consider the same betrayals, the same questions that never resolve. They have been captured, these thoughts, never to escape, never to be forgotten, never to burn up in the atmosphere. It is simply the gravitational field of my life now. What might seem or feel like self-pity is more like muscle memory, which tells me I need more exercise. The holidays are here, and Christmas has always been central to my life, atheist that I am. It was stitched into Jenny’s life — the love of Christmas — at least as strongly as it was stitched into mine. We carried that love forward with the kids, year after year, without ever needing to talk about why it mattered; it just did. I...
Read more