12:25 pm -
So last night was a very tough night for me. I wept going to sleep and then once I was awake with Claire this morning I was weeping again. I get the feeling Jan is around but I wish I could talk with her. You know, I carry around an iPhone. I receive calls and make calls but overall the phone to me represents the ability to make and receive calls more than it actually is used for calls. I received gobs of calls from Jan and made calls to her using that phone. My phone would ring and I would see it was from her. If I was in a meeting I would mute the phone and continue with the meeting. If she called again and again I knew it was an emergency and would answer the phone. I had a bad habit of not returning text messages, emails, and phone calls from Jan. I figured I would just talk to her during lunch or dinner and it wasn't a big deal. I thought yesterday about how much I would pay to just have a conversation with Jan. To just hear her voice. I scoured the voice-mail, text, and email messages in search of any personal note to me. I found very little. Most of our conversations were done in person and when I want to reflect on a personal note to me the most I am left with nothing. I have the holiday note with a short message but seriously, how often do married people write letters to each other? So, that is another thing I would do differently. I suppose I am just going through another wave of sadness. It takes a lot of energy to feel. A lot is not an adequate description. It takes nearly all my energy to feel. If I feel I am unable to function. If I don't feel I can function but then I end up falling apart when something triggers me. I swear - I am beginning to understand why Jan was so exhausted as she was working through her challenges. I understand why she chose to just watch TV. I just don't want to feel but I do. It is a real conflict.
8:09 pm -
So I smoked a brisket and two pork shoulders. The pork did not turn out like I wanted but the brisket is passable. The roof was completed yesterday and I have small remnants of roofing material everywhere. I am a perfectionist when paint is involved and normally that means I don't enjoy painting because it takes me so long to do. The roofers painted a portion of material that is like metal siding or something. Anyway, there was some overspray on the house and it looks like someone did it in the dark... which they probably did. Note to any roofer - don't use black spray paint in the dark. I was going to get my home repainted but now it is a must.
So I am mentally done. There was one thing after another today and Jan has been on my mind every moment of the day. I got one of the medical bills in the mail today. Apparently they charge for every time they administered CPR. Over 1K for every time. It appears they did this 4 times. Every freaking bill pulls me right back into the thick of things. I just want this to be over.
To quote J.R.R. Tolkien's character Bilbo Baggins from The Lord of the Rings - "I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread". As odd as it sounds I understand why stories are so very important. My ability to capture how I am feeling is so limited. A story helps build the foundation that is similar enough so when events happen the reader has a framework to understand the depth of emotion that the event carries. Perhaps that is why some books bring us to tears or drive us to action.
Tonight is ice cream night. You know this reminds me of a quote from the director of the movie "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead"... Joe Cross. He said "Sugar never let me down". I get that. As an introvert I don't feed off of people. I feed off of silence and reflection. That is my recharge; however, silence and reflection of late is more painful than recharging. Sugar seems to give me a happy feeling that takes the cares of the world away for a time. It is unhealthy, yes, but as a weekly family treat we embrace it as a good memory builder. I have to be careful because with all that has been going on I feel I could just sit down with a 1/2 gallon of Blue Bell and eat my cares away. So I teeter between keeping busy and full exhaustion. This helps me not have to reflect and feel. I feel lame that I am trying to avoid feeling. Lame but realistic to what I am able to do. I realize this is a new normal I am working to get to. I am just trying to accept that the old normal is no more. That is the hardest.
