Life back

Eons and eons ago, I was moving out of the house I shared with my first wife Nancy. We married very young, she and I, and I was certainly the more extroverted one. Nancy went along for the ride for a while, taking on my interests and generally subsuming her personality in favor of mine. She was a Polish Catholic girl from Niles and this is what you did, as far as she knew.

Since I am prone to center of the Universe behavior, and was REALLY that way at 23, I didn't really notice or catch on to this dynamic. (And there was a good deal more to this, really. I'm simplifying history here. Nancy's family was monumentally scarred by alcoholism and traumas that Nancy only ever hinted at.) As time went by, we grew far apart, having little in common in the first place and things got more and more negative between us. Nancy initiated the divorce discussion, but in the end it was I who moved out, and our discussions continued after.

"I feel like I've got my life back," she announced. I was probably sarcastic about it, since I hadn't knowingly stolen her life and didn't know enough about young women to understand. There was enough collateral damage that I had my own wounds to lick.

Nancy took her own life a couple years ago. Her life, for what it's worth, didn't improve for long. She married a guy we both knew (a friend of ours attended the wedding and wore black, she was so pessimistic about the match), and they had a couple children - a boy and a girl. Eventually she and her husband divorced, but not before he held the children hostage at gunpoint and got the state involved in their lives. Nancy was a very self-conscious, almost paranoid person and I'm sure she was horrified. After her sister died, of years of MS, she said goodnight and apparently took pills she had in her purse. She left her son, estranged from her by all accounts, and a daughter.

As I drove to Iowa City yesterday morning to see my clients (a pleasure as well as a second job) the sun was shining and the last of the leaves were showing their color. I sipped my coffee and listened to music, reveling in my relatively new-found ability to travel independently, and feeling little if any back pain. It's been a long summer and now with the crisp air comes the easing of our burdens, our ability to again look at something like enrichment, something other than survival. And I knew then, how Nancy felt in that time she became more independent and before she saddled herself with an even worse relationship than the one we shared.

"I have my life back," I said, to no one, to everyone, and to Nancy, wherever her troubled soul now lies. I hope, for a while, she felt as good about it as I do.

Saturday night bachache reverie

I'm thinking of my friend tonight who has buried his father, his mother and now his aunt in rapid succession, and who after returning from his aunt's funeral related that he was "beat from a long week (actually years) of mourning," and has disappeared from radar.

I know where he is. He's hunkered down wrestling with that dark inertia that descends on us as we face entropy and know with certainty that it's a matter of time, really. He's chasing everyday life and not looking over his shoulder for the next wave of sadness.

He is, as we will all be unless we pass away before our parents, an orphan. My Aunt Peg said to me after her older sister died "she was the only one left who knew me from the start." A lot of us are these days, orphans, that is. Mom still recognizes me and that is some recompense, but its not really her. We're writing our own histories now, the keepers of the past.

Yesterday I labored over files and to day I helped move a couple chairs and tonight I ache. A wise woman who had a similar trauma to mine said that her pain was her reminder that it's good to be alive. It's my reminder that I'm free again from the confines of invalidism, driving, working, playing a little, and at the end of the day nursing my aches and pains, and glad to have them.

When I had surgery for my fractured face, the surgeon was concerned that I might aspirate into my wired mouth after surgery and either die or aspirate or gross everybody out. My friend organized time off for Robyn and a host of friends to sit by me and then went home, got sick and fell asleep. Didn't come back for his second shift. Left me a text message. Didn't call the our other grumpy friend who felt particularly awkward sitting there with me in a gown, my ass hanging out, taking a dump in the bathroom and him having to listen. I was wishing everyone would just leave at that point and didn't get it. Grumpy friend was disgusted and suggested it was the same old shit, not following through.

That's not the point, though. The point is that I might have died and my friends were afraid for me. That someone would panic over my passing and try to organize me to safety is a beautiful thing. To realize that the crisis is over and fuck up a few details is a small thing.

Love is love. Brush it off and get on with it.

Dog day

Tye has a number of jobs, but his main job is getting you to throw things so that he can catch them. He will do this at any time and under any conditions, with any item handy. His favorite item to get you to throw is his chipmunk.

The chipmunk is a stuffed pet toy, sufficiently realistic, except that real chipmunks are not covered with dog saliva. It occurs in pet stores, and, if you visit Thompsonville, your lap. If you pick it up and fling it away in horror, the games have begun.

Here are various shots of Tye doing what makes him happiest. Happier than humping. Happier than eating out of the sink. Happier than cheese off the counter.
















































Caitlin took all these pictures. Good girl!