Wednesday, December 20, 2023

My Christmas Card


 

Monday, December 11, 2023

It's been Six Months

 Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   

And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   

But last year’s bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   

There are a hundred places where I fear   

To go,—so with his memory they brim.   

And entering with relief some quiet place   

Where never fell his foot or shone his face   

I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay




Tuesday, November 21, 2023

"Grief"

"Grief’s a bastard. 

Turns up no notice on the doorstep whenever 

moves in doesn’t shower doesn’t shave 

won’t do dishes 

dirty laundry 

eats badly spends hours in the bathroom 

keeps you awake half the night 

shows no consideration 

puts a filter on all the views 

no matter how sunny it gets 

the place still looks like shit. 


Grief’s a bastard. 

Talks long distance drinks too much overmedicates can’t finish a book 

keeps flipping channels mutes the sound 

turns down the colour 

’til it’s all washed out 

faded away. 


Grief will travel anywhere in the world to be with you 

nothing too extravagant for Grief 

can take the whole sky 

paint it bloodred demolish cities 

call down storms 

turn forests to sawdust 

punch holes in mountain ranges 

bedroom doors. 


Speaks for you 

whether you like it or not 

even though there’s nothing left to say 

and no words left to say it with 

roars furious flails around 

when you ask him how things are the fucker tells you 

trails along behind on walks 

dead-eyed pathetic shuffles 

’til you wait up and turn 

taking a deep breath 

knowing what’s coming. 


Gets old acts distant suddenly doesn’t call for weeks 

then comes over with too much whiskey and a bag of crappy 

skunkweed just to keep you on your toes. 

Jumps you in an alley after a movie 

and while he’s beating you says 

we must keep working on this relationship."

by Geoff Inverarity 


Monday, November 20, 2023

"Death, be not proud"

 A few nights ago I had a dream. Rob wanted to watch a film and I was running around the house like a madwoman. The toilet was leaking. There were all kinds of things falling apart. Why wasn’t he helping me? I woke suddenly and saw the bathroom light was on and the door was slightly ajar and my first thought was that Rob was in the bathroom and I called out to him and then realized it couldn’t be Rob. What do I do with all the questions I want to ask him? 

I am obsessed with death but I am not frozen. I did go to Paris - the second show. I saw a couple of my favourite designers and I was able to focus and send good notes and pictures to the store. I made a quick trip to Vancouver and saw the lawyer working on Rob’s estate and the bank who are dragging their heels and not transferring money from Rob’s retirement fund to me because of my name. I signed Barbara Yvonne Young and they asked me to change it to Barbara Y Young and still they stumbled. Finally a few weeks ago, they asked me to take out the Y… and still they haven't transferred the funds. This is my life right now - erasing Rob’s name from all our joint possessions. How I hate it. 

I didn’t expect to be in such pain over the grouchy old man with whom I’ve lived with since I was 19 years old. I didn’t expect the hell I’d experience in a Casablanca hospital and then in Albi. Brendan flew over and then Michael and finally Gilly so I was never alone. We were with Rob every day, holding his hands, exercising his arms and legs, hoping for a miracle. We didn’t get one. In the end, he died alone at 10:30 at night. I sent a message to the hospital doctor last week, asking how he died. He responded almost immediately: 

"I don't have precise information about his last hours but on the last nurse's visit, he was breathing the same way as in the afternoon (without warning signs). His death was very sudden, maybe by the way of a cardiac trouble or a pulmonary embolism but we can't be sure. The night nurse found him already dead. I'm pretty sure he didn't suffer at least."

Gill and I heard that he had died the next morning. We dressed quickly and went to the hospital. I went in first and touched his cold body - I was shocked at how icy cold it was in the warm room.  I kissed his cheek. I talked a little and said good-bye. My only thought was that Rob wasn’t there. 

On a happier note, I am flying to San Francisco and then catching a shuttle to Carmel on the first of December for a month to be with Gill and family. Brendan with his family will join us on December 22nd. I might go to Mexico in February for a birthday party for the friend whom I’ve known the longest and then I must spend a little time with my family in Ontario. I can only plan one trip at a time as my thoughts are foggy and come out in bursts, staccato, and not always coherently. I am scared, sometimes, that I’ve lost my ability to think clearly, to write, to live my final act with grace. In the lawyer’s office, she asked me what I was going to do now and, from somewhere deep inside me, I said “I want to do something extraordinary”. I have no idea what that is.

Thursday, September 14, 2023

Tragic Head

I have washed two jackets of Rob’s and the murdering shoes he wore when he fell. I’m putting them in the charity bin. (I am moving very slowly even though I feel the need to get everything in order.) I have also decided to do the last Paris market at the end of the month but with a much reduced load. I am taking along a younger friend. She will hopefully stop me from doing something stupid. I am doing stupid things all the time and, according to Didion,  that’s normal during this year of magical thinking. Still I don’t like it. 

Oh a happier note, for the past few weeks I’ve been doing Tai Chi on the Esplanade at 7:30 every morning. This is a discipline or rather martial art that I’ve always wanted to learn. Some kindly spirit must have decided that I've suffered enough and so sent an American artist teaching at a school in the village who is also an advanced student of Tai Chi. He kindly allowed me to join a number of his art students. The damn shingles refuse to vacate my head so I am struggling to keep up and balance on one leg but still I persevere. At the very least, it gets me up and dressed in the morning. (The art teacher is taking a week off between classes and so I am trying to memorize the moves with the help of a YouTube video.)

Everyone seems to be dying or complaining about the ailments of old age. How I hate it but am I any better? I went for a picnic and to an art gallery last Sunday with Susan (who just turned 95) and David (13 years younger) and the picnic in the rose garden was pleasant enough but after, wandering through the halls and rooms of the old abby (Beaulieu-en-Rouergue), the only painting I noticed was one nicknamed by the artist’s wife “Tragic Head”, a watercolour executed with long quick brushstrokes with, what appears to me, hollow eye sockets and a dissolving mouth. Death, fucking death, takes whoever it damn well pleases.

Sunday, September 03, 2023

Literally Crazy

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death.... We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes.” ― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

I have had a couple of bad days. No, I have had a lot of bad days. I cannot write. I cannot sort myself out. Today, Fauci caught a little bird and put her under the dining room table. At first, I thought the bird was dead and then it flew to the window and Fauci flew after it. I screamed at the damn cat to leave the bird alone. I ran to the window and opened it and the little bird flew away. A sigh of relief. I usually yell for Rob to come to the rescue but he is not at home. If he were, he'd be proud of me. 

Monday, August 21, 2023

"Brief Glimpses of Beauty"

Brendan gave me the article below to read when we were in Casablanca. At first I found it annoying because of the constant repetition and then I fell into it and began to like it as it forced me to slow down and absorb the writer's "masterpiece of nothing". And yet this "nothing" essay allows me to catch "brief glimpses of beauty" in the horrible images that plaque me from the past few months. For instance, I untied Rob's left wrist, tied so tightly it left red welts, and he slowly raised his arm to his forehead, palm upward - a true Rob gesture - his release was a glimpse of beauty. And when I untied his other arm and he raised it and placed his hand over his heart  - another Rob gesture - especially when his fingers started moving to the beat of the music that Brendan or Michael or I played near his ear. - that was another brief but exquisite glimpse of beauty. 

I have been alone in our house for a week. I listen for Rob to awake in the morning. My head pounds. (The shingles are still playing havoc with the nerve endings in my head.) I know he is not coming back but I cannot touch his stuff. His shoes still sit by the door. His clothes sit on shelves and hang in his closet. All his electronic gear rests in his office. His ashes sit on my bookshelf in my office. 

As I was moving ahead... (magazine article by Jonas Mekas)

If this link doesn't work, please copy and paste: http://www.ocec.eu/cinemacomparativecinema/pdf/ccc03/ccc03_documentos_mekas_eng.pdf