kvetching up

The End of the Public School Era Saturday, after a ton of work and help from many people, we threw a party for Abby to celebrate her ompending high school graduation. Because next weekend is the 4th of July, lots of people would otherwise be out of town and unable to come, so we celebrated her June 28th exiting from the Seattle Public Schools over the weekend. Lots of people came, almost everyone who we invited turned up. The weather cooperated, in general it was lovely. My relatives, both direct and through marriage, didn't want me doing anything because I had visited the hospital the day before. I didn't stop,  nonetheless. I didn't have to clean up, which was nice.  Abby had a bunch of friends, all of who seemed lovely. The new Weber worked well, and the house is so spacious it was never crowded. I can say that Jenny was sorely missed. She was the consummate host. Abby got lots of cards and money from people, and one special gift. Paul, my dear and thoughtful friend of m...

Arosa, 🇨🇭 Switzerland, 2018.   How do you square claiming to follow moral and ethical behavior with supporting a friend who is cheating? How was it Jenny's friends held her blameless and legitimately expected me to suck it up and accept her rejection of the kids and betrayal of our relationship ? I read their texts and emails with Jenny and was always baffled by this. One of these ppl was a school counselor, another two had  MSWs. I say this often, but Sara, Paul, Lisa, Cheryl, Ethan, Laurie, Ashley, and others kept me sane, were rationality defined. Had I only been reading the nonsense of Jenny's friends, I would have been lost to the madness.  They would tell each other that I was unreasonable, that I needed to get over it, that I needed to grow up and accept the behavior. They believed my refusal to do so was abusive. Part of this was, of course Jenny's seemed version of reality--i.e., she lied to them as easily as she exhaled, but it was also this conc...

Leiney's graduation from Central at T-Mobile Park was lovely. The vast majority of her classmates were immigrants from Asia, South Asia and predominantly Muslim African countries. At Western, she was the only person of color in her cohort at Fairhaven. It made it difficult discussing issues of race, which she did in seminar routinely very uncomfortable for her, with kids who were considering the idea for the first time, as a rule. Fuck, even if you don't get it, I do. This is especially true after being surrounded by all the brown and black folk at the graduation. So, bully for her. She hears from UW Bothell soon. Fingers crossed. Abby couldn't come to graduation, she was stage managing Romeo and Juliet at Center School, it was the day before opening night and Juliet called off with an infection post-wisdom tooth extraction. She met us afterwards at 13 Coins for dinner. The wait was 25 minutes, the kids didn't want to wait, so we went to look for food elsewhere. Ivar...

Time Waits For No One, or is it Tom Waits For No One? So much to do and so little time. Leiney graduates this Thursday. Abby celebrates her own graduation Sunday. Abby graduates next Wednesday.  I made reservations at Piccolino's at 5 pm next Wednesday for a family commemoration of the event after Abby graduates. We went there a few times when Jenny was alive, the last time when restaurants reopened during COVID--I am not sure the event. I can remember Jenny being angry with me, although I am sure I don't remember why. Sometimes I deserved her anger--earned it even. Mostly though, in those years of her cheating, her anger toward me went unexplained and was unremarkable. 20/20 hindsight and all that.   I ordered plane tickets for August and Massachusetts. I am not in favor of this move. 3300 square feet and just me and a dog. That sounds like a recipe for the blues. I'm happy for Abby, I am just feeling selfish.   I have to go get stuff for the high school graduation part...

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...

On pleasant spring evenings, I have taken to reading outside on the front patio. As I do on such occasions-- weather allowing--I took my book and curled up in the plastic Adirondack chair last night, excited to read Wm. Gibson. His writing is pithy, his sentences carefully structured. It requires more concentration than reading a Stephen King novel, but less than the typical Philip Roth joint.  For my next trick, I'll need a volunteer. The last few weeks, each time I sit, within a couple of minutes the Adirondack chair shifts a bit, which I presumed was it settling. It feels as if the legs are spreading a couple of inches. The movement has been--or so I thought--no cause for concern--it always stopped after the initial brief shift. It had become so regular, so routine, I didn't pay much notice to it last night when a couple of minutes after sitting down, the chair began to shift. I imagine this was the attitude Harry Truman had when he felt the earth rumble just before t...

I walked miles every day for months. My route only vary by length, not route. I dropped weight as quickly as FKJ & Masego dropped Tadow . I can see the route in my mind's eye. Walking through Ravenna Park over the converted commuter bridge, past the beautiful and expensive houses that I will never live in. Crossing 25th at Kidd Valley and meandering a block before turning back down toward the Burke-Gilman as it skirts the old workhorse Safeway. Turning up the hill that abuts the graveyard where much of my family lies in repose. I'd turn up, still following the cemetary border and cross 35th and walk back through there, passing the Met Market before heading north and heading north. Sometimes I would go as far as Nathan Hale, but rarely. Sometimes I'd stop at the QFC and get something to drink, but not often. Always, I would be trying to make sense of what was going on in my life, with Jenny. Searching for logic about her living, her suffering, her frame of mind. And losi...

Dinner tonight at Jared's. It's been 18 days since I had a heart attack. 4 stents and 2 balloon angioplasties later, and I was careful about what I ate. I had a few potato chips, but no corn.  Redmond. Their apartment building is located where the Redmond Athletic Club used to be, next to the Bella Botega Shopping Center. They gave us a tour of the place--its very nice. Gym, movie theater, deck with barbeques and a large event area, where we ate.  Abby was surly, more surly than usual. I feel she is peak surly as she closes in on graduating. I hate it. I just don't like it. Her constant snark, directed at anyone who is near, is grating. I know it is a phase, but I hope it stops soon.   Redmond has gotten so much more dense with apartment buildings it is unrecognizable from even 5 years ago. I ain't got no home in this world anymore ran through my head. I thought of Merle Haggard's " They're Tearin' The Labor Camps Down " and Edmund Burke's disd...

Early mornings, the dogs nearby and content, music playing, alone with my thoughts, this is when the darkness comes. " Nobody said it was easy, nobody said it would be so hard ," Aimee Mann sings through her nose, reminding me that I am woefully unprepared to be alone, and irretrievably broken to move forward. I spin in circles all the time.  Grief moves at its own pace . I am sad for so much. I grieve her passing. I grieve for my girls loss of their mother. I grieve for the relationship I thought was one thing, but was another. The loss of time I could have spent with someone that loved me, that better part of my life that I will never get back, these things I mourn as well. I of misspent youth, awho always blamed myself for her anger toward me, even though I knew it to be irrational at the time. I, who believed myself so smart, to realize I am the fool, who disguised himself from himself only by not wearing harlequin and a motley. We all build sandcastles against the tide o...

"All the time wasted in high school and college on classes we will never use. Imagine if there was one on red flags and manipulation.That should have been a required class. We're just not taught any of this." "It is absolutely crucial for survivors to find kinder ways to talk to yourselves, it is an essential part of healing. And no, you didn't allow this to happen. Allowing something to happen implies you gave it permission. At no point did you actually consent and sign up for somebody to do this much harm to you."   -D r. Ramani I didn't do it on purpose. I didn't even understand there was anything wrong. I never asked Jenny to be mercurial. I never asked her to be overly-sensitive to the point that one had to walk on egg shells when she was about. I never asked for her simmering anger toward me. All true. But, knowing all of this, I did choose to have children with her. They also didn't choose any of the above. My choices were selfish and stup...

The year of firsts is over. It was, less and more than I expected. Given that most of my friends who read this are women, more than1/2 of you, if coupled, will go through the year of firsts as well. I can't offer any advice, can't even identify what to do or what to avoid.  I am still lost. I still can't properly grieve, I don't know if I ever will. The rollercoaster that is loss had hidden twists and turns, unexpected hills and valleys. For me, I rode it all the way through illuminated by the fires of anger. The anger wasn't the Kubler-Ross anger over death, I made peace with Jenny's cancer when she was dying. For me, the fuel that stokes my rage keeps growing, and has everything to do with her behavior towards them and nothing to do with the affair (except for the ceaseless lying, gaslighting and the fact that she abandoned the children for el pinchè at EVERY opportunity).  Everytime I see my girls, I realize Jenny burned it all down, the world we built for th...

I am busy at work dealing with contract negotiations in Malaysia. It will keep me up tonight until 3 a.m. While I am too old for this shit, I am loving it. Very few people have had the opportunity to participate in overseas collective bargaining, so I am lucky. If you follow my Facebook, you know Abby's car was stolen from school on Monday and that, unbeknownst to us, the car had LoJack on it, and thus the cops found it and found the thieves. The thieves took the state patrol on a high speed chase ending on Beacon Hill where the car was ditched after the front axle was damaged and the transmission ruined. The loss of the car has proven challenging, given that Abby goes to school downtown and I am working so many hours in a day. Today, I will drive her to the Armory and work from there while she attends 1 class. Yesterday was a nightmare, trying to get her from school to home. I had meetings from 2-7. Mind, she could have taken the monorail to the train, the train to the SeaTac stop...

A year ago, on the first Thursday of March, Leiney, my sister Jane and I were lying in the bed that abutted Jenny's hospital bed set up in the master bedroom. Jenny hadn't been conscious in days. In fact, she had very much been in the active stages of dying. We were facing her and chit chatting. As you sit next someone in the throes of death, someone taking days to die and who is unconscious, and suffering, fear dissipates. Compassion and love fill your heart. I remember the day before, I sat alone with her and sang every song I could remember that meant so much to the two of us, that she loved so much, that we loved so much.  On that Thursday, none of the three of us could leave Jenny's side. Some days ago, before she lost her faculties, she had seen her dead mother and father standing in the room, a common happening as you near death. Fish breathing, which had been going on a few days before and is another feature of impending death, had passed, and now, she was taking a ...

Today in my Gmail arrived a new academic article on pancreatic adenocarcinoma. It announced there is, as I already knew (but hate to think about), no effective screening to detect the disease early. I worry so much for my girls and hate they have this fearsome disease to be afraid of for their whole lives and the lives of their kids. Jenny used to curse my genes for the depression (which, quelled surprise we later learned she had too) I carry and have gifted to my kids. She loved these girls so very much I know she would have done (had to change it to the past tense, I hate this) anything to prevent them from carrying the gene. 

I wrote to the tandem therapist some weeks ago. She responded, if what she said below is deserving of that description. I didn't find her response until today. Perhaps it's brevity and lack of response is borne of legal concerns, or perhaps it's just a failing of a search for the right words. Anyway, the conversation follows. Shayla  <shayla@xxxxxxx.com>  M To: "Geoff D. Miller" <gdmiller88@gmail.com> Hi Geoff,   I am touched to hear from you. I think about you often. It sounds like you have been doing some deep work and reflecting. I am so glad. And even though the pain is still so present it sounds like you and your girls are surviving together.   I want you to know that I have been honored to know you and allowed to peak into your life’s journey. Thank you very much Geoff.   And please feel free to reach out to me when you want to.   Thank you.     -- Shayla , MA, LMFTA,   From:   Geoff D. Miller < gdmiller88@gmail.com...

  Fuck. Loss is so painful. I lost my best friend at 17, 5 days after graduating from high school. I lost another close friend now almost 20 years ago. Then my mom. In three days I will mark a year without Jenny. Truth be told, without knowing it, I had lost her several years before. Her death, her dying, was a process of losing her twice.  But that is the Cliffnotes version of loss. I watched so many young boys and girls that we befriended at camp die over the years, I can confidently say I have attended more funerals than weddings by a stretch. The curse of Facebook is that people die and sometimes you know it, and are then reminded of it when their birthdays come along. Worse is when you wish someone Happy Birthday, like I did Tim Fisk last week, only to learn he'd been taken by glioblastoma, after the well wishing had been posted.  I've made it into my mid-50s, so I should feel blessed. In moments of darkness, when I contemplate checking out, I remind myself that I am...

Tomorrow is Leiney's 21st birthday. Family will be flocking to the house. Friday is the one year mark . These two events are so closely linked for Leiney it must be painful. For the rest of her life, it will pop up, an undesired painful reality of life's comings and goings. Leiney seems well adjusted, or reasonably so. Honestly, I have no clue how she is doing,it is just pure surmise. Other than the ham handed, how are you doing, I am failing to ask questions that really tell me more than just what she wants to surface.   Truth be told, I vacillate from being just fine thank you very much to abject despair.

I now work for a dot com. Well, I work for a Silicon Valley manufacturer. Well, I work for a Silicon Valley manufacturer. I was offered a lot of money to take the job. I counted all my chickens. I planned on pulling up stakes and moving to California. I have been looking for steal estate in Los Angeles and Riverside. One story with lots of yard. I told all my dearest California friends I am moving down in the fall. On day 2 of the job, three weeks ago, the company announces all bonuses are canceled, there will be a one week furlough in March, and I am not getting stock options. . . Oh, and the coup de grace, the company has ceased to contribute to the 401k.  My plans are pushed back. My effective wage cut in 2023 more than 50k, all told. So, I am putting it on hold. ‐-------------------------------------------------------------- Abby had gotten into all of her fallback schools, Willamette, Columbia College (not the Ivy), and Hollis, a single gender school in Roanoke. 16 schools she...

Jenny's suicide attempt was two years ago yesterday. Today, I am still wallowing in anger. If anything, as we approach the one year anniversary of her death, I am more angry than I would have hoped to be. I need a new therapist.  I charged her phone to cancel our milk delivery--I don't have the password on my phone, and for some reason it doesn't show up in her password list. Anyway, I went down the rabbit hole like some middle-aged Alice again. I should note that in October of 2021, while she was lamenting to her friends how awful I was, she was telling her sisters that we were in the best place we had been in years, and that she was happy. That she was lying to both is interesting--she was seeing Eric every day according to her own words--so we weren't doing that great. But the larger point here is she lied and manipulated everyone. At least I wasn't alone.

During the troubled times over the last two years, I really could have used a support group of spouses/partners of people with BPD. 20/20 hindsight, being what it is, coupled with the wide dissemination of information on BPD, I keep reading things and recognizing my life. For instance, Jenny would from time to time deny something had occurred, like her suicide attempt, where there were witnesses other than the two of us. Reading about the disorder, it is clear to me now that she likely wasn't lying, she was dissociative. A different part of her brain took over during the incident, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing for her to be able to remember. Had I searched for books, instead of journal articles, I would have found a bestseller about BPD from the late 80's entitled, "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me. I won't buy it, as it has to have outmoded ideas, but the title describes what I was living with all the time, even before she was diagnosed with stage IV cancer....

 

Entry 1 Six months or so into our relationship, I was in bed with Jenny in the fourth floor of old Lander Hall, where she was a resident assistant ("RA"). It was late June or early July (Jenny always worked summers as an RA). Jenny was laying on her side facing me, and had her right hand under her pillow.  It's been 30 years, but my recollection is Jenny got up to go to the bathroom, and when she did I noticed there was something under her pillow, where her hand had been. I lifted the pillow up and discovered a child's pajama bottoms. They were faded, old. When Jenny returned from the bathroom, I asked her about them. She blushed and stammered, and couldn't make eye contact. After a few moments, she sheepishly explained that this was her blankey. She had been sleeping with them since she was 6 or 7, a replacement from another that had worn out. She was embarrassed. She was distraught. Then, I told her I thought it was adorable. She never parted with her blankey, w...

 It's 3:36 a.m. I woke at 1:30, took the dogs out, came back upstairs and started watching Dr. Ramani on YouTube talk about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the symptoms of which have heavy overlaps and crossovers with Borderline Personality Disorder, which I am sure Jenny had. An interesting aside, Anna Kendrick, she of the Cup Song, talks about how Dr. Ramani's youtube videos helped her deal with NPD in a recent Rolling Stone article. I am not alone in feeling grateful for that resource. After some time, I switched to music, first listening to June Tabor's ridiculously beautiful cover of Richard Thompson's "Strange Affair." Then, I just let YouTube do its thing and have just gone down the rabbit hole of beautiful music .  Yesterday, I finished up my work at the City. I am grateful for my time there, and won't pretend that I won't miss the people there. Monday is the beginning of a great adventure.

Or Not I met Leiney today at Seattle Children's Playgarden to look at the mosaic that was installed by a local artist in honor of Jenny. It was one p.m., dark and rainy. Perfect, because it meant the park would be empty, we would have it all to ourselves. I lamely brought a dozen roses, to place on the monument.  My grief is stuck in anger mode. I gotta be honest. Not that I don't mourn the loss of Jenny, would that she were here.  But, my kids and I have been put through it. Moreover, I blame myself for not being able to get Jenny to pay attention to the girls through her illness. I can't forgive her, can't forgive myself. So, standing at the mosaic, I was awash in pain,, guilt and sorrow. My pain was centered around the stark fact that I watched my partner die, and as she died, experienced cruelty from her, cruelty for which I wasn't prepared.  My guilt stemmed from my abject failure to get her to love her children enough to give them real time over the 19 months ...

 It's Jenny's birthday. I don't really feel like wishing her a happy birthday on Facebook, I don't begrudge those who do, I just can't do it. Leiney is coming with Jared for dinner. My sister Jane and her husband are bringing dinner. I have been fine all day, until now. I am overwhelmed with emotion. I miss her to my core. What I can do is thank all of you who have been here with me through this journey of grief. I would not have made it through all this without you all. I am overwhelmed, surprisingly, with sorrow, which is better than the anger I can't shake yet. Abby got her first response from a school, Hollins, a women's school I know nothing about and which we didn't visit. It is in Virginia. They offered her a chunk of change. Many more responses to come. When I applied to law school, I applied to 11 schools. I was admitted at all 11. It was a blessing. I don't know if that will happen to her, but she is far brighter and a far better student th...

I wrote to the therapist Jenny and I used through the trials. I think I sent it around 4:30 a.m. yesterday. It follows: From: Geoff D. Miller <gdmiller88@gmail.com> Date: Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 8:09 PM Subject: Jenny To: Shayla N <shayla@qqqqqqqq.com>   Shayla,   Its been 10 months now since Jenny passed. I am writing to check in with you. The family is doing ok. Abby is applying for colleges, Leiney has come back to Seattle, having left Western when Jenny was dying, and is now at Seattle College getting her AA. I am about to transition to a Senior management position at a large tech company. It is 100% remote for now, but at some point I may head down to California to live in Palo Alto, where the firm is located. I miss Jenny terribly. I am still deeply wounded by all that happened, and saddened by all I learned in the phase of the loss where I was reading everything she had been saying about me, and how she was seeing Eric most every day. In retrospect, I am struck b...