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An end to this blog

I write here now.

It is all about grief and not fun to read.  I'll get back to other blogging if I feel ever can.

EDIT Jan26 I have started another one here. Hardly any soggy bits at all so far and it intends to focus on my life now that I'm moving to an island thousand of kilometres away from it all.

Sorry

It appears that its too hard to write about right now. It's also deeply, deeply personal.

Every time I think it has got as bad as it can get, I am proved wrong.

I have a rendezvous with death

My Ron, light of my life. It won't be that bad, this I promise you. Hold my hand and we're halfway there.

Alan Seeger. 1888–1916

121. "I Have a Rendezvous with Death"

I HAVE a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death	5
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.	10
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deep	15
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death	20
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

He's a little better, thank you for asking.

He's come out of his diabetic coma that he's been in for three weeks. This period of stress has nearly killed me, not knowing on the other side of the world.

He's not going to get better.

I am going back to LA, to be with him. I don't care what it costs. After all, what good is money if its not used to get you the things you want? The thing I want is Ron and I want it now.

I knew he would go quickly but this fast?

Who am I kidding?

I don't feel better at all, try as I might to convince others and ,by extrapolation, myself.

Somebody linked to this blog (always a surprise)

There's a slow unfurling

A peaceful unravelling at its own pace, its own time. Slowly floating out into that vast unknown sea, gently rippling.

And with each slow breath he's taking himself a little further away from me.

Rage against the futility of it all is gone now; it has no place in the uncharted area we now find ourselves. I love him and he loves me. There is a great and reassuring truth in this simplicity. Mine, mine and I am his. I cry less because there is less to cry about. It's the way it has to be,that's all.

My daughters talk of him as their stepdad. I refer to him as my husband. We could not be more firmly melded together, if a thousand minsters have said the words. He loves my girls so much and they love him right back. Don't say it isn't possible in such a short time. Sometimes the smallest truths are the most fundamental ones.

He loves me so and when he cries its mostly not for what he's missing out on, but for what I am, for the loss that I will have to bear.

And I love him. Those little words: so small and insignificent. H eknows; we know.

Oh dear.

I found this

Beautiful, isn't it?

3 in the morning

There's nobody around. I feel like I'm the last person on the planet.

So lonely sitting here, wrapped in my grief, just wanting to talk to someone. Anyone.

"My candle burns at both ends

it will not last the night.

But, ah! my foes, and oh, my friends

it gives a lovely light""

Edna St Vinvent Millay

He can leave me secure in the knowledge that he's given me such great gifts.

Living, loving, learning.

That I will be able to take care of myself.

And that I will think of him and love him and keep him close in my heart forever.

I've had a good day today

Well, as good as it gets when your fiance is dying on the other side of the world and can't do a damn thing about it. I've kept myself busy (admittedly a lot of that busie-ness was taken up with vomiting from the tail end of this migraine) and spent four hours wrapping Christmas presents. Its the only thing that seems to make me happy right now; the buying of things for others. I think its probably the start of a mild maniac episode but I'm going with it.

I've arranged to go on a little road trip with the girls, down south; we'll stay with my friends Zak and Lele. I've organised a Christmas bake-a-thon with an old friend, I've called my daughters, and even was up to taking to my friend.

On the down side, I called my mother twice, just because I needed to cry and to talk. It's funny but for years whenever I heard the phrase "call me anytime  to talk, if you need to" I used to think it was just  a platitude' that people said it because they didn't know what else to say and that you certainly shouldn't take them up on it. I never did.

This is different. I'm reaching out to anybody, and everybody, I can. I'm getting my strength from others when I can't find it within myself. If you offer help, I'm going to take you up on it. This is such a lonely time for me. I feel so isolated and helpless, watching my man slip away from me. Already I can't even recognise the person I used to love so much. The love is still there, the love will always still be there but the dialogue is one way now and I'm pouring as much out there as I can and for the first time ever in our relationship, its not a fair split. I'm lighting the way for him, standing back by illuminating the path.

He made me glow. A radiance that no-one has ever managed to draw out of me before. He used to say that my light shone half a world away and drew him to me. He used to say that I was beautiful, lit up from inside. He was the one that lit that flame, turned into a tangible glow, an aura of happiness and vitality that other people were drawn to.

He made me strong, confident and happy. Oh, so happy.

Even now there is happiness still. I can feel this whole dreadful time all around me and yet there is, for me, my world made made brighter simply because he is still in it. It will still be the better for having had him in it once he's gone.

My light's going to dim when he goes. I'll need help to keep it flickering and alive. Please help me do that, let me know that you are out there and that you care. That's really all you need to do. It doesn't sound like much, but it's everything to me.

I really don't know what to call this entry. Perhaps "Just one of the many reasons I was SO right to leave my husband".

His insensitivity. I've always tried to be as considerate and careful of his feelings as I can, bearing in mind I was the one that left him. Also, because I genuinely  cared  for him. I thought he was  a good father, a decent person and somebody worth having around as a friend. I've gone out of my way financially, emotionally and literally to put  his needs ahead of mind.

But things have changed. I don't think I can honestly say that any of those four things are applicable any more. Even cutting him all the slack in the world, and accepting that my behaviour changed him, I'm not willing to accept all the blame for our maraige failing. I left him; he pushed me away. We were married for sixteen years and he told me he loved me three times in that period. He didn't like to share a bed with me, he preferred to go out with the 'boys' boozing than be with me, he saw me as a fixture. Me? I just wanted him to love me, like I loved him. He never did

He's turned into a terrible tightwad who begrudges any money he spends on his daughters. He resents me for not earning enough and not giving him more money (I already give him way more than legally I am required to). His daughters see it, too. I don't denigrate him in front of them (not the other way round, though: my eldest showed me an email in which he basically said to her that he was too broke to pay for something and that I should pay for it and that I should go out a get a job. Yes, he knows Ron  is dying and that I have a job lined up after that but that appears to not be soon enough.)

The girls see the disparity and the different lives and they make up their own mind. I sold my engagement ring to give him $200, because I just wanted him to leave them alone, not be used as instruments of spite against me. I was surprised to feel a wrench even now. It meant so much to me when he bought it: we were both students and he lived on rice and potatoes for three weeks until he'd paid it off. I never forgot that.

I was so angry with the whole situation that I tried to avoid  him when he came to pick up the girls at the end of their six week stint with me. He came and found me in the bedroom and almost the first words out of his mouth were "is Ron dead yet?).

I can't believe that somebody could be as crass and tactless and rude and offensive as to say exactly that. I think I gasped. I don't know what I said in reply. I felt like I'd been stabbed.

I'm done with him. Totally done. He's not a person I would even want as a friend any more. He must act a little differently around his current girlfriend or else why should she be with him? I think they've broken up about five times now but it never sticks. I always vowed if I broke up a relationship I would never, ever do the rebound thing so I'd have to make sure that I really meant ti and that it was for keeps.

Oh yes, now it's for keeps.

Redecoration

If I'm doing any sprucing up of the place, which I am, I've decided that the bathroom has to be done first.  These days it appears that the nearly constant migraine I'm suffering from means that I'm spending a hell of a lot of time in there either waiting to be sick, actually being sick and recovering from being sick. I keep a clean toilet  but still the bottom of the bowl is rather plain. i was thinking of going for an aquarium theme: little fishes, octopi amd so forth in nice blues and greens and relaxed colours. Might make me feel better when i await in the inevitable. I had that idea just now. God, I feel really washed out today. I've thrown up 16 (I think) times since 8 pm last night and it's no fun. How do anorexics and bulimiacs manage it? Maybe you just get used to.

I can honestly say that my migraines have got worse as I've got older and much more frequent since the whole stressful situation I find myself in. I never used to be sick this much, maybe only once per episode, if that. There was one stage where I was getting them a couple of times a week and a neurologist put me onto betablockers for six months which brought the frequency way back down unti now, really. I might have to do that again. trouble is, the beta blockers lower your blood presure and mine is low anyway so it had the unfortunate side effect of me sometimes passing out for apparently no reason when I stood up too fast or did things too quickly. But it can't go on like this.

It's decided then. I'm going to paint my toilet and gt medicated. A lot of druggies will turn up at the ER with migraines because they are very hard to disprove and for that reason it is unlikely that any doctor will give you opiates for it, whereas years ago they would. I can remember cursing the skanky greedy little junkies for making genuine sufferers like myself, well suffer, for longer than they needed to with lesser strength medication. Morphine and pethidine were great for knocking it out but these days they make me sick as well so I have to have an anit-emetic with them. Speaking of which,  wait one...

Okay. Back. Ugghhh.

Oh, toilets. As part of his job Ron worked for a plumbing wholesale business and used to regale me with great stories about the many and varied types of toilets they had for sale.

I give you this crass but fascinating conversation from a while ago:

                 Ron: i had had a call earlier in the week from a man with a thick asian accent

11 minutes

Oh, lovely

I've been getting more and more migraines lately, entirely attributal to stress, I think. Usually I try to utilise an Imigran nasal spray which really does help if you get it early enough, but I've run out and they cost $35 each. I haven't got that sort of money.

So instead I try extra strength panadol and sometimes it takes the edge off and sometimes it doesn't. Usually, the migraine will linger for three or four days, recede for a day and come back fiercer than ever.

Which is why I am lying in the bathroom, naked on the floor, my head resting a on a pillow and my body curled around the porcelin pedestal. Every 15 mins or so I raise my head to turn my stomach lining inside out. Doesn't matter a damn that there has been nothing in there for hours. God I feel so ill.

The whole thing is really taking a toll on my body.

Improving my health

One of the things I did when Ron and I parted was to give up alcohol. I've always enjoyed a drink and very rarely drank too excessively. I certainly never drank at all while I was working. My tours were always alcohol free for me, whilst I shovelled anything fermented down the throats of my passengers to convince them that they were having a good time. That is, when I was driving and commentating.

Back in my early twenties, working in Eastern Europe, the coach had a driver  which meant that yours truly, the courier, had an obligation to interact with the 18 -35 years old who were our passengers, and who were at the prime time of life for drinking themselves messily unconscious during trips. I always felt a little bit sorry for the people who chose our cheaper (relatively) company to travel with to see the amazing history and delve into the cultures of other countries. Out of a busload of around 58 you might get five or six culture vultures and the rest were just happy to sample the national drink of whatever particular country we were passing through and let a little peripheral historical and contempory fact slip in along the way.

There were always a few barbed comments after the trip, via the trip report sealed envelopes we had to give up at the end of the tour - I remember one bitter one stating 'I don't know why I didn't  pick up a London cab and drive round the ring round for 28 days drinking champagne instead'. I was an organised girl, though, and had the forsighte to swipe a whole box of trip reports right at the start of the season: the company didn't care if the forms were filled out or not, just that a sealed envelope was returned. On the last day of the trip I would pick a couple, who I thought would give me really bad negative reputation, and open their envelopes in the ladies' loo on the trip back to Dover, substituting sealed empty envelopes instead.

I drank a LOT on those trips. I've drunk a lot since. But I've never been a fan of alcohol for its taste alone. I used to drink because of the way it made me feel. All those ads that would say 'just drink one or two' never made me see why - I was after the effect, not the taste, and one or two wouldn't cut it so might as well not bother.

I stopped drinking altogether when Ron got so sick. I didn't want to cloud any aspect of our interaction. I'm still not drinking; probably the longest period since I was a college student.

Alas, having given up alcohol I took up eating instead. I look a bit like this now:

In fact that probably is me, taaking a lurking paparazzi. Hmmm, I thought that cutting the booze out would be a positive health move.

I write to Ron every day. He'll probably never get to read it but its the only way I can feel that I'm in ocntact ith him. I ask his friend to read it out to him. I hope he does.

"It’s heading onto summer here in Western Australia, and after housesitting for six weeks at my mama’s I am now back down in Wembley. All the Jacaranda trees are a profusion of purple and the orange of the Native Christmas Tree contrasts beautifully. I know how much you would love it if you were here and I am so glad that you love my home town as much as I do.

I’ve just been at my brother Charles and his wife Keva’s place. I wanted to borrow some sleeping tablets because I don’t sleep, darling. I sort of think that I need to be awake for you, even if we are not in the same country. My whole self sort of yearns towards you.  I actually just called them up and then I started to cry over the phone so they came and got me and took me back to their place to have a cup of tea.

We talked about you and they both said how they were so sorry that you didn’t get to be a part of our family because they liked you so much and felt that you would just meld so well in the slightly eccentric, always amusing and heartfelt unit that is our family, disjointed though it may seem. And you would have fitted in. My family seem to value me for some weird reason and they wanted you for me, because they felt that I deserved something good after the thing that I married.

Its what I do, darling. I cry unexpectedly over nothing (well, not nothing – its such a huge thing, the loss of you; what I meant is that I just cry with no apparent triggers) and this is one reason why I can’t work just yet. I don’t have the closure yet to move on with. I will though; this I promise you. I’m going to live for you, see the places I would have taken you and you will see it too, through me.

I’ve been collecting little stocking treats for the girls. I also had a whole lot for you.  I want to write to you every day darling. I love you so much. I hope somebody reads this to you and that you are aware enough to understand.

I’m not crying for me darling, although my grief  seems overwhelming at times. I am crying for what we’ve missed together. But what you’ve given me is the gift of knowing that our love has made the last few years the happiest of your life, and of mine."

True. Oh, so true.

I have a friend

She's been a friend since my college days and afterwards, although life did gradually separate us for a bit. But she's still the person I wanted to be friends with in the first place and she's changed very little. She's happier; a loving mother and wife.  But the base essence of her hasn't changed.

She's still the ardent dressmaker who made me a gorgeous black taffeta bow for my hair when I wore my grandmother's black taffeta gown to a university ball that I gatecrashed. (yes, its easy to do that. Just drink lots of gin beforehand, turn up at 11 pm, cigarette in hand and mingle with the smokers outside. Discard cigarette noticeably and walk into ballroom. Saving: $120.00.) Actually, the bow was the longest lasting shaped bit of taffeta that night - the gown was so old that the stitching gave way while dancing and I had to use the bow as a sort of sarong tie which I hooked the rest of the gown into. )

She's the photographer who took such gorgeous pictures of my babies, of my wedding. The marriage was shit but the photos were excellent.

She writes on a blog of her own and her writing is truly excellent; compassionate and caring and full of life: just like her.

Chance reunited us and our busy lives have meant that we have largely stayed in touch via the blog medium and sometimes emails.

I do try occasionally to call her but its often that the impulse doesn 't carry through to the action. I don't call anybody at the moment. My girls call me, other members of the family call me but quite often I won't answer at all. My mother describes my voice as 'wooden' and I know what she means.

I only communicate through writing at the moment. It gives me that distance that I need. I can't seem to deal with human emotion right now. I can't talk to Ron and I don't want to talk to anybody who isn't him.

So, my dear friend, I'm sorry; I really am. One day maybe I'll be able to be an equal sharer in the friendship we both want . That means supporting each other in thinjgs. You do for it me but I'm incapable of doing it for you right now.  I will be better some time and able to support you in your turn if it comes to that.

God, why does this all happen around Christmas? It will take a long time before I see Christmas as a happy time again.

Back at Ghetto Central

On my own, with my girls having gone back to SpouseHole and nobody being very pleased with this arrangement. Me because I  miss them, them because they prefer living with me, him because it will cost  him money.

Actually, I'm not totally on my own. I have cheap ass vodka here and a nice sedative to mix it with. Don't worry, it's not a suicide gesture; just a wanting to sleep gesture. One pill and  a little vodka  really works in a way that the individual ingredients don't.

I prefer being asleep. My life is so sad right now.