Journal: 04/16/06

It’s Easter Sunday today, and ten days down the road now since Joann has died and I need to take a snapshot of where I’m at, or not. It’s been a rough time for me and I’m sure the worst hasn’t even stuck its snotty nose over the horizon yet. On the inside of the "grief container" as I am though, I don’t have a yardstick to compare things with, so I’ll just have to keep on writing and working things out. At the end of this post is a "Plea for Money," with all the appropriate reasons. I’m really, really broke.

Wellness Check

At the moment though, I appear to be functioning in real-time, getting up in the morning and going to work, coming home at night and eating or playing cards with Bill. Last night I even managed to get out a 2200-word post on the eight-day hole in this blog. Nevertheless, I seem to have been "automatized," merely going through the motions day to day. The good thing is that I’m getting the beer back under control.

Well into detoxing, my body is starting to respond to food. During the time Joann was in Home Hospice, I didn’t eat regularly, if at all, and paid the price for it. While I lost some weight in that two-month period, much of my weight was maintained by the calories in cheap beer.

I’ve also noticed that, while I’m going to work for limited periods now (seven hours today, up from four hours a day for the last couple of days), I haven’t done anymore "housecleaning" of Joann’s things. Maybe I can only do a couple things a day right now? That has the ring of truth to it.

One Big Gaping Hole

I knew before how much I thought Joann was a part of my life. I know differently now—she was more in my life than I was, almost. She was there when I got up in the morning, there when I came home at night. She made the morning coffee and got up at 6:00 AM to get our morning paper. She was the third hand at the card table when Joann, Bill and I played gin rummy. It was her things from her storage locker that helped make Snug Harbor a home. She made the apartment, old and new, a home working with what she had and a good sense of family. Her decorations graced three years of Christmas trees, and her homemade oatmeal cookies were the gifts we gave the motel maids and our friends at Christmastime. She was the last person I saw at night when I went to bed and the first one I saw in the morning.

Now, there is this big gaping hole in my life. My life-companion, the one whom I could always talk to, share dreams with, support when she was having a bad day, as she would for me, is irretrievably gone, never to grace my life again in any other form than a sweet memory. There is no one else in my life that is all those things Joann was to me, all at one time, and there probably never will be. It’s the learning to live with that wound, never to completely heal.

Today is Easter and this is the first holiday Joann has missed, and been missed. No egg coloring, as she loved to do, no marshmallow chicks and bunnies, no Easter ham from Bill and no Easter cards swapped between the three of us. Only work to keep me distracted and an empty apartment at the end of the day.

I don’t know how much further I want to go with this, so I think I’ll stop here for this entry and continue later on this subject. I expect I will be revisiting it a lot in the next few months.

Plea for Money

Thankfully, the VNA, via Medicare and Medi-Cal, supplied everything I needed to take care of Joann through the two months of her home hospice. It’s the quitting of my job for a month and the mortuary fees that are killing me. I work in exchange for rent and no money changes hands. Joann and I lived off her monthly Social Security check, hand-to-mouth, and were always short a week before the end of the month. We did not have any savings, as we lived way below the poverty line. At the moment, I am $1000.00 in the hole with no hope of paying off the debts. So, this is a beg for donations, and as soon as possible, please. The mortuary isn’t going to wait and I really want her ashes back. Donate $50.00 or more and Bill Walker will contact you to select a piece of his art. All donations will be posted on this blog, unless the donor wishes to remain anonymous. Thank you. Use the PayPal button at the bottom.

Say an Easter prayer for Joann.