kvetching up

  In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

39 years ago today I graduated from high school . 5 days later my best friend since childhood died. He was gone in an instant. It was such a terrible loss for the world. A kinder and funnier person I can't say I've met.  Much love, Corey. I held Buddy yesterday on my lap in our living room as the vet came to put him down. He seemed so normal through the day. Outside, he ran and barked through the fence at who knows what? But his prostate was so large his urethra was pinched off causing him to emit urine like a double kinked hose lets water flow. This made it clear it had to be done. Leiney, Jared and Abby were here too. The vet was very kind. She explained the two step process of giving a sedative and letting it take effect, before administering the coup de grâce. The sedative took a very long time to work, such that Buddy had to get the full dose, which initially we didn't think would be necessary. Holding him as he drifted off slowly, the girls each gave him loving attent...

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 ...

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     9:37 a.m. Two trips in two days. Yesterday, Jenny believes the medium who was with us was speaking with her mother, and that her mother and father were both present. Who am I to say?  Today, Jenny will be floating in a most peculiar way as she trips the light fantastic with psychedelic therapy. It will allow her to be more mobile than she has been in months. Speaking of which. Last night at bedtime, Jenny crawled up the stairs to her bed. Arriving there, she was so exhausted, she climbed under the covers with her street clothes on. She began sobbing loudly. I was close behind, having gathered her night time meds. As I pass Leiney sitting on the sectional, I ask her to come up and help. One could hear the sobbing throughout the  house. Arriving at the master bedroom, I leaned down and hugged Jenny, asking her if she was crying because it was so hard to climb the stairs. That was the reason, she acknowledged, and began crying louder. Her bed ha...

“And some things that I want to say Aren't survivable Or advisable Like, "Happy Birthday heroin But God, how I loved you And how I still do." -Lucy Wainwright Roche  The Ever Burgeoning Day Its Wednesday.  I want to remember these good times, from back in July 2009, in our family home.  By now things were a struggle.  Leiney was well older here than when she suggested to my mom that Jenny and I get a peace table like she used at Giddens.  Still, this was clearly a happy day.  I have to say, I wake up every day with a growing sense of doom.  I know that in a month, six months, a year or more, the foundations of this family will be shaken.  What we are experiencing now is like living in a house full of gnats.  We will be living in the center of a hornet's nest soon enough.  I would like to think that life is a farce.  But, that is true only insofar as much as The Joker is a farce. There is nothing funny or humorous about losin...

Kim is here for 12 days, visiting from Quakertown.  She is sleeping in what used to be my spot in the bed, long ago ceded to the invisible presence of el pinché motherfucker. Kim is the loveliest of humans. 12 days though?  I slept in the big red chair downstairs in the unheated basement rather than sleep on the living toom sectional couch, trying to maintain a modicum of privacy. Glad we got rid of the sleeper couch, I finally understand the urgency of getting rid of a couch in a room with a door. Or not. In preparation for the guest's arrival, Jenny and I cleaned and organized the bedroom closet.  We managed to fill a black lawn and leaf bag with clothes to give away. As I was winnowing my t-shirt collection, I came across the EJI t-shirt Jenny gave me as a gift after returning from Alabama in 2019.  She went with her friend "Ike" a 70-something teacher at TOPS and Eric  the pinche motherfucker. Ike wanted to see and show them the seminal sites of the civil ri...

Sacrifice Sacrifice .  Self-sacrifice to be more specific.  Its a mystery to me how one can be so oblivious.  This evening we had our regularly scheduled Tuesday tandem therapy. It was fascinating, start to finish.  The therapist, Shayla, asked how we were doing.  I was stewing, had been all day, because I was and am convinced Jenny has been seeing  Eric  the pinché motherfucker on the down low.     Jenny answered Shayla first, and said she thought things had been going pretty well, actually. I was hesitant to speak my mind.  In fact, I had been kicking around all day whether or not to remain silent, but my big mouth got the better of me.  I went on a soliloquy, not a jeremiad.  I said that I was unhappy, that I had believed that by telling  Eric  the pinché motherfucker's wife, Jenny would see the light, that something would change.  I noted that I realized now how ridiculous this idea was--magical thi...

Jenny apparently thinks I have treated Sheila and Jennifer Murray poorly.  At least that is what she said to Sheila. Sheila doesn't give a shit, and concurs with Jenny.  This is unbelievable. Jenny said she was surprised that I care so much.  What the hell? I feel every visit to Jennifer Murray's, every text to Sheila or Jennifer or Eric   the pinche motherfucker is a betrayal. Today I saw his portrait on an electrical box.  I have a fantasy of creating a bumper sticker that says this man is cheating on his wife and putting it on the box, on the front bumper of his car. I hate that she is still seeing him and will not stop.  Its so painful. I hate that she is sick, dying in fact, and want her to be happy.  But how do I live with this?  I love her.  I want to care for her, and want her to care for me. She only complains about me. I saw a text complaining that I said I was going to, on occasion, be in the living room to work. I have a roll...