Anna’s 45th Birthday

Anna’s 45th Birthday

Originally uploaded by Jason Dufair.

Today would have been Anna’s 45th birthday. We left cards that the kids made. My sister-in-law was nice enough to laminate them. We’re going to have cake tonight.

Halfway Around the Sun

Six months ago today, I sat by Anna’s bedside and stroked her hair as she took her last breath. Watched her pupils dilate until her eyes were nearly black. Kissed her over and over on her forehead, stroked her hair long after she was gone. A week prior, she greeted me coming off the Dewees Island ferry after ten days away with the hugest smile I’d ever seen. Standing there against the backdrop of the South Carolina marsh grass, she looked gorgeous with her curly red hair, in her blue fleece. I could see in her face that she was sicker than when I’d left ten days before but was feeling more than a bit relieved to see me.

It’s been a hell of a day. I couldn’t fall asleep until about 2:30 AM, lying here thinking about how it doesn’t feel real to keep living with Anna gone. Sometimes I wonder if it’s an illusion and I’m the one that had cancer and died and this is just my weird post-death reality. I left work early, unable to concentrate. I went to Anna’s grave and cried and cried, kneeling in the snow. I cried until the snot and tears started running down my chin and freezing. I thought my eyes were going to pop out I was crying so hard and loudly. Luckilly no one was there and the nearest house is visible but through some woods and across a ravine. I told her how much I missed her and how much I wanted her back. And how truly sorry I was that this happened to her.

Have I ever mentioned how beautiful her site is? It’s secluded, on the edge of a wooded park. There’s a tree right next to her grave that is actually three trees that have woven themselves together into one big tree. I think they represent my three babies watching over Anna. I’ll have to post a picture soon. Someone had left a little basket of smooth glass pellets and seashells and bubbles and a star wand that said “Wish you were here”. Funny that I don’t know who left it. Sometimes I have the illusion that I had some sort of monopoly on her love and a monopoly on grieving her. Silly. She had a lot of people who loved her. And her grave blanket that we put on at the beginning of December still rests on top, green and dusted with snow. I brushed the snow off and adjusted the little white dove that’s attached.

It’s funny, I’ve had this idea that perhaps it might be fun to look into dating maybe at the one year anniversary of her death or something. I went to an Umphrey’s concert for New Years Eve and, aside from it being an awesome show, I found myself asked to dance at the end of the show by a beautiful 22 year old goddess as they played Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” over the sound system. After 17 months of Anna’s illness and, on NYE, 5 months of widowerhood, I had kinda forgotten how wonderful it was to just touch a woman’s skin. Not that Anna and I didn’t find a few moments of intimacy in the 17 months, but chemo, radiation, fatigue, vomiting, drastic weight loss, not to mention the usual being tired after putting kids to bed meant those moments were few and far in between. I mean there’s a huge hole in my life where Anna used to be. Kneeling by her grave this afternoon, the idea of being with anyone else seemed utterly ridiculous. I mean, Anna’s the only one I wanted to be with and the only one I still want to be with. If only I could.

Anna came to me in a dream two or three days after she died. It was a dream that was not like a dream. It was another state altogether. She held my face in her hands and told me everything was going to be ok. Over and over. And that she was ok. Since then, I’ve been at least a little bit less afraid of dying. I do have the sense that, in some way, we’ll be together again. I’m not much of a subscriber to the supernatural, but I also have the feeling that there’s more than meets the eye (and the rational mind) to our existence. As I knelt there today, I longed for the day that I was lying next to her in the ground so that maybe somehow we could be together again. Not that I want to die or kill myself or anything like that. But I do hope our spirits in whatever form they may take, find communion again someday.

Sharing Tears with Alyssa

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Alyssa and I cried for the first time together tonight about Anna. I sang her the lullaby I wrote her when she was a baby tonight when I tucked her in. when I finished, she was crying. She doesn’t often let her guard down enough to cry. And, until now, she’s either cried while I’ve been in a comforting place or I’ve cried and she’s comforted me, Tonight I was comforting her. She decided to wear one of Anna’s nightgowns and she was crying about the fact that it was the last nightgown she saw Anna in before she went swimming with her cousins and Anna & I ended up going to the emergency room,

I got her calmed down and made it as far as her door before I lost it. Why isn’t Anna wearing that god damned nightgown? Why does my daughter have to cry about not being a “normal” Kid? I went back in and hugged her and we cried together sitting on her bed. I told her that even though she may not be a “normal” kid, she’s a great kid. I told her it was a terrible, pitiful sad thing for a kid to grow up without her mommy and there’s nothing good to say about it. We just kind of left it at that.

I’ve been listening over and over to Martin Sexton’s Black Sheep from his Live Wide Open CD and he goes into this riff at the end where he says he’s thankful for all the hard times in his life, even though he didn’t want them to happen at the time. It’s a stunningly beautiful passage. It got me thinking about what gratitude I may be able to summon about having lost the woman I love so so so much. I surprised myself discovering that there really are some things I can be thankful about. Raising my kids by myself has bumped up my confidence a lot. I have a lot of logistical help. More than I could reasonably expect. So I can’t take a ton of credit in that regard. But being emotionally strong and available and connected has done a lot for my babies. For that, I’m thankful – Alyssa got her grades yesterday, and they were stellar. She makes me extremely proud. I’m thankful for the fact that, as the only adult in the family, decision-making and planning is just that much more frictionless. Perhaps a bit of a strange thing to be thankful for, but nonetheless. There are all sorts of things I’m thankful for in addition – a good job, a nice house, health insurance, good extended family, great friends & church community, good health (good music, too). I was consciously thankful for these before Anna died, for sure. Martin got me thinking, however, about what I may be thankful for as a direct result of these hard times. It’s a time of big change for me and for us, and I suspect that there will be even more coming out of this change that will be worthy of my gratitude in the years to come.

I’m also grateful that my one day of planning eating, and tracking has extended to four and that I’m feeling better and down about 4 lbs this far. I tried out Sparkpeople, at Kat’s suggestion, and it is extremely well done and fits my groove just right.

R.I.P. Robert Francis McSorley

My gramp and my son

My gramp passed away on Friday night. I sure loved him. And he sure was proud of me – he told me so pretty much every time I talked to him. One of my fondest memories of him was when I was about 8 years old and he took me out for a run in his truck. He drove an 18 wheeler for Dean Foods and I was thrilled that I was old enough to go out on the road with him for an out-and-back in one evening. We stopped at the greasy truck stops. He tried to explain how the air splitter gears worked. We talked on the CB radio. I got back and barfed all over the place (and all over him). Dunno if it was the burgers and fries or the diesel fumes or what. I wanted to be a truck or bus driver well into my college career. Sure will miss him. Got to have a brief Skype video chat with him just a couple weeks ago. He wasn’t well, but it still was great to see him.

High Tide on Grief Beach

Seems like my grief comes in waves. I’ll be fine for days and days and think I have more and more of the tough part under my belt. The start of the Christmas holidays was definitely the last high tide I experienced. I could barely cope toward the beginning of December. Then we went on our whirlwind tour of Disney and Charleston and Chicago and all of the chaos and kids and relatives and general fun distracted me sufficiently well. Coming back, the start of the new year blew a fresh wind of hope into me for a while. Well, it appears the tide has risen again. I struggled with sleep last night just thinking over and over again about Anna in the ICU on her last night with a fucking respirator in her mouth, heavily sedated, tossing her head from side to side, presumably trying to get it out of her mouth. She did not deserve to suffer like that. I put myself in that bed and imagine how horrible it must have been. Except that I can’t imagine it at all. I was pushing the kids in the stroller to my good friend LZ’s house today and remembering the hundreds and hundreds of hours Anna and my kids and I have spent with her and her kids (and her sadly misguided soon-to-be-ex) and just wondering how the fuck I got to this point.

Alyssa told me she was thinking a lot about Anna today and feeling sad. She didn’t want to say much more than that. She and I went to Tae Kwon Do tonight. Usually a good workout and it just doesn’t hurt as much for a few hours afterwards, but tonight it still hurt. I missed Anna the minute we climbed back in the car. Ian was talking about Anna today too. Remembering some bruise she got hiking. Emma and I watched some video of Anna today and she didn’t seem to register that Anna in the video was her mommy.

My grandfather passed away on Friday night. So my almost-90 year old gram and I are in the same boat, looking at the future without the one we love. I was thinking today about what made it the same and what made it different. I suppose we all maintain the illusion at some level that we’re immortal and that keeps us going. At 35, this basically was working for me. Most of us at this age know few people our age that have died, and if we’re lucky, it’s not someone we loved dearly or even knew super well. At least in the west, we can generally maintain the immortality illusion past our thirties. Anna’s death has, obviously, shattered this illusion for me. My gram is almost 90. She has lost lots of people she’s loved. I imagine at that age, it’s hard to maintain the immortality illusion with your own death rapidly impending and with so many reminders of loss having paved your path. So that’s one difference.

Also, at almost 90, she’s not exactly going to be hitting the dating pool. She really is looking at the unblinking eye of loneliness. Yeah, she’s got my mom and aunt and uncle. And that’s really good and important (and hopefully they’ll all be able to put aside their differences in my Gram’s best interest). And she has my brother and I and my cousins and some other family members. With the exception of my aunt, none of us are geograpically close, unfortunately. I wish that weren’t true. Every once in a while, the eye of loneliness blinks for me and I can imagine dating or somehow having adult companionship at some point in the future. I’m in no place to do so now, but I have time on my side (Alyssa was talking about wanting a stepmom today – one that is nice. The whole idea is still way too scary to me). So that’s another difference.

Anna and I spent so much time adapting ourselves so that together, we’d overcome anything and our marriage would survive. When she died, it was like someone ripped out a few major organs. I imagine it’s like that for my Gram, but probably more. They were just about to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary. We barely made it to 10. Crappy circumstances in either case.

It’s funny, when I am doing better, I find myself a bit guilty still that I’m not grieving harder. Then when it hits, it’s at least familiar, if not comforting. I think I have a lot more work to do, grief-wise, and perhaps it’s frustration even more than guilt that the work isn’t progressing faster. Anna’s 45th birthday is coming on the 31st. The 6 month anniversary of her death is coming on the 29th. I hope I can ride this wave out ok.

Guilty Music, Part 1

A few of my latest guilty pleasures in music:

• Morrissey’s new CD – I Just Want to See the Boy Happy. Sure, who didn’t like The Smiths’ How Soon Is Now in college? But I’m a bit too straight to be a big Morrissey fan. Maybe it’s the fact that now that one of my oldest and dearest guy friends is a woman and I’ve put a great deal of thought into gender and even my own sexuality lately. Maybe it’s just that slightly whiny depressing music (albeit with a good beat and crunchy guitars) is a good grief soundtrack. Whatever it is, his new CD sounded great to me when I listened to it at work this week.
• Matisyahu’s Jerusalem. Hard to take a Pennsylvanian, former jamband junkie seriously as a big star singing Jamaican music, but it’s a really catchy tune. And I suppose Rasta and Judaism are, very roughly, cousins. I have a problem with people faking accents in their music. It seems to be the norm, whether it’s “metal accent”, a la Nickelback or “fakey urban, slightly latino, slightly african-american accent”, a la Fergie, but it’s weird to me. I prefer someone like Billy Bragg who has the same accent when he talks and sings. Why try to sound like you have a Jamaican accent in your music when you sound like an upper-middle class jewish guy in interviews? Nonetheless, it’s good reggae. And on the slightly humorous front, I can’t help but singing “Jerusalem, if I forget you, fire not gonna come from me bum.” – a line I misheard the first time
• Way too much Justin Timberlake for a healthy mind. My Love and SexyBack have been in heavy rotation in the Dufair household. I even looked online for a karaoke version of SexyBack this week to try and record Bringing Messy Back in my spare time. I’m neurotic. Didn’t find much. Luckilly, the JT meme has peaked in my head, I think.

On the not so guilty front (aside from the guilt of playing it for my kids with pretty inappropriate lyrics), I ran across Le Disko by Shiny Toy Guns on Q101 in Chicago while doing some last minute holiday shopping and it jumped out of the radio at me. Tasty electronica/dance/pop with lots of stops and changes and other things to keep an ADHD mind very happy. Reminds me a bit of Hardknox in it’s bratty, overconfident, sexually charged way.

On the not so guilty and quite excellent front, I played Martin Sexton’s Black Sheep today while cleaning house and it was, as it always is with Martin, my favorite Bostonian singer/songwriter, a religious experience. Serendipitously, Karrie posted about Black Sheep (the old skool rap group) today, which prompted me to find a copy of Sexton’s Black Sheep. Found this on YouTube and it’s pretty tasty:

A Mountain, Disguised

I’ve got it set in my mind,
I’ll be a mountain disguised this year
-Umphrey’s McGee, “Resolution”

Setting your goals too high can defeat them before you ever start (I say this hypothetically – I’m about the least goal-oriented person I know). So I decided this year, rather than make a New Year’s resolution, I’d make a January resolution. I intended to plan every calorie that goes into my mouth and only eat that. I figured I could do that for one month. And then re-evaluate from there. I planned a standard breakfast (low-fat yogurt, berries, 1 T chocolate chips, 2 T wheat germ), a standard lunch (2 oz various fancy cheeses, 1 c grapes, 1 slice whole wheat bread, 1 orange), and a standard nighttime snack (1 apple, 2T peanut butter). That left me with 800-1200 calories to spare for dinner. The plan is probably a bit high on sat fat, but I figured I’d tweak after January.

Have you ever noticed how long a month is?

The problem is that we’ve had various dinners with friends, plus my weekly night out has caused me to slip. Actually, the problem is my complete lack of discipline and will.

So I’m going to set my sights even lower and work up. I’m making a one day resolution. This Monday (1/22), I will plan every calorie (including dinner) and eat only that. If I’m successful, I’ll work up to 2 or 3 days. Then a week, etc.

Karrie is trying out FitDay. Perhaps I’ll give it a try too. I’ll see if it lets me plan meals ahead. If so, I’ll put my 1/22 meal plan on there. Wish me luck.

The Polly Pocket Sessions

I actually sat down with my other Christmas present yesterday to make a test recording with my own mic and guitar and such. The song is a ditty I made up one night when Emma was asking me to sing a song to her. I sing her to sleep every night. She was asking for some song, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Sounded something like Polly, so I made up a Polly Pocket song. This was my “hello world” with the Mbox, so forgive the rhythm, intonation, etc. problems. I was going to ditch it, but Alyssa’s yodel in the background made it worth keeping, I think.

Alyssa on the News

Alyssa was on our local news today as part of a quilting project done at our church. Anna took up quilting when she got sick and made a quilt for each of us with a hand-written note on a square in the middle. Alyssa started working on the quilt in the video at our church retreat this past summer, a week or two after Anna died. She stayed up until 2am working on it. I’m really proud of her. And I think she interviewed really well this morning at church.

Anna, Two Years Ago

For those who never had a chance to meet Anna or those who would like to remember her a bit. A short video clip with Anna, Ian, and Emma from right around two years ago, just before her cancer diagnosis.