I have been busy this week. My workload at WhereNet has not abated and it looks like any easing is still a ways off. This week has been a little more difficult than the last few weeks. I find myself thinking about Jo Lynn more than has been the norm for a while.
I am also starting to get tired of living alone and I have started thinking that I may always live alone. I hadn’t really considered that idea before. I think I just kind of acted like my wife was away and would soon be home. This wasn’t that I was nuts, it just means that I haven’t yet begun to think about the long term and what changes I will have to make. I haven’t concluded on anything but my feelings seem to changing in subtle ways.
I suppose this is healthy but it will mean more work I think. I expect that I will have to dispose of some of the things in the house that are more feminine and replace them with something that I prefer (I don’t know what that those things might be.) I don’t really know what it means or if it means anything. Just my musings I suppose.
Last night I stopped by a birthday party for that some of Jo’s friends had for one of the “chicks”. Although they were all very glad to see me and very gracious I was not very comfortable there, I have so lost track of them and the common things were really through Jo Lynn, there is not much to talk about now. So I stay about 20 minutes and then left. The same thing happened at the Fourth of July party so maybe it is time to cut some of those ties too.
This will be my first weekend at home for the last month, which means a lot of chores to do. I want to clean up the plants in the house and the atrium. I also need to get the new computer for Deanna and Rich set up and install the Microsoft and HP updates before I give it to her. So I will be busy this weekend.
I got home this afternoon from my trip to Seattle. Had a very good time and great visit with Ruth, Rich, Dad, and Jewell. Also got to see Brian and Aimee. Spent a lot of time driving but still a very nice time.
We visited the home site that Rich and Ruth have purchased near Mazama, WA. It is a nice place and they own it with the idea of jointly building a house one day with their kids but now they are rethinking that. Not sure what they will decide but for now they enjoy visiting the Methow (pronounced Met-how) river valley. I hiked to the mountaintop one morning; it is very very steep.
On Wednesday evening Rich, Ruth, and I were walking and came upon a rattlesnake. About four feet long, it was slowing crossing the road in front of us and ignored us until we got close then it would shake it’s rattles and coil up. The people who lived closest to where we saw it planned to catch it in a box and have the game warden relocate it to some other place. I’m not sure I agree with that but that I guess if they want to trap it, its OK.
On Saturday we went to Bellingham to see Brian and Aimee. They have a great little (as in small) out in the country and it is very nice. We had a nice lunch then Brian told two stories. And Aimee played her guitar and sang of us. She apparently doesn’t often play for other people so it was very nice. I suggested that she might accompany Brian’s stories and they liked that idea, they tried it and it was very nice. I hope they decide to keep it up.
I went to church with R/R (and D/J) this morning to a very large Presbyterian Church in Bellevue. It was a large service (one of four each Sunday) and the preacher; Rev (or Dr.) Dudley was good speaker but the message seemed weak to me, very entertaining but light on substance. And I missed the liturgy and the formal hymns. Some of the songs were more like camp songs. Dad and Jewell really liked it though and that was good.
For some reason I felt a lot of sadness today for missing Jo Lynn. I talked about things we did with her and about our life and then today I was thinking about coming home alone and … there you have it … loneliness. It is better now but I still feel pretty sad.
I will be leaving this afternoon for the visit in Seattle with Ruth, Rich, Dad and Jewell. I am looking forward to going but also worried because it is a bad time to be gone because I am so busy at work. I have been installing a new computer at home and that is keeping up me busy there too.
This past weekend I was with Scott and Marissa and dropping them off at Sugarloaf Fine Arts Camp on Sunday afternoon. So I will be gone three weekends in a row, first San Diego, Placerville, and now Seattle. I am too busy. It is good but maybe a little less intensity would be ok too.
Deanna and Rich went to Diana’s wedding last weekend in Colfax. Dianna is Mary Beth’s youngest daughter (Jo Lynn’s niece). She had a good time and saw lots of people. She also reports that Mom is doing really well. She even went to brunch and walked well with her cane. Deanna says that Mom able to keep up with conversations and events pretty well. So that seems good.
I am still kind of stuck again in memory lane about Jo and my life. It seems like I just can’t get out of this rut. Just when I think I am getting better something sucks me back. Yesterday I received a phone call from a guy I worked with several years ago, during Jo’s original bout with cancer. John’s wife had breast cancer about the same time. Anyway John asked about Jo since we hadn’t talked in that long. He was so sorry but of course the nothing he could have done to prevent stirring it up. Things like that often set me back a bit when they happen. Another example; I met a woman on the plane to San Diego two weeks ago and in chatting with her about Jo and I had trouble even getting it out without choking up!
It has been a couple of weeks since my last entry here. I started several times to write but I didn’t seem to have time or the inspiration, I guess the muse was absent. (As if I had a museJ)
I went to San Diego this past weekend to spend the long Independence Day weekend with Jake, Jill, and Max. I had a good time and Max is getting to be even more fun as he grows up a little more. Some how though I came home more conscious of Jo’s loss than usual. More than I have felt for sometime. I am not sure why but it seems like spending time with Jake’s family does that to me.
Maybe it’s because he (Jake) doesn’t have the same sense of loss that Deanna and I seem to have; or maybe it is because of my wish to make Max remember his Grandma Jo Lynn. After Jo was diagnosed with the MDS but before she entered treatment she wanted to me to let Max know how much she loved him and would have loved him. But I don’t really know how to do that. Maybe it is not possible for him (he was three) when she died to remember the intense love she held for him. Maybe a more able Grandfather could find a way to make the love seem real in memory. Or maybe he will ask me someday about her and her love and I can tell him then. Or maybe he will ask Scott or Marissa and they will tell him. I don’t know how to do it any differently even though I wish I could directly act on Jo’s wish.
Anyway after I returned home yesterday around one o’clock in the afternoon I went by Doug and Marion Wells’ house for their annual Fourth of July party. It is of course an AA event. I ran into several of the “chicks”, a few others that I know but the number of people I knew was small and I was not able to enjoy myself so I left after 30 minutes. Came home a puttered around all afternoon.
Last week my stepmother, Jewell was ordered to have a CAT scan after some pain in her abdomen. It delayed their departure for the west coast for their summer trip. Neither Ruth nor I knew what symptoms led to the CAT but I was quite concerned. Although the first word was no report until Tuesday (today) Dad sent an email on Saturday that all was well, she just has to curtail dairy products and they left Sunday on the trip. So my concerns were unnecessary. But I am glad it turned out OK.
I will meet Dad and Jewell in Seattle on the 12th of July and spend a few days in the Cascades with them along with Rich and Ruth. Looking forward to that visit.
Back to my missing Jo; all day yesterday I felt it and still today I feel the sadness. I skipped going to a fireworks show because she loved fireworks so much and didn’t want to face that alone. So on TV I watched a medical show…stupid…I flashed back again to the last day in the PICU and her death! I am not sure when this cycle will finally break once and for all.
Last time I wrote that Dee from church was going to try to fix me up with a woman from the program but nothing has come of it so far. I am not sure I want someone from the program but I am probably willing to accept that if we got along otherwise. It doesn’t matter unless someone appears anyway.
