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Slept 10 hours last night—and this is good because I feel human again today but also bad because when I’m sleep-deprived, I can focus on how awful it feels to be sleep-deprived, but when I’m not sleep-deprived, I must focus on my problems—
—not the least of which is a sense of total exasperation with myself: How can I possibly say I have problems?
Those 800,000 Gazans fleeing from the IDF’s relentless bombing missions! They have problems!
###
You might argue that my biggest problem is figuring out where I’m gonna live.
But to me, my biggest problem is: Who is gonna be there to meet me when I finally wriggle out the other side of that tunnel of white pulsating light after that truck runs me over, or the earth opens up & swallows me, or my heart finally gives out?
Nobody in my family ever liked me at all except for my kids (whom I hope will survive me.)
Friends? Well, I suppose there’s Mark—if he’s forgiven me for mostly ignoring him while he was up there in Portland dying.
Maybe Tom Mandel—who always loved me quite protectively to the extent of attempting to cast a kind of enchanted shield over me for at least a year or so after he died. I felt that shield.
Certainly not Ben, who I now think actively hated me.
No, I suspect the welcoming committee will mainly be made up of my companion animals over the years: Little grey Sybyl, dapper orange Fritz, my doofusy, gentlemanly Rutger. The Meezer! Possibly with a dead squirrel in her mouth. She’ll be able to talk: Even in heaven, catfood cans must be opened, she’ll scold. And you must keep up your strength!
And, of course, my beloved Milo.
###
Loraine & I had a good time at the Northern Dutchess Botanical Garden—which is not actually a botanical garden but a very large plant nursery:
Those black petunias are really quite something:
I bought $20 worth of plants even though I will almost certainly have to abandon my garden when I move, so this was a pointless expenditure indeed.
I have a feeling that Loraine & I might have developed a close friendship had we met a few years ago. She has a pleasant astringent quality and is remarkably grounded and sane—I say “remarkably” because Loraine’s mother killed herself when Loraine was 12, and yet Loraine shows no signs of overt or suppressed trauma.
She was raised by a kindly but no-nonsense Italian grandmother, which is a large part of her inherent saneness.
“Some children of suicides blame themselves,” I remarked over lunch.
Loraine didn’t immediately push the notion aside with a snort—which, to me, might have demonstrated there was some truth to the notion. Instead, she considered it thoughtfully for a few seconds.
“No,” she said. “I never felt like that.”
I’ve met Loraine’s younger sister Jane, a nervous, high-strung woman.
I’d be willing to bet Jane has felt like that.
—not the least of which is a sense of total exasperation with myself: How can I possibly say I have problems?
Those 800,000 Gazans fleeing from the IDF’s relentless bombing missions! They have problems!
###
You might argue that my biggest problem is figuring out where I’m gonna live.
But to me, my biggest problem is: Who is gonna be there to meet me when I finally wriggle out the other side of that tunnel of white pulsating light after that truck runs me over, or the earth opens up & swallows me, or my heart finally gives out?
Nobody in my family ever liked me at all except for my kids (whom I hope will survive me.)
Friends? Well, I suppose there’s Mark—if he’s forgiven me for mostly ignoring him while he was up there in Portland dying.
Maybe Tom Mandel—who always loved me quite protectively to the extent of attempting to cast a kind of enchanted shield over me for at least a year or so after he died. I felt that shield.
Certainly not Ben, who I now think actively hated me.
No, I suspect the welcoming committee will mainly be made up of my companion animals over the years: Little grey Sybyl, dapper orange Fritz, my doofusy, gentlemanly Rutger. The Meezer! Possibly with a dead squirrel in her mouth. She’ll be able to talk: Even in heaven, catfood cans must be opened, she’ll scold. And you must keep up your strength!
And, of course, my beloved Milo.
###
Loraine & I had a good time at the Northern Dutchess Botanical Garden—which is not actually a botanical garden but a very large plant nursery:
Those black petunias are really quite something:
I bought $20 worth of plants even though I will almost certainly have to abandon my garden when I move, so this was a pointless expenditure indeed.
I have a feeling that Loraine & I might have developed a close friendship had we met a few years ago. She has a pleasant astringent quality and is remarkably grounded and sane—I say “remarkably” because Loraine’s mother killed herself when Loraine was 12, and yet Loraine shows no signs of overt or suppressed trauma.
She was raised by a kindly but no-nonsense Italian grandmother, which is a large part of her inherent saneness.
“Some children of suicides blame themselves,” I remarked over lunch.
Loraine didn’t immediately push the notion aside with a snort—which, to me, might have demonstrated there was some truth to the notion. Instead, she considered it thoughtfully for a few seconds.
“No,” she said. “I never felt like that.”
I’ve met Loraine’s younger sister Jane, a nervous, high-strung woman.
I’d be willing to bet Jane has felt like that.
