It Breaks My Heart

 

It is just there. I mean, there is no below the surface. There are no good days. There isn't a day I don't wish I didn't have less cowardice to just be done. Or less worry for my girls, lest they follow after me. I am not bereft. I am neither morose nor sullen. It isn't that I can't find some modicum of pleasure. I am sitting in a candle lit bathroom with music I have collected and curated since my teens playing in the background. This is a small dream for a small life. I stopped being alive a very long time ago, with some.punctuated moments-like traveling across the country with Abby-of unmitigated joy bordering on perfection. But, it slips away. I have ambled into a castle's keep, the walls of which I only fortify to my own detriment. And yet, as I have done since loss became real back when Corey drowned, I pull back. Without love, without that risk, you can't be hurt, can you? 

Whether it's disappointment, betrayal, or death, I wasn't built as resilient as this world requires one to be to bounce back from such insults to the soul. The further along I go, the thinner the patina of fortitude wears, and the more I isolate. 

Today, I took Willow for a walk. Just walking up the hill--less than a block-- my road is on is enough to cause pain in my chest, bobafide angina. I think this likely isn't good news. I have no excuse not to get back to a cardiologist, except for my own intransigence.

I didn't answer my phone today. I didn't go to a family get together organized by Moni, didn't talk to my sister Jane, who was trying to get me to buy tickets to Dina Martinez' Christmas Show. I haven't gone--she goes every year. Instead, I bought tickets to A Christmas Carol at the ACT.  I used to go every year for a very long time. It was my first date with Jenny back in late November 1990. She drank milk with her Kidd Valley burger that night, which was adorable. I wore my brand new Pierre Cardin jacket, purchased at Frederick and Nelson that day, and realized as I exited the theater that all the tags were still on it. She invited me up to her dorm that night but I declined and didn't spend the night until January, didn't kiss her until after Christmas even. I think we went each year until we moved to New York and began going again when the kids were old enough-but not consistently. This will be the first time since I don't remember when, and the girls are thrilled--which makes it all the more worth it.

I have a large collection of Christmas specials. I love Scrooge, both the 1938 version with Reginald Owen and the 1951 with Alistair Sim. I watch them every year. I indulge in some Capra-corn, but I lose interest somewhere after Camptown Races but before Clarence gets his wings.

When you spend a lifetime with someone, every day after they leave serves as a reminder of something. Every blade of grass, every street post triggers a memory, every holiday is a reminder that they are gone. 

What haunts me the most these days is a moment just a few days before Jenny succumbed to the cancer. She was in her bedroom and sitting up in her hospital bed when I walked into the room. She had been looking toward the window, but turned as I entered. She looked at me with the most unadulterated look of love I ever saw anyone give another human, smiled and said, "Husband!" more (or is it less) breathlessly than Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday to President Kennedy. Jenny was high on morphine and this was a rare moment of lucidity, likely the last or one of the last she had on this earth. I savor that moment, not willing to ascribe more to it than what I saw. Her joy was the joy you feel after a first kiss or after the first time you make love to someone you are mad about. I am so sad for her battle, for her suffering, for her utter destruction from a foreign invader. The suffering I witnessed every day for those many many months were a private hell, made worse by her choices I grant you, but given the terrorist pancreatic cancer is, I can't say much worse. For my girls it was much worse and for me. It breaks my heart.