Category: Sadness and Loss

Posted on

This was weird…

I watched the actual swearing in of Trump yesterday.

I loved the Marines walking JD Vances children in. I’ve always been a sucker for Dress Blues.

What was weird is this. I got emotional about it. I’m quick to anger to be sure. But not quick to tears. 

While watching the inauguration I had this weird juxtaposition of time. Trump should have been The President in 2020. For just a moment, I thought I was back in 2020 waking from a nightmare. I expected Jerry to be alive and that I’d tell him of this crazy assed dream. Then we’d laugh at my silliness and all would be well.

But Jerry is still dead. I’m still alone. Things are still much more expensive than they were, injustices still happened, and two tier justice is still the norm. The “Nightmare” was real.

I cried.

Perhaps from relief that Biden wouldn’t be fucking things up worse. Perhaps because It wasn’t a dream and that hit like a ton of bricks. Perhaps it was just the last of my grief leaving, and me looking forward to opportunities the new administration may provide.

I lay a lot of my sadness, angst, and loss at the Biden administrations feet.

Jerry’s life might have been prolonged if he hadn’t had to navigate COVID protocols and repeated cancellations or rescheduling of appointments with his cardiologist.

Eventually, he stopped trying because every appointment was canceled due to someone testing positive for COVID in that office. Which meant they’d shut the place down for a week or two.

Jerry wasn’t alone, a lot of people were denied care for the same reasons. He gave up on his doctor in October of 2022 and was trying to find a new cardiologist but ran into the same BS when scheduling appointments. 

Biden and his shitty administration aren’t directly responsible or that.

They are directly responsible for increasing the stress & fear, and censoring information about COVID that might have brought the pandemic panic to a close sooner.

None of them will ever be held to account.

I can only hope that things get better for this country as fast as they went into the shitter with Biden’s executive orders in the first 100 days.

Somehow, I doubt it. 

It takes a lot more energy to create that to destroy.

On the plus side, the stock market was hopping yesterday. That’s maybe a positive sign.

Posted on

Yesterday was pretty good.

I’ve been bordering on being blue for the past few days. 

I don’t really know what’s causing the problem but I’ve been thinking a lot about Jerry, our life together, acknowledging that I was happy and feeling sad about missing him and the goofy life we made.

I was tossing a bunch of little things that were junk when Jerry put them into the junk drawer and they were still junk when I pulled them out of the junk drawer. That man couldn’t throw anything away!

Spring_flowers_2015_longwood_cr_Longwood Gardens L Albee.(I smiled as I typed that.)

Then a wave of sadness washed over me. The dog had been walked, but I felt like I needed to step outside. The sun was warm, the breeze pleasant, and as I looked over the back yard I noticed weeds had sprung up with a vengeance.

I went down stairs with the intent to just do poo patrol. Once I’d completed that chore, I thought, “Might as well do the weed whacking too.”

That felt good. I took all the weeds down to nubs, Then I did the patch of grass & weeds between my fence and the next door neighbor. During one of the winter storms, some limbs had broken off of one of his trees and were laying in the way. I moved them, then cut the weeds which had been growing under the limbs. The battery on the weed whacker died just as I finished the last pass against the fence.

“Great Timing,” I thought as I put the weed whacker away. Slipping the battery into the charger I noticed it was the bigger battery that came with my chainsaw.

This led to checking the oil in the chainsaw, and since I was holding the saw, I grabbed a charged battery pack, shrugged and headed out of the garage. Happily I went out to the side of the house where the limbs lay and started cutting them into small manageable pieces. 

From the winter damage I’ve seen on the tree that lost these limbs, I’m not sure it will survive. That’s sad because it’s a beautiful tree. Similarly, the butterfly bush in front of my house is looking pretty shabby too. I’m hoping it will recover but I’m not holding my breath.

The singing of my chainsaw blade made me happy. I’d noticed some of my neighbor’s Mountain Lilacs were overgrowing the power pole we share. So before he gets an abatement ticket or worse, Edison “Helps’ by butchering the plants, I started pruning.

Well, I had the chainsaw in my hand…  

I cleaned up all the trimmings, came inside covered in sawdust and debris from weed whacking, and asked Jerry if there was anything else I should do before I cleaned up.

Yeah…

My heart stopped for a second. In that breathless moment I figured out part of the blues I’d been feeling.

You see, I always did the outside work.

I can run the snow thrower and always could. In winters, Jerry wanted to help and contribute. But Jerry had shitty balance, doubly so on ice, so we agreed that he ran the snow thrower. I was pleased with this arrangement because while he was holding onto the machine, the odds of a fall were greatly reduced.

When It came to yard work, trimming, digging, planting, painting, and that kind of stuff. I did the work, Jerry supervised. He made sure that I was staying hydrated, and wasn’t out in the sun for too long.

Jerry told me enjoyed watching me working in the yard. He said I looked hot, and he liked my confident strut and my confidence while using the tools.

At the time, I’d never thought that I could be hot looking doing chores. For me, it was just chores. Other guys, looked hot doing construction, or farming, or whatever. I never thought about myself that way, but I was happy knowing I was good enough for him.

I suppose what I’d been secretly dreading was this “first” spring.

Last year, I was just going through the motions still “numb” from his passing.

This year, I’m getting back to something like “normal” and those normal things remind me what’s missing.

One “missing” ritual is this. In the first days of Spring, We’d have discussions about planting spring flowers, or changes in the yard, and trimming of various shrubs and trees. Sometimes there wasn’t much discussion, Jerry would come home with flats of flowers and ask me to plant them. I’d do it because I enjoyed the work and because the flowers made him smile.

It’s that time of year and probably why there was a bit of a sting yesterday. This is a part of the healing process. It’s just going to take time.

The good news is that being outside and doing the usual, normal work felt really good. There’s more to do, but I wanted to see what my arms and shoulders felt like before using the pole saw on some Cottonwood trees that are spindly and overhanging my fence line.

The other good news is that I’m not blue today, it seems a little yard work was all it took to make the blues disappear.

Maybe I’ll go look at some flowers up at the hardware store.

Posted on

I really was trying to ignore the News…

But Come On!

Colorado has decided to keep Trump off the ballot using the 14th amendment section 3, and they’ve made this decision by assuming his guilt in the Jan 6th “Insurrection,” (what the rest of us call a riot,) without benefit of a trial. 

Folks, no matter where you come down on Trump, Jan 6th, Republican or Democrat, this is wrong!

Honestly, it’s something that should alarm every single American Citizen. I’m serious, all of us should be shitting ourselves and preparing for what inevitably happens next, if you believe the history books.

That Judges in Colorado’s courts think this is okay, calls into question their competence, and their ability to be unbiased in administration of the law.

Frankly, if this is allowed to stand then “Democracy” as the Democrats breathlessly say they’re protecting, is already dead and gone. (The minor little issue that our government is, or was, a constitutional republic seems to escape them.) However what I think they’re trying to say is, Democracy = Our form of government with checks and balances and supposedly equal justice for all, is threatened.

We still have to wait for the Supreme Court challenge to be heard. If the Supreme Court of the United States allows the Colorado ruling  to stand, there is no justice system in our country anymore.  We’re going to find ourselves in an era of “Show me the man, I’ll find the crime,” justice.

By the way, that’s normally the way the justice system works in communist countries, and dictatorships.

I’d submit that politicians have already destroyed that “Democracy” they claim to protect. Oh, and it’s not just the Democrats. The Republicans had a hand in the destruction of our form of government too. Every compromised vote, every rancid pork bill they passed, eroded our government and enabled ever greater corruption.

We can’t reasonably expect any form of government to stand under the weight of corruption from bottom to top.

Speaking of which… By Colorado’s logic what about Joe Biden?

He’s under impeachment inquiry, There is some evidence to suggest that he’s been in bed with China and Ukraine which also appears to fall under the same section of the 14th amendment.

Corruption, providing aid to China, and what appears to be a litany of charges, are dogging Joe Biden aren’t they? Shouldn’t Colorado remove him from the ballot too?

Oh right! We only believe unproven allegations when it’s a candidate from a party we don’t like… Otherwise everything is hunky dory!

I realize I might be the canary in the coal mine here. 

That being said, I’ve suggested outlandish theories in these very pages only to have them come true!

Remember Afghanistan? Way back in the day, I theorized that we’d end up just like the Russians. Recall, they spent years in Afghanistan just as we did. You might also recall that eventually they bailed and left behind The Taliban. Uhhh, we spent 20 years there and what was the result? It sure as fuck wasn’t a democracy.

One thing I’ve concluded, about terrorists and corrupt politicians. You can’t take half measures. They’re like a cockroach infestation, with cockroaches you have no choice but to gas the place and kill them all, or they’re going to come back. We’ve seen it with The Taliban, so the theory holds up in one instance. To prove it we may have to march corrupt politicians to the gallows here in America.

We won’t of course…

There was a time when corruption was a very bad thing. Now it’s business as usual. The obviousness of the two tiered justice system is new. There’s always been a difference between trials of rich people and trials of us commoners. I’m not so blind or deluded that I hadn’t noticed. Back 10 or 20 years, you had to really be paying attention to catch it.

Now it’s not as much about who has how much money… Justice is dictated by the people threatening to burn a city down. Or by people who don’t like a particular political candidate. The Law??? Toss that shit out with yesterday’s dirty diapers and unwanted fetuses. 

There was a time when the failures of the Justice system could be overlooked, those failures were somewhat rare and had to do with esoteric issues. Now, failures of the justice system are much more common. This new failure mechanism isn’t a failure in trials, it’s a failure in bringing people to trial, and an almost infinitely flexible criteria for charging someone with a crime.

If I’m Black and toss a molotov cocktail into a drug store. I’m simply expressing my opinion. If I’m White, or Asian, and do the same thing, I’ve committed a crime. 

If I organize a protest supporting Hamas and their butchering of children, wherein I block a freeway, or invade and occupy the capital interfering with congressional business, I’m exercising my protected free speech.

If I organize a protest supporting the IDF and Israeli rights to defend themselves, wherein I block a street in New York I’m inciting hate. Likewise, If I walk through the Capital on Jan 6th carrying nothing but a flag, and interfering with congressional business,  I’m an insurrectionist and subject to the full force of American Law.

These things suggest to me that the America I was brought up to respect, revere, and protect has been destroyed from within. 

It’s depressing as hell, but there’s nothing that can be done. The only solution is to reboot the government according to the Bill of Rights and Constitution. That can’t happen today because there are too many dissenting voices and too many people who literally hate everything this country stood for. That leaves the only option for control being a military dictator and even if that dictatorship was only supposed to be temporary while rebooting to original principles, we know we’d have a dictator for life.

Even if there was a civil war or some kind of revolution, there would never be consensus about how to restart the government. We’d still end up with a military dictator. The thing about dictators is that they have no desire to give up power once they have it.

Sadly, I think the American Experiment is over. We had a good run. 

I think it’s time to locate a quiet state that remembers its roots as a commonwealth. Preferably someplace with a history of fierce independence, individual freedom, and rights. Oh and that state needs to have a constitution that is enforced and honored. Because at this point, it looks like our Federal government has decided to wipe their asses with the actual constitution.

Sorry to be such a downer, but honestly folks… I think nationally, we’re well and truly fucked.

Posted on

Wow! The other half had a lot of musical scores in digital format.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much of a filing system for either Paper or Digital scores.

Screenshot 2023 09 30 at 7 29 50 AM

I’ve been trying to collect up all the music (Digital and Paper), and sort it with the intention of making sure that it got to the people that could use it and who would appreciate the effort.

I’m using a 32GB thumb drive now and unlike previous attempts will hopefully not run out of space.

I’ve also been finding a lot of duplications. I suspect that is in part due to the lack of a filing system and in part it might be further evidence that he’d been “off” for a while and was doing a damn fine job of hiding that fact from me.

No, I’m not angry about it. I’m just a little sad. He did his life, his way, as do I. We called “Shotgun” on each other’s journey through life and rode together for a long time. It’s cool, even if I am a little sad about the way things went from time to time.

As an aside, I have no clue how music is supposed to be catalogued, or indexed, or anything else.

I’m just doing what seems “Right” with the music much the same way I’ve done with every other curveball that’s come my way over the past 10 months.

In addition to the actual musical scores, some of which are only identifiable by opening them. (I’m fixing that slowly but surely.) I’ve also run into actual recordings where he was playing and recording into GarageBand either via a MIDI connection or he was using a microphone. Hearing him play has been somewhat jarring because I recognize his style and technique. It’s okay, but I’m still prone to crying over stuff like that, because the memories of him practicing a particular piece come flooding back. 

I’ll be a little sad over not being annoyed and hiding out in the office as he played the same measure over and over again trying to get it just right. In a way it was like RAP with Classical music!

I hate RAP!

As I typed that, I was smiling through misty eyes.

I’m sorting the music as best I can. If something has Hebrew characters in it, then it’s obviously going into the Jewish music folder. If it’s written in Russian It’s probably a fair bet that too is going to be Jewish Music. That is also true of German and Spanish.

I’m so out of my depth!

I’ve been looking for keywords in the scores. If I find anything that is recognizably Hebrew or Yiddish I know where to file it.

Christian music is a little easier because there I only have to scan for “Jesus” or Holy Ghost or Father, Son and Holy Spirt. You don’t find those kinds of references in Jewish Music.

Things start to get dicy when there are no lyrics, only the musical notation. If the title isn’t obvious, then I’m in a bit of trouble. 

If I can sound it out and recognize the roots or the rhythm of the piece  then I’ve got a shot at getting it in the right place. Some music is instantly recognizable as Jewish when you hear it.

I recognize the names of many classical pieces, or at least the composer so those scores go into the Classical Folder.

But wait! There’s more…

The harp music, the organ music, the piano, harpsichord, and even accordion music is all in one big assed digital pile.

For him, this presented no problem. He’d open an arrangement and know exactly what instrument it was for just by looking. Hell, I think sometimes he didn’t care what the score said the instrument was supposed to be. I think he’d just figure it out on the fly. That’s what a classically trained musician can do. It’s a skill built up over a lifetime and it’s amazing to watch in action.

I’ve been trying to sort the Harp and keyboard music into separate folders. Some of the folks that will be looking at this are classically trained musicians, but others aren’t.  Some of the amateur choir members can carry a tune and read music, but I know the other half curated very carefully what he gave to the choir.

It wasn’t about him disrespecting them, it was about not wanting to frustrate them with super busy scores. Sometimes he’d sit down and manually do choir only notation as a new file that he’d print here. Then we’d assemble the choir books if he wanted or needed my help.

I was probably next to useless because I didn’t read music. But I could follow instructions, run the printer, punch holes in pages, and we’d be spending the time together.

I know I could just hand all of the over to “Real” musicians instead of a hack like me. One reason that I don’t is because also mixed in this big pile of musical scores are receipts, and medical evaluations, and all the usual documents that one accumulates. So I have to be the one that filters all of this stuff out. 

Some of the pieces of music where he’s actually playing are in Apple only formats. Not a problem for me… But the Synagogue and Church are Windows based. So I’m letting my super fast computer handle processing the music into something universally playable. That takes time. Not much in the way of computer time, but time listening to the various edits and editions to determine which one is most likely to be the “Final” version that he’d want distributed.

Perhaps I’m doing all of this as much for me, and the other half, as I am for the Synagogue and Church.

It’s tedious, and time consuming. But I’m hoping to construct something that he’d be proud of. 

Posted on

I was going to start this with the old…

… This is your brain on drugs photo. If you’re old enough, you’d remember the eggs in the frying pan.

As I was looking for an easy image to pull, (because I don’t feel like fried eggs for breakfast,) I ran across a lot of images of brains, and brain related memes.

Ironically more than a few of those “informative” images, were suspect or had typos.

This one for example, has both concerns. I think the average human brain is perhaps 1/3 larger than the image asserts and there’s the old To, Too, Two, bugaboo. I’m going to ignore capitalization and sentence structure.

According to a quick internet search, (we all know how accurate that’s likely to be,) The average human brain weighs in, at about 3 lbs. It has a volume of 1260 cm3. Another interesting thing to note is that the human brain contains approximately 40% fat.

I suppose that means I shouldn’t have been offended when someone called me a fathead.

All of this about brains started because as I’ve moved through the grieving process, I’ve noticed things that disturb the hell out of me. I can’t remember SHIT! I write stuff down, or I put it into my phone and then forget to check my list.

I didn’t used to have this problem. I remembered everything, and found the act of writing things down to be a waste of time because I remembered everything I needed to do.

Now, I can’t stay focused, or on task. Everything is monumentally difficult, even the things I like doing. I’ve also noticed that I feel like I’ve lost myself, and am lost. I don’t “Feel” like myself right now. I’m easily bored and far too easily annoyed by the simplest of things.

People have said that this will pass. I can feel the truth of that statement. Simultaneously, I sense another truth as well. The hurt will diminish, (and has,) but I will never be the same person I was. I will be irrevocably changed. Things that I used to enjoy, I may leave behind because those things remind me of who I was with my other half, and it is too painful.

It’s in your other half’s absence that you are confronted with constant reminders of how much you were loved. You also have to confront how much you took that love and care for granted. There’s an element of guilt in that last bit. I don’t think guilt is the right emotion because if the roles were reversed, the feelings would be the same.

Moving on is hard. I haven’t done as good a job at it as I thought I would. I feel ashamed about that. I’ve been told not to beat myself up over it. I try not to, but I still feel ashamed.

I thought I was prepared. I thought it would be a quick searing pain and then it would be done. I was wrong. The pain lingers on. I think that’s a lyric from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I don’t remember the exact track.

I understand now why many societies have a minimum period for the grieving process. None of these societies have the process written in stone but many have social constructs that determine appropriateness of various behavior during this time.

As an intelligent species with millennia of lived experience behind us, various social fabrics have been woven to accommodate and protect those of us wounded by loss. Make no mistake, it’s a gaping festering emotional wound. It may be a wound that scars over but is always felt. My thinking along these lines allowed me to feel a connectedness that is very human, and was strangely comforting.

July and August have been very hard months for me. I’ve burned a lot of energy trying to process why. His birthday, my Birthday, my Father’s Birthday, the anniversary of my Father’s death, this was typically the time that my other half and I would do things together because he was off work. Which meant he wasn’t running from thing to thing 7 days a week.

In years past we’d take short trips, go to museums, wine tasting, or if it was really hot, we’d content ourselves to walk the dog or dogs here in the mountains where it was cool and beautiful.

In really good years, I’d have sucked enough cock and kissed enough ass at my employer that I could actually take my paltry week of vacation. Most of the time though, “Business Needs” prevented me having anything but weekends off. (Business needs usually meant that the boss was taking 3 weeks off in Cancun with his family or mistress and fuck everyone else!)

School would have started by now and my other half would be getting into the swing of the school year plus preparing for the holiday services at the church and temple.

This hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday while I was making a meatloaf. Laugh if you wish, it is funny. I think it’s the mundane nature of what I was doing.

For a few minutes I forgot he was gone. I looked at the clock on the stove and thought, “I’ll get this cooked and walk the dog before he gets home then make a nice summer salad and sweet corn for dinner, the weather is nice enough that we could perhaps eat on the deck tonight,”

Then I saw his car in the driveway where I’d parked it, and it all crashed in on me again, he’s gone and he’s not coming back.

I think the dog is getting tired of comforting me…

Perhaps not, he doesn’t seem to care as long I cuddle him back. Then he does the only thing he knows as a “Fixes Everything,” he’ll keep bringing me balls until I pick one to throw for him. Apparently fetching a ball is the puppy cure-all that ails you.

It actually works. I think it’s his tenacity, he’ll bring each ball in, drop it at my feet or in my lap and wait for a response. The response he’s looking for is a smile, or for me to grab the ball. At that point his tail starts wagging and he heads for the door. All is well again…

The point of this rambling train of thought is;
Life is Change
Change is sometimes painful
Love is beautiful, terrible, painful, and joyous. Above all, those we love and who love us back are never forgotten, because they’ve literally gotten into our head.
The pain we feel when grieving is real, and I think caused by suddenly finding familiar pathways in our heads non-functional.

Hell, it could even be endorphin withdrawal. When we see a loved one we get a hit and when we don’t see them anymore we have to go cold turkey.

There are probably thousands of too tightly wrapped Phds, MDs, and whatever else the educational system has turned out that will vehemently disagree with my assessment. Go ahead! I never claimed I was an expert, I’d bet however that I’m a damn sight closer to being an expert than any of those so called “Experts” because I’m living through this time, it’s my lived experience. (See what I mean? I’m almost as edgy and easily pissed off as Biden, or my Mom these days.)

I need an endorphin hit. Maybe I’ll go buy myself a birthday present or two. I think I’ll try the built-in method of getting that endorphin hit before I go out and spend money. I suspect however that I’m going to be shopping in the next day or two.

Maybe it’s time for a haircut, a massage, and some time spent caring for myself and saying the hell with responsible behavior (within limits…)

Yeah, I’m working through a lot of shit that I am ill equipped to handle.