Skip to main content

Once a writer, always a writer

 During my career, I wrote something somewhere on a daily basis. Without fail. I continued after retirement. A writer never retires,  someone told me.

But in 2014, when I became Harriet's caregiver, my writing ground to a halt.

 In the next 11 years, I wrote almost nothing. I'm not a natural caregiver, I had to focus on it. Moreover I was a nervous wreck. Harriet had been dead for 3 minutes before she was revived. If she dropped dead once, she could drop dead again. (I was right. 11 years later she dropped dead in her sleep.)

Writing now about my grief and other things feels like a rediscovery of myself. This suggests that yes, I can still have a life,.

And here at Homewoods I am surrounded by people who have done this very thing, surviving the death of a spouse and creating a new life.

Even as I am feeling deep grief, I feel blessed to be here.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did she know?

 I have a suspicion that Harriet knew she wss dying. For four or five days earlier, she had a bad case of the flu. On the day she died, she woke up feeling good. She planned to go to the dining room for lunch. But around 1130 she said she wasn't feeling good. She was going to take a nap. I checked on her every hour or so and could hear her breathing. Once, around 3, she heard me and said, "I love you."  On my next visit, around 4, I heard no breathing. I couldn't wake her up. I called 911. She was gone. In retrospect,, her "I love you" feels like a goodbye.
1 comment
Read more

The Plan

 I'm not sitting around feeling sorry for myself. Keeping busy reduces my grief. I've arranged to return to VA health insurance. Since getting married, I've been piggybacking on Harriet's health plan at Kaiser. This will save me a significant amount of money. I've arranged for her cremation and while at it am prepaying for my own. Harriet was my last connection, so to speak, and now I am a man without next of kin. I've outlived all my family and friends. Imagine!  No next of kin. Harriet's oldest son has agreed to play the role of next of kin after I pass. Paying for my cremation now will simplify things for him. I have a plan for dealing with much that needs to be done. 1. De-clutter the apartmnt. We were the Mothership of Clutter, believe me. After her heart attack and minor brain damage, she no longer did housework. When I did it, she wouldn't let me get rid of anything unless she went through it, which she never did. I didn't make an issue of it ...
1 comment
Read more

Winding down

I am close to a point where my comments here will become repetitive, and I don't want that. There has been a little of this already. So I will be writing less and less. When I get Harriet's ashes and set up a memorial for her here, I'll post a photo and write no more. But I'll keep this blog online and alive for the possible interest of her family and friends. i say "possible" because I have no sense whatever if anyone visits this blog. There was one early comment by a daughter, a very interesting one, but otherwise there is no evudence that anyone else has ever been here.  In a phone call, a friend of Harriet's told me there are memories and sharing about Harriet on Facebook. I don't do Social Media, and not even this will get me to join. Despite positive aspects, as far as I'm concerned, the main contribution of Social Media has been to give crazy extremists a way to find one another. I am reminded of why poet Lew Welch left the growing hell of C...
5 comments
Read more