The Palmyra Sliver

And what exactly happened to February?

Lots of things, including things that I wish I had captured here at the Sliver at the time.

Highlights include a trip to Altamont to see my beloved Aunt Ella, the start of Spring Training, and celebrating Scott's 50th birthday at The Brightside.

I write this from my room in the Kimpton Alexis hotel in Seattle, WA. I'm here for work -- seeing two shows -- that happily coincide with my godson T's 13th birthday. And since my niece D lives here I get to see her too.

It was hard to pack for this trip. It was hard to pack to go to IPAY too. I'm not sure why. Something to do with leaving. When I went to get my carry on bag out of the closet I pulled out the duffel bag that Scott would always use: a good-sized black nylon bag with Beau Rivage embroidered on it. A presenter gift from when he was on STOMP and they spent the summer in Biloxi MS playing at that casino. I guess we never got around to emptying the bag of all its contents when it was put in the closet, so some of his toiletries were rattling around in it. Seeing 'life' things like deodorant, a comb, a cannula, an extra phone charger... that stopped me short. I took a moment, acknowledged that it was a little overwhelming, that I missed him so much in that moment it ached, that it was normal, and I was okay. And then I put that bag back in the closet, his toiletries still inside, and searched for the one I was looking for.

The last time I was here was Fall 2003. Scott was on the Flower Drum Song national tour, and he had brought Max with him. He made his own hotel arrangements and rented his own cars so that he could travel with his dog. It was an additional demand on his time and energy but he didn't mind -- except for the time that he had taken Max to the dog park, and Max did not under any circumstances wish to leave, and he stood in the water pleading to stay. Scott finally had to wade in up to his knees, dressed in his work clothes, and get Max by the collar and get him out of the water. He drove back to the hotel, put Max in the room as quick as he could, and raced to the theater, his pants still wet from the unplanned wading.

I've only been outside walking once since I got here last night, but even just arriving into SeaTac was enough to remind me, to stir up some deep forgotten appreciation for this city. I remember arriving and being so excited and happy to know that Scott and Max were waiting for me, just a short walk through the terminal. At the airport they have murals built into the floor of salmon swimming along the long corridors that I was excited to remember and recognize that I had forgotten. I had to remind myself to keep my eyes on the road as I drove past Safeco Field in my rental car. I remember conversations that Scott and I would have about wanting to move out here except that we didn't want to be so far away from our families and the growing nieces and nephews. Funny, now one of those grown nieces lives here. And the last time we were here, C was just pregnant with our godson T, and it's his thirteenth birthday we will be celebrating on Saturday the 4th. Amazing.

I feel a great tenderness here as a result of my happy memories. Some time in the future -- this was not the right time -- I will be bringing some of Scott and Max's cremains back to this city that he loved, and I will scatter them at Magnuson (site of the Max-wouldn't-get-out-of-the-water story above). They were both very happy when they were there, and I was happy to have spent time with them there too. For now, I will be content to get reacquainted. Hello, Seattle.

1. New Year's Eve. Being with the Sleepaway Camp Family on New Year's Eve was the absolutely right thing to do. My friend D went with me, as he is extended family with them, too, at this point. He was great company on the road. We ate dinner at The Valley Inn in Marcellus -- a restaurant owned and operated by old friends of ours. R and Scott were on a number of tours together. There is a whole other story I could tell about him and his wife J, that I want to tell, at some other time; I'm just not ready to. Suffice to say they're good people and I'm so grateful for their support. The food was outstanding, too.

2. My birthday. I didn't have it off this year, but it was a lovely day at work. We had a staff-wide birthday celebration for me and my colleague V, whose birthday is January 1. I made it an early night; I came home to gifts from family which I had saved to open *on* my birthday; and a pistachio muffin from Hanford made a nice stand-in for my traditional pistachio birthday cake. Quiet and calm and nice.

3. Empire Improvements. News from just this morning. They have finished the work on the Hillcrest house -- soffit repair/replacement, new gutters, and new siding to replace melted & missing pieces. I can't believe it's really done. And D, the owner, could not have been nicer or more supportive through the whole process. Dealing with getting Hillcrest ready to sell -- for once and for all -- is a daunting project. It has emotional bumps that go along with it, and I do best when it's broken down into smaller tasks. I hired Empire Improvements to bring it up to code again, which they did for a great price. Thank you, universe -- Scott -- whoever led me to D and his company. We are now one step closer to having the house ready to go on the market in the springtime.

Since I was in the area I went to the farm and picked up some produce. I am going to make soup for the first time in months. A funny thing, this strong desire to make soup. It's because I bought some for lunch the other day and it was The Perfect Thing -- delicious, warm, nourishing. It tapped into this nostalgic, bittersweet feeling I can only describe as longing for the old days, when I cooked every night and Scott and I were crusaders for the Eat Local movement. Nowadays, I don't cook nearly as often as I used to. Rather than lament that, or try and force myself into Cooking Big Things Every Night when I really don't have the energy or the inclination, I'm going to make soup this one time, half the recipe, and freeze the leftovers. This is a start. This is manageable. This will be enough.

I was happy that N was there and I got to get caught up with her. The farm now has baseball caps with their name on them and their tag line on the back ("Don't Buy Food From Strangers"). One of the last things I truly need right now is another baseball cap, but this one was a must-have. Navy blue with white embroidery.

As I continue to do things that Scott and I used to do -- especially "big" things like going to the farm -- the ache is infinitesimally smaller each time, replaced by a tenderness. One that still makes me tear up, but it's an interesting feeling. Like, okay. All right. This is how life is now. He is not here. The farm is still here, and I am still here, and he is not here. And it still strikes me as so strange. Yet real at the same time. That's when the tiredness sets in -- the emotional impact becomes a physical one -- and I know it's good that I'm headed home so that I can rest a while.

I have a serious bone to pick with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. She popularized the Five Stages of Grief model, and clearly she never grieved herself before perpetrating this fraud. I grew up thinking that grief was linear. You went through the stages of it, and healed, and went on with your life. You started at the bottom of the thermometer -- SAD -- and slowly and evenly and steadily you climbed higher and higher and became not so sad and eventually made your way to the top. HAPPY. 100%. Yay!

Ben Franklin was sure of two things in life: death and taxes. I will add a third: grief is not linear.


My mother in law tried to explain this to me not long after Scott died, using the illustration above. I couldn't fully grasp it. I have a much better sense of it now.

There is no wrong way to grieve. There is no time limit. There is no end / 100% / "HAPPY" / all done. Back to normal.

I have been having a hard time on and off this past week. And just before that I had been thinking, okay, all right, I think I am starting to figure this out. And then boom!, out of nowhere, a fresh hard aching. I do know that it wasn't some kind of subconscious self-punishment for Actually Having Had Fun So Soon After Scott Died. I've come too far generally in life for that to have been it. No, I think it's all just still swirling around, and fresh energy from fresh experience stirred things around, and this is what surfaced.

The pull toward home, toward staying in, hunkering down, is very strong. I'm trying to stay mindful, accepting that this is a genuine need I'm experiencing. At the same time, I want to be careful that it doesn't turn into a depressive thing. Restful, restorative, quiet, soothing, all good. Hiding, dreading? Not so much. I cancelled on friends of mine earlier this week because I felt overwhelmed and didn't have it in me to go to their house for dinner and conversation and spend the night and go in to work the next morning from there. It seemed entirely too enormous a thing, despite the fact that I've done it before, that they are very dear to me, that I am utterly safe and loved with them. Adding to that the upcoming holidays and I am nowhere near ready and I had no clean laundry and -- and --.  And I am disappointed in myself for having cancelled on one hand and I appreciate myself for acknowledging my limits on the other. We will try again in the new year.

My friend C advises me: Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. It's the best I can do.

I've been buying my Advent candles from The Candle Shop for this makes seven years now. Scott discovered them not long after we moved to Chester. They've been in business for more than forty years in the little arts and crafts hamlet of Sugarloaf. They make both pillars and tapers, their prices are very reasonable, and the candles all have the same lovely scent. I have given them as gifts, and I have brought them in to work for myself, for the sheer joy of having them there to smell them.


So since Advent will be here this Sunday, I went over this past Saturday the 19th. I should preface this by saying that going to The Candle Shop was something I had to work up my courage to do. I wanted to go; I knew I would be happier for having gone; but it was one of those things I was doing For The First Time Since Scott Died. This was a happy little ritual that he was responsible for having started for me.

Whenever you go to The Candle Shop you are greeted by the owner, Peter. He is a wonderful man, a kind man, who loves people and loves what he does. He carefully wraps your purchases, greets you like a friend, and will say goodbye to his candles as they leave the store with you. "Shine bright, little candles... do no harm." You cannot visit the shop without feeling kinder than when you went in.


But on this trip to The Candle Shop, I found a subdued Peter. Still kind, but not quite as sparkling. It turns out his wife Amy died in April. It was only a month between her diagnosis and her death. I was so sad. I told him about Scott's death. He came around from behind the counter and we hugged and cried and exchanged stories. He was not ready to let her go, but came to realize that if he loved her, he had to, and so he did. I bought my Advent candles and another pillar for the hearth as the current one is nearly burned down. As he was wrapping them he told me he's been putting Amy's picture in with the orders of people he knows. Sure enough he had a stack of pictures sitting next to him on the counter. He walked me to my car -- he's never done that -- and handing me my bag said, "Think of my Amy and I'll think of your Scott. The depth of our pain is the depth of our love for them so don't trade a single moment of it. Let love see us through." Sweet, sweet man. I was happy to see a picture of Amy peeking out from the top of the bag.

I felt the need to write this down because it reminded me that even as I feel like the world is completely different and turned upside down because Scott's not here, other people feel the same way about their loved ones too, and in that similarity is a kind of comfort. An odd reassurance in the fact that this has happened before, it is happening now, and will happen again. And when I get shaky, I will remind myself that Peter is sometimes shaky too but he's so brave, and I will be brave too. And I will try to greet strangers as friends, and I will try to do no harm.

My living room got a much needed redesign when my friend C came for a visit at the beginning of the month. There is now open space, room to breathe, with all the clutter either thrown away, recycled, or packed in boxes. Not all clutter is trash. Sometimes even things you love need to be pulled out of your space so that you can breathe and figure out what really needs to be where. All of the things I wanted to save are packed carefully away in boxes with their contents labeled neatly on the lid. I can find whatever I want fairly easily. There are other things to de-clutter in this room (specifically the side tables), and I am playing the Five Things At A Time game with those. I don't need to tackle the whole thing at once. Just take five items and put them in the giveaway bin, put them away, or throw them away. Give away, put away, throw away. Those are the three options, and recycle is implied in the throw away.

A friend of mine introduced Rutter's Requiem to me when we were in undergrad. One of the choirs he was singing in was performing it and he loved it so much he bought the CD. He brought it over to my apartment and we listened to it in its entirety. I remember hearing for the first time how, at the end, we circle back to the beginning theme, and how it brought me to tears.

The word requiem comes from Latin. Loosely translated it means "rest." In the Catholic tradition, a Requiem Mass is a Mass said for the souls of the departed. The music that is composed to accompany a Requiem Mass is also known as a Requiem. In contemporary language it has come to refer to an artistic offering in memory of someone, and does not need to be church-related.

I have always loved Latin. To me it is a beautiful, round language, full of vowels, pleasant to hear, speak, and sing. Not unlike Hawaiian, without the glottal stops and a few more consonants. For all intents and purposes, Latin is no longer a conversational language, and that is one of the things that makes it so beautiful to me. The mysteriousness of it. That you can share a thought or an emotion in a language that is so rich with meaning. A lot of words in English have Latin roots.

So this morning I listened to Rutter's Requiem for the first time in a while. (By the way I keep specifically referring to "Rutter's Requiem" because dozens of composers, including Mozart, Durufle, Faure, and Verdi, have been inspired to write their own). And I started reflecting on the 'Pie Jesu,' which brings me to feeling the need to write this post. This is a prayer for the departed, and I have always considered it as such. But this morning I heard it as a prayer for myself, and it stunned me.

Pie Jesu Domine
Dona eis requiem
Requiem aeternam
Dona eis Domine
Dona eis Domine

Dear (Kind / Pious) Lord Jesus
Grant them rest
Eternal rest
Grant them this, Lord
Grant them this, Lord

Scott's service of remembrance is Monday the 14th. I have been shaky for the past couple days leading up to it. I am looking forward to gathering as a community and celebrating the gift that he was to all of us. But I am also having a harder time with my grief than I had been having even a week or two ago as we approach that day. It is not a linear process, I know; and I am struggling to allow all of my feelings the consideration they deserve. Not to try to fix them or get rid of them. To simply allow space for all of them to be.

It's not exactly the same, as I am still finite, and the infinite still awaits me. For me it is more of a gentle request for ease, for strength, for grace. This is such hard work. I am not asking for it to be taken away from me, or that I could just stop feeling this way. I don't want it to, because I know it is the result of all of the love and gratitude I have for having been his wife, and having built a life together. But Finite Me is grateful for those times of ease, of rest, that see me through. As I make my way through my grief, please grant me rest.