Christmas alone.
It just occurred to me that this is the first Christmas I’ve ever spent alone. Now before anyone runs amok with that statement, I set this weekend up to be by myself. The actuality of being alone for Christmas hadn’t occurred to me before today. I’m not terribly upset by it or anything, it’s just the first time in my life this event has happened.
It is also the first Christmas I have spent without Michele since 1997. Christmas 1996 she was still living in Colorado; it would be another six weeks or so before she moved to Illinois. Michele very much wanted to come to Illinois for Christmas but I was reluctant to expose her to my family around that holiday given the darkness that comes with the anniversary of Amy’s death.
All told Michele and I shared eight Christmases. The first in Illinois with my family, then one in Vancouver, one in South Carolina, four more in Illinois, and the last one here in Kansas a year ago. Twice we took trips for the holiday, traveling to Tampa in 2001 and Hawaii in 2002. We really hit our stride in terms of decorating the house, and celebrating our way in the last couple of years in Illinois. We decided to make the central theme Santa Claus and we collected many different Clauses including a two-foot tall Scottish one. Each year after Christmas we’d go to the upscale interior decorations store and buy hand-blown glass ornaments at steep discounts. Consequently I now have a collection of beautiful ornaments; maybe I’ll get them out next year.
Later today I’ll get out A Christmas Story and It’s a Wonderful Life and curl up on the couch with the cats and try to touch the magic and wonder of Christmas that Michele showed me.
Show Of Hands
Pointed.
Since her birthday was December 24th, Michele rarely had the attention a June or October birthday might garner. Instead her celebration was often rolled into the holiday or skipped altogether. Throughout our relationship I tried very hard to make her birthday special. I know that her birthday in South Carolina in 1999 was the low point in the years we had together. Perhaps the high point was December 2003. You see, that year I managed to pull off a surprise party for her which was attended by her three best friends.
It all started in January, 11 months earlier, when I had the idea of inviting her three best friends to come to our house in Illinois for a weekend in December to celebrate her birthday. Emails were sent and calendars marked; every one agreed to come. Now I just had to keep my mouth shut for a year. The first few months were easy; it wasn’t until September and October when flight plans were solidified that I had to really work at not saying anything that would let the cat out of the bag.
The weekend of December 12 -14 finally arrived and the surprise was complete. Never had I seen her so completely shocked and overjoyed at the same time. She just could not stop smiling and laughing. As luck would have it one friend was unable to travel on Friday, so I got to surprise her again on Saturday when Laura arrived. The four women sat and talked, cried, laughed, and communed with each other for hour after hour that day. The conversation lasted well into the wee hours of the morning. It was truly a glorious celebration centered around Michele.
On Sunday morning, before shuttling her friends back to the airport, I snapped this picture. This was the last time Michele saw her friends, and I am very glad they all came to spend a snowy weekend together.
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In the two years or so that I’ve been hauling my Powerbook back and forth to work I’ve always managed to remember all the extras; the mouse and the power supply. Today I broke that streak as I have the computer and mouse here but no power supply.
Nuts.
I recently bought a sleeve style bag that is just big enough for the computer itself, with no extras, and I’ve been tempted to carry the machine back and forth to work using it. However, I’d need a second power supply to leave at work to really make this minimalist approach work. Perhaps leaving the power supply at home is a sign. Maybe a sign that I should get a spare power supply, maybe a sign that my short term memory is going.
It has been a little while in coming and, given what this weekend is, I wasn’t surprised when I boiled over today and had to leave work early. The combination of stresses in my life just got to be too much so I left rather than say or do something that could come back to haunt me.
Thirty-two years ago this week my sister Amy was in the hospital dying of leukemia. On the 18th she suffered grand mal seizures, and on the 20th she was transfered to St. Louis to a much larger hospital. The 24th was another day of seizures and intolerable pain for her as her body was ravaged by the cancer. On Christmas Day her symptoms eased and she had a few moments of peace before dying. It took me thirty years and a tremendous amount of work to finally put to rest the guilt and anger I didn’t understand at the time, and suffered with privately year after year.
The past several years has seen a return of a joyous Christmas for me, one of magic and beauty, giving and wonder. Michele played a pivotal role in this transformation. Learning to celebrate her birthday on the 24th was also a part of my growth. Along with Christmas my family had started to treat birthdays rather perfunctorily. Michele would have none of that.
So this weekend I am faced with three major events: the anniversary of Amy’s death, the first birthday spent without Michele, and the first Christmas spent alone too. All in two days time. Adding to this the impending loss of my job (14 working days away now), fear over my mother’s declining health, and some serious financial issues and I’m looking at a really joyous holiday weekend.
A rather minor and insignificant oversight at work today proved to be the straw and I just lost control. Rather than sit at my desk sobbing uncontrollably or lash out in rage I beat a hasty retreat and came to my apartment. I cried for a while and then called a very good friend who is an excellent listener. She called me back and I was able to dump all the anger, sorrow, fear, and helplessness out. It felt very good to just dump everything. I am exhausted now, but in a good way.
Moving through the next few days, and then the next couple of weeks is going to be very difficult. Nothing feels normal any more, and it is a sad commentary on my life that the best part of my day is being at work. Or it was until two weeks ago. I know that friends and family are all going to call to see how I am over the weekend. On the one hand this feels very good and on the other I am dreading their intrusion. never have I felt more acutely the truism that being loved is really about accepting what people give you and not expecting what you want.
On Monday it will be seventy-seven days since Michele died. On Wednesday I would have known her for ten years, three thousand, six hundred and fifty days. Today I feel a hundred thousand days old.
Several years ago I got hooked on the idea of electronic books. Thanks to a free reader for the Palm OS from eReader and a huge selection of titles there as well, I’ve amassed quite a collection of books on my hard drive.
The problem is tracking which ones I’ve read and which ones I haven’t. For lack of a better structure I create a folder for each author inside the ebookz folder, and I place their titles inside. Some times I purchase three or four new titles at a time, and they all disappear into various author folders. After reading the first one I often can’t remember which other ones I’ve recently purchased but not yet read.
Thankfully eReader provides an electronic bookshelf that lists all the books I’ve purchased, in purchase order. So periodically I visit the site, not to buy new books, but to discover which books I already own buy may have lost in the shuffle.
I don’t even know where to start about Christmas this year. I’m tempted to just say, “bah, humbug.” However, that feels too much like giving up and I’m not ready to go there.
At my own choosing I’ve set this weekend up to be entirely on my own, doing only what I want. Thanksgiving was good, and I appreciated having other people around to shelter me from the stark reality of a formerly special holiday without Michele. Once I realized that I was going to be okay then I wanted time by myself to commune with my memories of Michele and our Thanksgivings together. I resolved to spend her birthday and Christmas doing only things I wanted to do, and, more importantly, free to do whatever I needed in the moment to be okay. Spending those days (the 24th and 25th) with my family would erect numerous barriers to my need for flexibility around these two events.
So my current thinking is that Saturday I’ll visit the grocery store for the things I need to make Arroyz con Pollo and chili, and the video store for a movie or three. I know that turkey is traditional, but that was our favorite meal and I just can’t bring myself to make it and then eat it alone. I’d like to bake a cake for her birthday, but I can’t eat an entire only solo - maybe I’ll take the left over into work Tuesday and let my co-workers polish it off for me.
Christmas Day I want to watch all the old Christmas movies we own ending with It’s a Wonderful Life, one of her favorites; mine too. I’ll have eggnog and cookies to snack on, and take a nap or three. I’m sure there’ll be a good cry in there someplace. During our relationship I worked hard over a number of years to put the sorrow of Amy’s death into a better perspective and that ultimately allowed me to start having joy and magic around Christmas again. I know that I am still grieving her death but I want to try and at least celebrate the memories I have of her to offset my sadness. I feel it is appropriate to express both now, and healthy to have some balance between them.
I wish for all of you a Merry Christmas, filled with love and appreciation for the real gifts in your life. The gifts of friendship, of companionship, of love. Don’t get so lost in the commercial trappings that you lose your connection with the joy, wonder, and magic of sharing yourself with others.
The saga of my US Airlines exception refund continues. Shortly after Michele’s death I contacted Expedia about getting a refund for plane tickets we were never going to use. After some initial difficulty getting the paperwork into the pipeline, Expedia at least is working on it for me. Since it had been a month since they passed the paperwork on to US Air I thought I’d call them today for an update.
Imagine my surprise to learn that US Air hasn’t contacted Expedia at all. Picture the shock when I discovered that calling the US Air Refund Customer Service center toll-free number gets a recording saying that “we can’t take your call right now.” The woman at Expedia was very nice and she did try to reach US Air multiple times while I was on the phone with her. In the end she said we’d have to try again tomorrow.
Equipped with the ticket numbers and the US Air toll-free number I called myself a few minutes ago. The initial greeting tells you all about their useful web page where you can get all your questions answered online and please go there now. The first menu offers several enticing false options that will only lead to automated response systems. After listening to several choices I hear one that sounds like I’ll connect to a human. This sub-menu starts with its own greeting that tries to sell you on the sleek, modern benefits of their Internet site, and here’s the overly long and complicated web address so you can please go there now. Repeated. Twice.
Eventually I get a sub-sub-menu with an option to speak to a customer service representative. I poke that button and endure the obligatory “this message may be recorded for quality assurance purposes” spiel, and then a series of clicks. Next a message stating that I must have my 13-digit ticket numbers ready. More clicks. And finally:
“We are unable to take your call at this time. Please call again.”
Click.
Dial tone.
Shit.
This weekend I made my first solo road trip in almost nine years. Michele and I were good partners in the car and we enjoyed time spent traveling, whether listening to audio books, playing Twenty Questions, or just sharing the passing scenery.
It was strange to drive so far alone. I talked out loud to her quite a bit, but the silence at times was overpowering. I found myself becoming more and more manic in an effort to keep from facing the empty seat along side of me. Michele frequently wanted to stop at rest areas; in fact I often kidded her that she should write a book, Rest Areas I Have Known. In our trips to the east coast and back we often stopped at the same points along the way. Friday, and again this morning, I didn’t stop at any of the rest areas. But I was acutely aware of them nonetheless.
Returning to the apartment and seeing my cats was good. I’ve always believed that home is where the heart is, and since October I have not really considered this apartment home as my heart is with Michele. However, a part of my heart is with my two wonderful feline companions. Not seeing them for a couple of days was hard, and, just like when Michele and I traveled, starting off for “home” added a poignancy for little Taz and Nekko. As I write this, seated in the oversized chair, they are both on the chair with me, sleeping. I still feel homeless in a sense, but I had a good homecoming after my journey this weekend.
Every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The journey towards my future took a step this weekend.
A few weeks after Michele’s death I went to a bar with some people from work to see a fellow work mate and his band play. It was good, and it got me out of the apartment for a few hours at a time when I need diversions. In the days that followed my bass-playing friend and I discussed music quite a bit. He gave me a CD called One Fair Summer Evening by Nanci Griffith. Although more “country” than I normally prefer, her voice is liquid smooth and the live recording is very good.
One song off the album in particular has really touched me. Her version of From A Distance is incredible. In the introduction she explains that the song means something different to “every ear that hears it.” For me it makes me think of Michele, in particular of her watching over me from a distance. Even though she is no longer here physically she is still a part of my life. I listen to that track every day, sometimes twice a day. It really is very good.
If you have iTunes (and why wouldn’t you have it?) you can get the song via this link: {{ $image := .ResourceGetMatch “badgeitunes61x15dark.gif” }}