3/6/2025

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

So I’ve just spent the last ten minutes, scrolling through Facebook to avoid starting to write this blog. Because I have absolutely no idea what I want to write about.

It’s been a week where nothing much happened, really. Which at times can be a great relief. I did nearly slice the top of my left thumb off as I attempted to actually cook a real dinner in the crockpot. It was an easy recipe. Cube some sirloin steak, cut up chunks of russet potatoes, Throw it all in the crock pot, add onion flakes, salt, pepper, and garlic powder, mix together some beef broth and Worcestershire sauce, put on the lid, cook for 8 hours. Top with cheddar cheese fifteen minutes before serving. I thought, I can do that! So when I finished with my morning clients, I ran downstairs to my kitchen, got the steak in the crockpot, peeled the potatoes and began to chunk them. And that’s when one wet potato shot out of my hand and left my thumb exposed on the cutting board like a tied-up woman on the train tracks. Or a more appropriate comparison, a woman tied up with a sawmill blade rolling toward her, because my knife sunk into my thumb like it was what was for dinner.

One trip to the ER later, where they GLUED my thumb back together, I came home, cleaned the blood off of everything in my kitchen, realized my shoelaces, blood-soaked from tying my shoes before driving myself to the ER, were a loss, found a whole unpeeled potato stuffed into my garbage disposal, thanks to my cat Cleo, and eventually finished the recipe. Which turned out very well, by the way.

That was really the most noticeable thing to happen this week, and it hardly counts as a moment of happiness.

It was one of those weeks of looking around and thinking, and sometimes saying out loud, “What the hell?”

This is one of the really odd things about grief, I think. Mostly, I’ve seen it portrayed as dark and depressed, an inability to get out of bed, tears that are so constant, they’re not even noticed anymore, long sighs, gazing out of windows.

And I do have those days, trust me. Right now, given a choice of innumerable activities, I would always choose sleep. I’m asleep as soon as I close my eyes. I sleep as late as absolutely possible. While sleeping, I have weird dreams, and while waking, I have weird almost-awake hallucinations. The weirdest one was lifting my head toward Michael’s side of the bed, seeing a hole in the wall just beyond it, and inside that hole was a man sitting in a chair, reading a magazine. He waved at me, I waved back, and went back to sleep for another half hour. When I woke again, he was gone, and so was the hole in the wall. I did not recognize him, but he was comforting. I haven’t seen him since.

What the hell?

I took up sleepwalking for a while too. I live in a three-story condo, with my bedroom on the third floor, and one early  morning at four, I woke as I opened the outside door on the first floor, preparing to step outside into the snow.

I don’t wear pajamas.

But the sleepwalking seems to have gone away.

Facebook Memories hits me across the face sometimes, which probably wasn’t the original intent of this social media site. This week, on the preview it gave on my news feed, I suddenly saw Michael looking out at me. It was a photo from rehab, where he’d just been moved. He was out of a hospital gown and in one of his favorite shirts. He was holding a stuffed Ursula, a special pillow I had made for him, because he missed our dog so much. At that time, he’d been in the hospital for six weeks, and he was in week one of what would be three weeks in rehab. His right eye is closed in the photo, not in a wink, but because the eye simply did not want to open.

But it was a moment of hope for us. He was out of the hospital. His memory seemed to be coming back. On his first day in physical therapy, he walked several steps. It was easy to push aside the troublesome signs that all was not well…the way he would repeat things a million times. The pain he was in. The complaining about the constant roaring in his right ear. That winking eye.

And then, of course, despite the hope we felt, he died.

Looking back now, I can see all of the signs I ignored and covered over with hope. I didn’t cry over them then, but I do now. I wish I would have let myself be more prepared. I wish I’d prepared him more. I wonder how much he knew, but he tried to cover up, so that I wouldn’t worry.

Writing all this is not making me feel any better. I had a client say this week, “I can tell you’re feeling sad today.” Well, I feel sad every day, actually, though I thought I was doing a good job of hiding it away. Maybe I’m letting hope push aside signs that all is not well.

But that’s the thing, really. I do still have hope.

I have moments where I lose myself in laughter. There are times now when I can think of a memory of Michael, even speak of that memory, and not collapse into tears. While our dog Ursula still comes downstairs every morning and looks for Michael in his recliner, I don’t. Though I do reach over every now and then and pat the arm that separates his recliner from mine. For a while there, I was only looking at my feet, trying to focus on taking the next step. Now, I’m looking all the way down the block, even though I’m walking down this street by myself.

This past Sunday, my daughter Olivia came home from work, and walked in just as I was reading a column from the Sunday paper out loud. I explained to her that, while her father was alive, I read him this column, an advice column we both liked, every Sunday. Now, his recliner was empty, but his urn sits on the piano, and so I still read to him.

“Oh,” Olivia said. She nodded, told me about her day, and went off to her bedroom, like it was a perfectly normal thing for me to be doing, and for her to see, walking in.

And that’s the thing too. It is the norm now. A norm that I can’t change, no matter how much I hope. But also a norm that is allowing me to laugh again, and resume moving forward.

I think that’s about as good as I can do today. And you know what? That’s all right too.

Even though hope let me down, there is still hope to feel, and I feel it thoroughly and always. Even through the sadness.

Hope always rises, donchaknow.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.