Journal: 04/19/06

This morning I woke up a widower. It feels like a new suit, with a stiff shirt collar and starched underwear. It’s uncomfortable, but I know that with wearing, the clothes will break themselves in. Other than that, just another normal day today. I’ve quit anticipating some intense emotional reaction on my part to Joann’s death, I’m spending too much of myself looking over my shoulder for the boogey-man to sneak up. There are two upcoming events where I might get emotional, my first day off next Monday and the return of Joann’s ashes after I finish paying the bill. I keep telling myself that my relatively low-key reaction so far is the result of Joann’s three-year progressive illness and that after such a long ordeal you get numb, but the upcoming opportunities to come apart will tell the story.

One True Love

I believe that in everyone’s life, there is that one true love, a life-love if you will (a term coined by my friend Rose), of which there will be no other. Rose and I were talking about this yesterday and she told me that my actions throughout my time with Joann and her illness, the way I performed home hospice, confirmed in her mind that Joann was my true life-love. I feel the same way, Joann radically changed my life and who I am during the three years we had together, and for that I will always love her completely. I can’t imagine any future relationship that I would want to be involved in with a person (cats are just fine). Joann and I were so simpatico that anyone else in my life would simply be a pale shadow of her, even as a memory.

Maybe its because this is Day 13 since Joann passed, but I knew long ago that I would never have another relationship like the one I had with Joann, nor do I crave or want one. The gift Joann taught me was how to be responsible for myself, not make rash decisions and above all, go with my soul. Where I had trouble living alone before, when in the past I couldn’t deal with my depression or the booze, Joann gave me some piece of her that totally changed all that. I’m not afraid to go on without her; I know she will always be with me, an inseparable part of me.

Cleaning Out My Cell Phone

If you’re like me, who keeps every, and I mean every receipt from every store or web purchase for years, then you must know what my cell phone is like. Cluttered with the numbers of dead people, deceased jobs and long dissolved businesses, it looked to be a daunting, emotional task to clean out my cell phone address book. For years, I never had a really good reason to clean it out, numbers kept accumulating as I sailed through life and I never thought to clean out numbers no longer valid. After all, I have space for hundreds of them, and I’m not that prolific about my contacts.

Once I started though, the task was relatively straightforward, if not eerie. I just didn’t dwell on it when it came to the names of dead people such as my great friend John Woodruff (died July 10, 2005), Joann’s mother Mildred (died January 11, 2006) and Joann herself (died April 6, 2006). Possibly, it didn’t affect me much to remove her name from the address book because I shut down her phone yesterday.

The phone’s out of the way, I wonder how long it will take me to clean out the address book on my laptop.