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AND CONTINUES Dec 17-Jan 3

17 December 2007, 00:00

I’m trying to take my last bereavement day today. I told everyone I’d be back at work, but I’m so exhausted I can’t really see straight. I just want a day where there is nothing expected of me. I’m just physically and emotionally exhausted and don’t really have the strength to deal with things. I don’t know what makes me think tomorrow will be any better, but maybe it will.

It’s the end of the main nightmare, and the start of a lot of little ones. Shells, bills, clean up, Minnesota, etc. For some reason, people just won’t get to the fucking point on stuff. They feel they need to couch things in a BUNCH of exposition, and don’t understand, especially on the shell things I have to take care of, that I don’t know what to do, and if you just tell me what to do, I’ll do it.

I’ll getting irritable. I wonder if that’s a good or bad sign. I might just find the strength to get up and knock some shit out of some people.

I never thought at 39 I’d feel so tired and defeated.

Life

So, I’m beginning to go through Kenny’s stuff, his email, his files, his junk. It makes me cry but, I am realizing that Ken liked his life, and love me and the dogs. I sort of knew this. You never really KNOW these things but I was hoping.

He had many online friends that he wrote almost everyday. And he would talk about me. And the dogs. And the house. And it was joyous and full of caring and love. I had run across the thermostat he bought for the house. Have I told this story yet? I might have. It’s a little thing, a new thermostat. But he bought it for the house. He bought it because he was invested in our life together. He bought it because he cared. And he bought it because he loved me.

It’s a little thing. But I remember so many little things now. I loved him with vigor and passion, sometimes a little dormant – well, after 11 years, things grow quiet and comfortable. I have never been comfortable with that. I have always stuck to the familiar patterns – the insane and the volatile. But he made me feel safe and loved and quieted my soul. He brought out the best in me, and made me a far better person than I could have ever been had I’d been left to my own devices.

I love you kenny. And I know you loved us and your life with us.
Cleaning

I’m having bad anxiety pangs. It’s a tightening of the chest, and my heart just pounds. sometimes its comes in wave after wave.

I cleaned out a bit of his computer/shell room so that there is at least a clean path through some of it.. I was thinking about how much alike I’m discovering we both were. And I think I understand why he did a lot of the things he did.

Yesterday, at the service, Paul (the kenny mentor dude) gave his eulogy. He talked about Kenny and his life and what he was about. But he also talked about how he cut people out of his life and didn’t seem to live up to expectations or potential. How when he perceived some thing was hard or he had obstacles, he took another path, and how probably because of something he did wrong to Paul is why he didn’t connect with Paul after he came back. Some of the eulogy was quite nice, some was quite truthful, but then there was a portion that was a bit rude and almost spiteful. My feeling was that I didn’t like what he said about Ken, and made him sound like a flake and degraded his memory a bit. After talking to some of those who attended, they thought some of the sentiments were “rude and distasteful” but were probably borne out of old wounds, and “residual hurt feelings or whatever but that was not the time or place”. It made me angry at the time. And, yes it makes me a bit angry thinking about it now, but there was a lot of history there and a lot of mistakes made on both sides of that relationship. Maybe it was his way of closure or mourning. I don’t know. Paul has a tendency to want to play the leader, the wise man, the dominant one. And Paul, I think has and will always assume that a lot of Ken’s distance came from Ken’s shame in some slight he might have done to Paul. I value Paul a great deal. I value his influence and his presence in Ken’s life and he has given Ken so much that it’s value cannot be measured. I am grateful that Ken had Paul in his life. But the time I have spent this week, with Paul talking about Ken and his life was very uncomfortable. There is a lot of feelings there. A lot of, what seems like to me, resentment and bitterness. He talks a lot about what he perceives were Ken’s shortcomings and faults. There was a lot of disappointment and judgement that I was surprised to hear.

And knowing Ken, he was the type to take that sort of thing to heart, and feel bad about himself if someone he respected ever dumped all that upon him. And it hurt me to know this. During the eulogy, my friends saw me just glare at Paul at times for what he was saying. No matter what feelings of this type you have, I think that the memorial was not the time or the place for it. It hurt me to the core. I know if Ken would have actually reconnected with Paul, and this had happened in my presence, I would have said something. That was one of the differences that I found between Ken and I. His gentle soul would never let him become angry and lash back at something like that, whereas I would have shot back, I would have said something – anything. I got to thinking, in addition to whatever guilt or shame Ken had that kept him away, maybe he didn’t want to be judged or feel the disappointment of Paul.

I could just be talking out my ass. I could have NO IDEA what there relationship was like. But I know Ken. He was more than the man Paul described at the eulogy. He was the man I counted on. He was my rock and he was strong. I’ve seen him struggle against things and try and fail, and keep on trying. He tried for me. I recognized the man that Paul described at the eulogy as Ken, but he was so much more than that, he grew as a man beyond the one in his speech. I hope that in the 11 years that he and I spent together, he gained strength from me, and gained the will to fight. Because I knew that my Ken was so much more than Paul’s Ken. I am so sorry that Paul did not know my Ken because he would have been so proud of him. This has been bothering me a bit and I just wanted to get it off my chest. I want to keep Ken in my life and in my heart for the rest of my days. I don’t know how to do this without these people he called family, and these people he valued as friends. But how do i show them my Ken? How can I spend time in remembering with them when it breaks my heart when I see the disappointment and hurt he has caused them? How do I share with them the joy and great love that MY Ken embodied?

I don’t know how to do this.

Still Lost

i’m thinking about the upcoming holiday. Not that I’m a religious person or really a sentimental or spiritual one. For the last 10 years, ken and I have been our own company. Our own best friends. We were all we needed. Cultivating close outside ties wasn’t a big priority, especially local ones.

Now, I am facing days without him. And I don’t know how to do this. Everyone has home and hearth. And you know what has happen to my home. It will be me and the dogs. I’m going to hug them close, and cry. For my love. For my lost home. For all the days to come.

I don’t really want to spend it with others, but I don’t want to spend it alone. I’m back to wanting to spend it with Kenny. And that’s not possible.

So I’m hugging the dogs. And all I want for christmas besides the thing I can’t have is some peace. Lost again in the world.

WORK

So today, I went back to work. It was probably the hardest thing I did since, oh, yesterday. It was hard. I faked like I was all right most of the day, and when I couldn’t do that anymore, I spent time in the bathroom crying.

My company gave me a memory box for kenny, and a crapload of cash for my future. I put his cards and his obituary in it, and the newspaper articles about him and a note i had found in his things – it was a cute little note he wrote to me “No dogs under the table.” And I had wrote “What Dogs?” and he wrote back “ANY dogs”.

I spent some time today telling a couple Kenny stories, like when we were first dating, we were hanging out at his favorite tavern, and I was quietly singing “son of a preacherman” by Dusty Springfield – its really one of the only songs I can sing quite well. I saw him go to the phone during the evening and make a call. When I got home that night, I found a message on my answering machine from Kenny. He had called me when I saw him go to the phone and left the message “I am looking at you right now and you are so beautiful.” This is what Kenny was to me. He was love. He was more than love, he was proof that I was worthy to be loved. And I can’t fathom that I have lost that.

There are lovely little stories that I’m starting to remember. And it makes the loss that much more great. He brought me roses in the evening, he brought me fruit in the mornings. He held me in his arms when I cried and he laughed with me and stood by my side always.

How do you deal with the loss of that?

He drove me nuts, and made me mad. He has made me feel the range of emotions from real anger to naughty passion. But I have never felt the lack of love. I was always safe with him. And I have often thought that he was too good for the likes of me, and that any day, he would realize this. But he was always there.

JOURNAL

And I got up again.

And I went to work.

I fought the urge to roll over and sleep. To pull Ken’s blanket around me and just go to sleep. Last night, I pulled out an old journal of his. One of his habits is to write. He used to write more than he did recently. Of late, he wrote prolifically to friends, and in between all the emails of snail talk and shell discussions, there were lovely letters he wrote telling of his life, the mundane stuff, home front news and flotsam of this sort. That, more than anything, showed me he was happy.

But when he was younger, and full of the angst and, lets face it, bullshit that a young man between 18 and 24 is, he tried to keep a journal. I had found it once while we were dating and would read out loud to him particularly embarrassing passages. We would laugh, and he subsequently, hid these away from me. I found it as I was cleaning out his stuff and paged through reading about a young man, with no job complaining his girlfriend has no time for him. He railed about how unfair the job market is and how he sits around and watches TV. And it went into how said girlfriend broke up with him… and as I turned the pages, I smiled and thought “what a tool, ken was.” Truthfully, Ken was a tool at one point. This took him off the perfect man pedestal I had him on and made him more human. I’m not sure what it did, but it made me less sad all day today. I was able to access memories easier and enjoy them. I even seemed to be a little lighter and happier today. Then I felt guilty that I wasn’t in agony any more. That I was a crying mess. I did occasionally have pangs and gripped my chest, but I made it through the day.

It’s at home, in the quiet that I feel it grip harder. And then I feel the hurt come again. Sometimes in waves, sometimes in strange burst where I sob and cry out and its gone as quick as it came.

I tried to work on his computer room again, going through his files. He saved EVERYTHING. Pictures, papers, everything. I found an old computer picture that we had done at the mall. OH MY GOD. That made me smile, but then made me cry. I worked on the room till my chest tightened and i couldn’t breathe.

I got an email that apparently the sister and Ken’s friend Lewis had talked and Lewis is coming down with a vehicle. Paul is suspicious and I became scared. I am scared that they will take ken’s stuff away. I am scared they will come and take away ken’s stuff from his home. I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t have any control over things. I’ve been told that I am within my rights to throw him out of my house, should I not feel right about things. I am scared, and maybe for naught because it might be nothing, but I am scared that I will be raped of ken’s only legacy to me. That the things he loved will be ripped from me and I won’t be able to do anything to stop it. And then I cried again.

I cry a lot. I miss him. But you knew that.

A STEP BACK

For the past week and half I’ve been letting things happen. And consequentially, I haven’t been liking the result. I’ve let estranged family members and friends do things. I’ve lost control and I really feel I have.

No more.

I’ve decided that, in terms of Kenny’s things, NOTHING that I don’t want to leave this house will leave this house. I’m taking back control of this situation. I am not going to let Kenny down.

I wasn’t just his “girlfriend” or his “lady” or even some chick he decided to shack up with. I was his home and his family. And I’m not going to let anything happen that I don’t want happen. This was our home, our stuff, and our life. It’s not going anyplace that I don’t want it to.

———

Lewis and Paul came over.

Lewis is an old tattooed man, sailor written all over him. Walks with a cane. I had said my peace and what I wanted to happen earlier with as much strength as I could gather. Today had been a bad day filled with bad moments. Spontaneous uncontrolled weeping at work. I couldn’t seem to reel it in. And I had to sign more papers at Ken’s work and return his work clothes. I have to sign more tomorrow.

Lewis explained that he would need to take the shells and inventory and catalog them. He said he could guarantee I could get 10k maybe more. Paul was trying to explain how this was the best option, and that shell dealers wouldn’t be a very good option. I had no feeling to guide me, and I had nothing to go by. I only knew that these two men had mentored Ken during most of his life and cared for him deeply. I asked Paul what he thought, and he thought this felt right, and to really make a decision like this, the only thing you could do was go with your heart and his heart told him that Lewis would do things right and do Ken right. I waited for something to tell me what to do. Nothing came. I didn’t know these people, I didn’t know anything. I knew these people were important to Ken, yet I didn’t trust some strange man I didn’t know. Plus, I was weary. I was tired, and even though Paul said it was totally up to me what happened here, I sort of gave up. It didn’t feel wrong, but it didn’t feel particularly right. I didn’t know what to do, so I agreed. I said I would go along with this until something didn’t feel right.

So I watched as box after box was carried out of kenny’s room. With every box, it felt like someone was excising Ken out of my life, cutting him out of my body. After a while I sat there silently weeping uncontrollably. Paul tried to reassure me that this may be my only best option and that he knew that Lewis and Ken were close, and there was a bond there, that he believed that Lewis would never wrong me. I couldn’t think of anything other than the wound in my heart that was slowly ripping open again.

At that moment, the shells were the least important thing in my mind. I just wanted ken back, I wanted the pain to stop, I wanted my life, such as it was, back. I couldn’t stop the hole in my soul from growing deeper. I couldn’t see straight and I couldn’t feel my body anymore.

As I stood there crying, I started making Lewis tear up. A hairy tattooed, gold earring wearing, really bad smelling old sailor man was wiping away tears as he wrote me a check for what I guess is a first installment of the money. Later, when he comes back through into town, I guess it would be June, he will take the last of kenny’s collection. The last big part of Ken will be gone, and I won’t know what to do with the rest of my life. Today, I imagined myself at the top of one of the downtown bridges. I closed my eyes and let myself fall. It was a feeling that didn’t make me feel any better. So I opened my eyes and cried in the bathroom at work.

It’s probably the right thing to have done, I don’t know. I just know that my coping skills are strained to the breaking point, if they haven’t just shattered already.

I don’t know if I did right. I just know it seemed as Kenny was being erased from my life and taken back to somewhere else. I haven’t felt this hurt since Sunday, when they told me Ken was gone. It felt like the big part I still had of him died.

COLD

I’m tired. I know I keep saying the same thing over and over again, but it just seems that life is just a looping tape of the same feelings and all the activity, all the things around me don’t seem to be clear – like one big fuzzy picture.

I have the whole week off next week, its a company thing. I’m desperately trying to find something on tv that is innocuous, that doesn’t have some deep christmas meaning or some message of love or shit like that. After Friday, I’m trying to work my way back to numb. I want to clean, I want to keep busy, but its gotten snowy and its gotten cold, and even in the best of times, the cold saps my life and my motivation right out of me. I’m not sure how much bills and stuff would be since Ken handled those bills, so I have the heat down to about 65? Something like that. I have to take Afga to surgery on Thursday. Dogs ate my only pair of boots. I guess I will have to get some new ones.

Shopping for me now is so hard. Its something me and Ken did, and enjoyed, almost like they were dates.So it is deathly hard to do it alone. Especially when there are millions and billions of people at the mall. I might have to start doing late nights/wee hours.

The sister hasn’t told me when the memorial in Minnesota is. Minnesota in the middle of freeking winter. Ken is laughing at the irony somewhere, knowing how much I hate families and cold.

Shirley, who I know loves me and thinks she doing the right thing, is pushing me to be strong, be happy, smile, be jolly. She isn’t just letting me feel bad, letting me work through this – I feel the pressure from her to stiff-upper-lip and move on. She’s talking about making bookshelves for Ken’s computer room and turning it in to a study when I’m just trying to deal with the fact Ken’s not in there anymore. Maybe the depth of my darkness scares her. It probably scares a lot of people. They want me to call or to be with people. To what? To cry and repeat the same stuff I’ve been saying for the last two weeks? So I can bring people down and make the miserable, thus just adding to my guilt? I love them all. I understand, but I think they think that I have ALL these people that care about me yada yada yada and I don’t have to be alone. They don’t understand that yes, I am alone. I have to learn to deal with life alone now. Because i can’t move in, I can’t wake them up at 3 in the morning and cry. I can’t really be not alone. Because, no matter what everybody says, and what everybody REALLY truly believe, they aren’t there for me all the time, as many times as I need.I am just a guest in everybody’s life. They can’t take the mantle of my life on as theirs. Because they have lives. Ones that are filled with joy and love and that haven’t halted because a large part of it has been severed off. The whole point of Ken having me and me having Ken was that we were there to make our lives each others. Ken could shoulder the depth of whatever pain I was in, I could try and help Ken wage the fight against life and obstacles.
It was nearly as close as you could have two lives merged, in tandem. This is what everybody’s marriage is, or what the union of two people are. The joining of two lives to where the worries about propriety and invasion and separation don’t exist.

It is almost unbearable that I had finally found the one person who didn’t mind being the other half of myself, and now I have lost it. I don’t know what I need or how to fix me. I’ve never lost half of myself before.

FLEETING THOUGHTS

You know what I’m discovering the biggest thing that Ken gave to me. A sense of safety and comfortableness. I was comfortable and safe in my home, even when I was by myself.

I don’t feel comfortable anymore. I am relegated to the bedroom, I’ve dragged everything in his small room because I feel better here. No where else in the house do I feel as good. I feel cold in the other parts. The house feels big.

Sigh.

I think we were finally at a place of security. All the ups and downs we’ve had about the relationship had been suffered through and worked out to a large extent. It wasn’t perfect, but I think the big hurdles that any couple would have faced had been conquered and all we really left were the tiny things that drive each other crazy. And I can’t say there wasn’t times that I hated things in my life or that I wish he would’ve have been more of this or that, but the love I had apparently was ingrained and solid. I think any brooding annoyance I had with him was very superficial, like all couples. I was a couple. I was truly half of a whole.

————————

It’s nighttime. And soon to be Christmas.

Watched on the news how two or three other people have lost loved ones. A Kansas HiPo officer, 48, died in a car accident. So did some other people. Two daughters died in a shooting.

Thought about Kenny. Didn’t cry. Maybe I’m all cried out for now. And if I don’t really try and think about, say, how we went house hunting last spring, or how he put in new door locks, or how he cuddle with the dogs as they slept, I don’t cry.

I’ve been thinking about when our relationship took the big dips, how we were doing bad a few times. I don’t know why. I wonder if we really fixed it or did was he just here because of habit. Then I think why am I wondering that. Because I know he loved me and he liked his life. I don’t know why these things are in my head. Am I trying to distance myself from things? Am I trying to lessen the relationship to lessen the impact of what I lost. Then I feel guilty. I know I miss him. That feeling has never left or lessened. I feel so alone. I feel so vulnerable. Confidence has ebbed away.

I’m watching the dog sleep with his head hanging off the bed, and his nose is running making a puddle in the carpet. The others are just hanging out. Staring at me, or trying to get comfortable. They are showing how fucking marshmellow peeps are made on TV. I wonder if I want a peep. I’m just thinking of stupid shit. And I wonder why I’m not crying anymore. And if I will just start again.

Before Ken, being alone wasn’t that big of a deal. I even enjoyed it… I think. I don’t really remember. Life before Ken is fuzzy. I do remember somethings, but nothing of any real consequence.

I think about the dogs now. I had always assumed, I don’t know why, that I would die first – probably in some big accident or something big and heavy landing on me – and I’ve always made Ken promise to take care of the dogs. He always promised he would.

He’s not here now, so what happens to my family if I should not be here anymore. I have no one to care for them. No one who loves them as I do. Maybe the vet will take one? But what about poor Jacob. We were his last hope for a home. He’s gotten so much better, so maybe he can find a home too. I don’t want to leave my family. I didn’t want my little family to come to harm. Now I know I can’t protect them, now I know that they are vulnerable too. Fate took Ken, fate could take me too.

This is the sort of thing I’m thinking about. This holiday season.

CHRISTMAS EVE
It’s christmas eve.

Usually it was never a big deal around our house. We both weren’t holiday people, nor were we religious. We bought presents for each other, and just spent the holidays BEING with each other – sometimes maybe we would do something special, sometimes we wouldn’t.

It’s christmas eve. I’m alone here with the dogs. I spent the day rearrange furniture. To find something that was comfortable. I found a framed picture in the garage. It was of two wolves with the caption “Two against the wilderness” And I felt like crying. For the last couple of days, I haven’t felt like crying – I wondered why I wasn’t. I worried that I wasn’t. The mail came, and I got a bill for the ambulance from that night, and I broke out in a deep sob. I didn’t even know it was coming – it just hit me like a hammer in my chest. It drained my breath and I sobbed for a few minutes.

It’s christmas eve. And tomorrow christmas day. what I want is that 3 am stays and never goes. that time stops. so i don’t have to face another morning. I hate the mornings.

The dogs play in the snow, and I smiled this afternoon because Ken would have loved to see that. I wish he could have seen that.

FEEL

I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but all your thoughts and caring is helping. I can’t see it, but I know it must be helping. Love always helps. Even when you can’t see it.

Today I didn’t know what to do but clean. When my mom was upset, she would clean. Clean, in a weird way, with toothbrushes and Q-tips. I guess that’s something I picked up from her. I had the UFO shows on all day. I have to have noise now, all the time, whether its soft or loud. The silence makes me cry. I think what I do is not think about it, and then somehow its not real. When I get a card or phone calls, I end up crying because then it brings it up front again, in real life. I don’t mind the calls or cards – I just can’t help feeling bad. I’m not afraid of feeling despair, and its much better that when I feel it, its because somebody cared to reach out to me in the first place.

Since friday, I’ve worked my way up from deep agony to the panic attack-chest tightening phase again. I don’t know if that’s progress or not. I think I watched the Mummy Returns, where they bring Evie back from the death. Magic. Before Ken’s death, I think there was a little unspeaking part of me that believed in magic, that maybe there is a soft fog in the universe where magic happens and wishing works. I think maybe that part of me now is gone. Or maybe asleep.

I’ve cleaned a lot and even threw out the garbage. Of course that made me cry, because that was Kenny’s job. I can’t tell what will make me cry anymore.

I thank everybody, and I’m sorry I don’t call or sometimes I don’t email. I forget, or I’m not real up to it. I really appreciate all the effort you all make on my behalf.

There’s this commercial where you send in your watch and then they send you money for it. What stops people from stealing watches and sending them in for money? Just wondering.

*****

Tomorrow, I take the dogs in to the vet for shots and afga in for surgery.

I think if there weren’t the dogs, I would have spent the last three weeks in bed, and crying. The dogs need. They need all sorts of things from food, water, baths, medical attention, etc. It’s not feasible to roll over and die with the dogs here. They need. I think they miss him too. I know I do. I’m starting to realize that I’ll be alone for a long time. Without Ken’s companionship. Without my best friend. That’s starting to hit me, and sometimes it hits bad.

I’m not sure how I’ll end up. Maybe its too soon to think about that. But I keep telling people, all this stuff is churning in my head from the saddness and darkness to selfish and almost unthinkable stuff. I have fleeting thoughts about dying alone because I can’t bare to “leave” kenny, to thoughts that I’m too unattractive to find someone else. I can’t think there is anyone out there that would love me like ken did, that would put up with me, that thinks the disgusting habits I have are alright, someone in who’s eyes I am beautiful as ken saw me.

I can’t think of anyone else who could be my best friend like he was. How can I ever be comfortable with anyone else. How can anyone else feel like home the way he did. And it took a while before he was home.

Right now, I’m just trying to think about bills and practical matters that will come up. I like this not worrying about it, and staying at home, away from the real world. If I could, I would do it for a long time. Quite possible, I’d never leave. I still have till next Wednesday before I have to go out there again. And then start coming home to an empty house. Well. Except for the dogs, but you know what I mean.

And I’m kind of scared too. Today on the news, there was a home invasion – some guys broke in to a woman’s house tied her up, sexually assaulted her and stole her money and her car. And it was a nice neighborhood that she was in. I’m kind of scared of other things. Going places alone. Doing things alone. Going through Drive thrus or shopping. Why do people think I’m strong or brave? I don’t feel strong or brave. I feel scared.

AUTOMATIC

I’ve just got done booking my trip to Minnesota, I’ve unsubscribe Ken from some shell email lists, and closed his gmail account. It has caused a surge in the ache I have. When I do concrete things like that, it brings the ache, and it brings it all out of the abstract back into my reality. There are strange noises in the house that I’ve never heard before and in the moments that I have nothing to do, the only think I can think about is how much I miss ken. I feel like I’m repeating the same thing over and over again – like I’m a broken record. I can’t feel much else, and its about the only thing I think of most of the time.

It hits the worst when I do something that use to be his chore or when I find myself trying to do things all by myself. I remember that I use to be capable and independent, and now all of a sudden, I am helpless and inept.

Everyone says it will take time. Time might heal me, time might not. I find myself wondering about the nature of life and death and what really is truth. The afterlife, the nature of soul. My heart wants to believe for no other reason than I’ll be able to see him again.

But I don’t know. I’m so unsure about a lot of things now. I always thought that I could do anything, weather anything, find contentment, if only my little family could be kept same from harm. Not so much, I’m finding.

It feels like a punishment, like something really good happened to me and then, in some big balance sheet being tallied on me, something really bad had to happen to balance the scales. I KNOW it can’t be this, but I FEEL it differently. Or I’m being brought to pay for some other horrible thing I’ve done, or said, or didn’t do or didn’t say. I’ve sat and cried to the big empty, I’ve tried to offer my life instead of his. I’ve promised I’d be a better person. I’ve just begged. I guess I’m at the bargaining stage. I bounce back from this and denial where I can’t believe that I’m in this place and all this is truly happening to me.

I can’t seem to write anything else but this sort of thing. It’s been 19 days. And I don’t remember what I was doing or what I was thinking for most of them.

December 29

So I have to go to Minnesota for Kenny’s funeral that his sister is setting up. Since I’m traveling and you never know about planes and winter, I decided to do a will. I was in the middle of it, and realized that I have to change all my beneficiary information from being Kenny to… and then I stopped. I had no one to change it to. I felt the stabbing in my chest when I realized there was no more Kenny. The hurt came back. I have to change all my beneficiary information for my life insurance, for my 401k, for everything.

Apparently the sister, I’m told, “ She’s not too sure about you either, though. “

WTF. I’m going through the WORST thing I’ve have ever gone through in my entire life, and SHE isn’t sure about ME? What does she need to be sure of me for? HOW am I even CONNECTED to her life in anyway? The only connection we had was Ken, and now I’m mourning the loss of my love, and now I gotta deal with her? I have lost my life as I know it, I am stuck in limbo all alone and SHE’s not sure of ME? Again, WTF. She can be unsure of me till the cows come home. Hopefully, I can get through the service up in Minnesota the 19th, and come home.

I don’t want to go. I don’t want to deal with them. I don’t know them. I don’t feel like I’m wanted up there. I want to honor Ken. I want to make Ken proud of me. I don’t know what Ken would have wanted me to do. I’m trying so hard to try and figure out how to get through this thing. I wish Ken was here. I wish he could help me somehow.

There are times I can’t see where I’m headed and I don’t know what to do. More and more. I don’t know if I’m even doing any of this right. I don’t feel strong, and I don’t feel brave, and most of all I don’t feel right.

AND ITS STILL GOING ON

So I’m starting to dream again when I sleep.

I absolutely hate it. A week ago, I relived Ken’s death but in a different setting and I had time enough to beg him not to die, and that we needed to go to the doctor, while he kept saying no.

And last night, I had one where me and him were sitting on the couch and I was telling him how much I love and miss him and I was crying – I woke up and had felt like I had been crying all night.

I woke up feeling more despair than I have in a while. Now I’m afraid to sleep.

And the one thing everybody says is that time will heal the wound, or time will make me feel better – most say, time will help but it won’t be quick. I hate this. I hate all of this. I’m going to spend New Year’s alone and I hate that. Everyone who’s lost someone hates it, and I know it seems normal and expected for me to say this, but this is the first time I’ve lost someone this much a part of my life, except for Kodak. When I lost kodak, Ken was there, and Ken helped me through that time. It took two years before when I thought of Kodak, I didn’t cry out loud – and at times I still do cry for Kodak.

What is going to happen now. Am I going to be in despair and in agony in a long while? They say the pain will soften and it will be come dull with time. Right now, its a stabbing agony and unlike before in the beginning when I felt it all the time, night and day, now the agony creeps up on me and takes over when I least expect it, causing me to break down. It’s now invading the only respite and solace I get, my dreams. I don’t know if the dreamless sleep I was getting was necessarily healthy, but it was a time I didn’t think of any of this. I guess a dreamless sleep would be as death would be.

It all is making me tired. It’s like I can’t rest.

January 1

Tomorrow I go back to work after a week or so off.

Most of the holiday, I’ve spent my time crying and cleaning. Tomorrow, “normal” comes, but a normal that will feel like something is very wrong. I’ve been moving furniture around, cleaning things, moving things. I think I’m doing this so it will feel different, so it won’t feel so familiar. So the familiar won’t remind me of what’s not there anymore.

I now spend most of the time not crying. The waves come, sometimes as agony that grips me and brings me to the floor sobbing. Sometimes, I just start weeping silently.

I’ve been reading and rereading the emails of condolence and the emails of sympathy. There are a few that I read over and over again for comfort. I’m not able to read most of my previous posts. It’s like reliving the events all over again, and I think at this point, I’m doing well just to get through them once.

The holidays have halted time – to where I am frozen in terms of knowing where my future is headed. I need to get bills and insurance forms and death certificates and titles and I need to find out where I stand financially but the holiday delayed all that. I am frightened, but I’ve pushed that way down to where I don’t feel it except for when I purposely think about all that stuff.

It’s too cold in Kansas. By the end of the week, it will be up to the 50s or 60s so maybe motivation will return to me to get back on track. I’m numb most of the time. When I laugh at something on tv, I feel guilty. When I’m not crying for Ken, I feel guilty. When I think of all the things I could have done to be a better person and partner for him, I feel guilty. When I think of my future without him, I feel guilty. So I guess its going to be numb and guilty for a while.

I’m not sure if I’m making progress. I have yet to receive information on the bereavement classes from work, because Shirley has forgotten to give it to me. I’m not sure if some of the thoughts going through my head are normal. I pretty much have decided they are until someone is horrified by one of them.

I think about being alone, I think about dating, I think about who can even care for me as Ken did, I think about all the things that pissed me off about Ken, I think about maybe life wasn’t as perfect as I think it was. But then I think that it didn’t have to be perfect, because it was the one I wanted and that I was working on. I think about all the weird “moving on” thoughts as maybe parts of me trying to distance myself from Ken, thus distancing myself from the pain. I always end up wanting Ken back, and telling myself, although things weren’t perfect, they were what I wanted (most of the time) and that I would give anything to have it back. I come back to homebase and I am in pain again because he is gone and I am alone. Then i feel guilty that I feel alone, because I am thinking of myself, and “poor me.” I have this and much more constantly going through my mind. And now my dreams are stealing the bits of peace I can get in sleep. I know its my mind trying to work things out, but now I have no time where I am not thinking about it. And its not like the thoughts change. It’s the same thoughts, the same guilt, the same pain, being worked over constantly.

This is probably part of the reason I am tired. That, and I don’t get very much sleep and eating is something I have to remember to do now.

January 2

Went back to work today.

Didn’t cry once. Had some horrendous… anxiety attacks, I guess would be the closest description of them. My chest tightened and I couldn’t breathe. People kept asking me “Did you have a good holiday?” – people who KNEW what happened – asked. And I just said with a straight face, “No”. I’m not sure what people want me to say. A forlorn headbob and a “yeah, I’m getting better, not to worry, almost all well.” I am not going to have good days for a long time. I’m going to have numb days. Days where I don’t cry. Days where its easier to put on that smile and a brave face.

Nobody wants to know I come home and cry. I come home and feel lost. I come home and feel uncomfortable in my own skin.

I started going through Ken’s boxes today. He saved almost everything. At first it was comforting. I read through old letters and separated things I wanted to save from the things that needed to be thrown away or shredded. Ken absolutely saved every piece of paper he ever had. Every scrap, every notebook, everything. I’m not kidding. It’s almost insane that he had 4 boxes full of blank stained paper or a whole box of old pay stubs from 1999. He saved all thing things he should have, but he also saved all thing things he ever touched. I found scraps of poetry he wrote about an old barfly potential girlfriend, and a couple that I wished were about me. I don’t know who they were about, but I wished it was about me. I think I was trying to find things he wrote about me.

The more I dug through and saw his life as a complete line, the more I found we had in common. The more we I saw we thought alike, felt alike, reasoned alike. We even wrote to express ourselves. We differed in very few ways – I was an extrovert and a fighter, where he was an introvert and hid from things. He was a procrastinator, contemplative, stoic, and almost existed within himself. I was always impulsive, extroverted, expressionistic and angry. Where he had sadness that manifested as something inner angst, my sadness and rage usually spilled out in a cascade until I emptied my cup. My soul sickness manifested differently than Ken’s but we both shared the same deep pain.

I read all the things, and got bits and pieces of how much I meant to him. It pained me that I never heard these things from him, that he never told me. I knew, I suspected, that he loved me, that I was important, but he never really told me. He did tell me he loved me, but he never did it first. In all these letters and snippets that I read, I really felt how important I was to him. In all these things I read how he had the same thoughts I did, the same insecurities, the same questions, and he never really shared them. And it hurt. It hurt that this man, who was more like me, and closer to me than I ever thought, the one who shared things with me on a deep unspoken level, is gone and I can’t ever grow closer to him. That I can’t be with someone who is as close to a soulmate as I will ever have.

And I miss him. And it tears at me little by little everyday.

BANALITY

I’m afraid to listen to music nowadays, because sometimes that will set me off. And its not the same song all the time. It’s like my life is a giant game of Russian Roulette, you never know what is going to sent you down into despair.