Tag: Dealing With Death

I never thought I’d be saying this, and especially so soon after Connie’s death, but I’m starting to deal with the world again and I don’t feel like I’m just going through the motions. Of course, I’m suspicious of this new feeling, but a couple of things make me think I’m starting to turn the corner.

Firstly, I was finally able to walk away from the old house in Plano — if I don’t want to, I don’t ever have to see it again. (Here’s an example of my disconnect: the painter asked me what color I wanted the outside gutters and drainpipes painted. I waved my hand around to encompass the whole street and said, “Use whatever color fits the neighborhood. I don’t care, it’s not my house anymore.”) I will go back, of course, just to make sure the reno went as planned, but I don’t have to — all the work is nearly done, next week the “stagers” come in to make the place look decent, and then the agent will list it. Basically, what happens next will happen, and there’s not much I can do to affect the outcome. After the burden of emptying the place out and the scourging of my soul that went with that activity, the house is no longer Connie’s and mine: it is somebody else’s house now, the market just hasn’t decided whose, yet.

Secondly, I’m dealing with being alone again better than I thought I would. Doc’s been on an extended shift at the ER, which left me pretty much by myself for the past two days. I have to admit that the first few hours were a little nerve-wracking; but amazingly, I settled into the routine of solo living without too much anguish. Mostly, I napped — good grief, I had no idea I could sleep so much, my body must have decided that it was time to make up for all those sleepless nights over the past two or three years — and I even started making plans for the near future.

Once the house is sold, I’ll probably be able to start working again — “working” being whatever I can find that will pay me enough to keep me afloat. (There’s a book to finish — one scene yet to write — and there might be a YouTube Kim channel in the future, but I can’t work out those details just yet.) I wish I could start doing that now, but I need the sale of the house to close that particular chapter of my life so I have to be available in case there’s an emergency. (One story to share: the flooring people are using the leftover tiles from our big flooring project from back in 2004 to fix up the master bathroom. I measured, re-measured and made the flooring contractor measure the space as well, just to ensure that we could agree that there was enough stock on hand. When we’d finished I said to him, “Just know this: if I get a call right after Lowe’s closes, telling me there isn’t enough tile to finish the job, there will be gunfire. Use the stock frugally.” There were wide-open, fearful eyes looking back at me. I think he got the message.)

Finally, and I hate to do this more than anything I can think of: I need a little more money to get this job done — new turf in the front, fixing the sprinkler system up and so on — so if you all can go to the well for me just one more time and drop whatever you can spare into my GoFundMe appeal, I will be grateful beyond words. The minute the house is sold, whatever it’s sold for and even if it sells for a loss, I plan to close the appeal for good because I can’t stand begging for money anymore.

Enough, already. Once this is done, it will be time to get on with my life, on my own terms and on my own two feet. I know exactly how Scarlett O’Hara felt, because AGIMW, I am never going to beg for money again.

And one more time: thank you all from the bottom of my heart for making this possible. I would not have survived this catastrophe, this loss, this upending of my life, without the financial generosity and just as importantly, the moral support I’ve received from all of you. My gratitude is profound, and eternal because at long last, I feel that I’m going to make it.

I can even listen to that beautiful song now without dissolving into a pool of tears.

Finally out of the house yesterday; all items meant for Goodwill stashed in the garage, all items meant for other people also duly stashed in the garage, all items destined for storage stashed in the garage, and while the garage was completely full, that meant the house was empty.

So the reno crew came in to get the place ready for sale — without a new floor in the main bedroom and new carpet upstairs, the house wouldn’t sell for ages — so they were really necessary. Fortunately, their fee comes off the final sale price so I don’t have to go to my rapidly-thinning wallet.

The first thing they did was rip the bookshelves off the walls in the den and dining room. Three days of backbreaking work for Connie and me to build and install the things; ten minutes and they were down, destroyed.

I had to leave at that point. I know: intellectually I could see that what sells a house is bare walls so that the new owners can put their imprint on the place, just as Connie and I did; emotionally, all I could see was one of our favorite projects reduced to splinters and our house being turned into someone else’s home. So I fled.

Fortunately, Doc Russia was available (night shifts this week) and as always, he had the right answer: “Lunch with booze, at an establishment which features scantily-clad women.”

I was so distraught I let him take me to just such an establishment, and yet another sign of my distraction was that I ordered a salad. [pause for gasps of shock to die down] Okay, it was a steak salad with avo, bacon, blue cheese and blue cheese dressing but honestly, it’s probably the first time I’ve ever ordered a salad as a meal in a restaurant. A tall mug of draft Shiner Bock (too fizzy, of course, but okay-tasting), a waitress of extraordinary loveliness (tangential thought: why would such a pretty girl resort to working at a place like that?), and with the wall-to-wall TV screens showing everything from fishing to football (both kinds), my mood turned from bleak and miserable to if not Happiness Stan, at least away from Blubbering-Sorry-For-Himself Kim. (Another tangential thought: on one of the TV talk shows, some guy was being compared to another guy, and I realized that I’d never heard of either of them. I am really out of touch.)

And as always with Doc, the conversation was all Guy Talk: guns (duh), hunting, cars, women and sports — we both turn off the TV when it’s people talking about a game versus people actually playing a game.

So the meal was done, and the music was making us both jittery (final tangential thought: when did rap music become acceptable in a sports bar?), so we left. When we got back to my new home, Doc got ready to go to work and I started unpacking the few paltry possessions I’ll need as a house guest: clothes, guns, books, my laptop — you know, the bare essentials.

And then to bed. For the first time since Connie died, there were no dreams, no nightmares; I slept all the way through the night and I didn’t wake up dreading the day to come — also for the first time.

Today I’ll be back at the old homestead, supervising the demolition of the workshop side of the garage and the clearing up of the backyard (which until recently looked like part of the Amazon forest had skipped over the border and established itself firmly in my little plot of land in N. Texas). A couple-three trips to Goodwill, a trip or two to the storage unit, and that’ll be it.

I don’t think I’ll go back inside the house. Not for a while, anyway.

I wish. To turn the passive into the active, mourning has (almost) broken me.

Here’s the thing. I’ve always been a strong man, both physically and mentally. I lost my own father at age twenty-one and in retrospect, got on with life with the callousness of youth to help me overcome the loss of the man who helped guide me through my tormented adolescence into young adulthood. I’ve been a rock to friends when they’ve been in trouble, and was always the first to open my big mouth or use my fists when I saw some kind of injustice. And I brought security and peace to Connie who, despite her own strength and toughness, was fearful of men because of her own troubled background. I was always, in other words, the tough guy, the independent guy who bulled his way through life and did it all by himself, if no one else wanted to join in the fun.

What has disturbed me the most about mourning is that it has weakened me so much. For the first time in my life, I’ve come across a situation that overwhelms me, and although I’ll survive it, there are times when I frankly don’t care if I do or not. I’m not being melodramatic, either. There are times when I just want to curl up in some lonely corner of the world and never leave, let the whole fabric of my life crash and burn, the hell with it all. For the first time in my life, I truly understand the situation of hobos and tramps, the people who just say “Fuck it,” and leave society, to sink themselves into drunkenness and drug addiction because the pain of everyday existence is just too much to bear. These are not people who willingly drop out; these are people who are pushed out by the demons inside their own head — and for the first time ever, I too have those demons in my head.

But that passes. I have discovered that apart from the responsibility I have to my family, my friends and all the other dear people in my life, I have an even greater responsibility to myself — that stubbornness which says, “You can’t just walk away from it all, and you can’t escape it either. So… waddya gonna do, Tough Guy?”

There’s really only one thing to do:

I hope so. If I survive this thing it’ll be through my sense of humor, although believe me, right now I have absolutely no desire to laugh. When that comes back, then I’ll know that morning has broken.

A week or so ago, I went over to the funeral home to pick up Connie’s ashes and get her death certificate. The funeral director, a lovely young lady named Amanda, had been wonderful throughout this whole grisly process — dealing with the hospital, the doctors and the state of Texas as part of their service.

Once all the talking was done, I said to the container of ashes, “Come on, sweetheart; let me take you home.” Whereupon Amanda gave a little sob, and ran out of the room.

All the way home, I talked to Connie’s ashes, telling her what I’d been doing in her absence, how the kids were doing, and in general keeping her up to date an everything that had happened since she died.

Stupid, huh?

I’ve always wondered at people who kept Mom’s ashes in an urn on the mantle like some sad reminder or token. Of course, it’s been a staple of black humor in stage productions and movies (the scattering of the ashes scene in The Big Lebowski comes to mind), and yes, it’s all good fun, but silly.

I don’t think it’s so silly anymore. Actually, it’s kind of peaceful and reassuring to have them around even though, let’s be honest, they’re ashes.

She’s not going to stay here, though. In fact, later in the year she’s going to be laid to rest in a long barrow in Wiltshire, built on the farm which belongs to an old family friend (pictured in the article). The irony is strong: Connie was always severely claustrophobic, but as another friend said, “She’ll get over it. Besides, she’s going to be among friends, now.”

What I do know is that Connie loved the place; she called it “home”, and when we visited the farm, she would sit for hours at the kitchen window looking out over the Vale of Pewsey. When I asked her what she was doing, she replied, “Looking at one of Constable’s paintings,” because that’s exactly what it looked like. Here’s what she was talking about:

It is even more beautiful than the photo suggests. And when it’s my time to go, guess where my ashes will end up? Yup… right next to hers.

Together again at last. And I’m not claustrophobic.

(Before I go any further, I want to beg my Loyal Readers not to read anything more into my words than what they actually state. This is a philosophical discussion, written in as dispassionate a manner as I can manage given the circumstances.)

It seems to be a fact of life that when one spouse of an elderly couple dies, it’s not long before the other dies too. I haven’t looked up any actual stats for this — it’s purely an observation — but it seems that if it’s the wife that goes first, it doesn’t take long before the widower follows. It seems especially true if the couple is truly elderly — say, in their 70s or 80s, and I believe that spousal deaths “days after” (and sometimes even “hours after”) are almost a given once a couple has reached their 90s together.

I know exactly how they feel.

What I’ve figured out, speaking just for myself, is that once one is older, the death of a spouse takes away a large reason for the survivor to stay alive. The kids are grown, have left the house and are getting on with their own lives. (Which is exactly as it should be. Nobody should be held to their parents so tightly in adulthood that they can’t follow their own lives’ dreams and ambitions.)

It’s not just the lack of companionship following a spouse’s death. It’s that a large part of living involves being there for someone, to help them, care for them and (if you’re a man) protect them or (if a woman) feed them. (I speak here of a traditional couple, where roles are clearly defined and assumed with willingness and even joy. I have no idea how “modern” couples function, nor do I wish to follow that tangent here.) Once that part of the relationship has ended, what’s left is… not much. In my case, I can cook for myself, clothe myself, defend myself and generally look after myself and my needs. But so what? I’ve always been able to do all that. What a relationship means is that you can do all that, not just for yourself but for someone close to you — and it’s not a duty or obligation; it’s a pleasure to do it, to share it, and to give all that to someone you love.

And it gets worse the longer a couple has been together. In my case, The Mrs. and I were together for over twenty years, and I mean “together” in its most elemental sense: other than the (very) occasional business trip where we were forced to be apart, we were together — and I mean in the same home office, living room, bed or even on the same couch — pretty much all the time. That’s how much we enjoyed each other’s company, conversation and intimacy. If I went to the supermarket, I hurried home as soon as I was done, and if she was out of the house for whatever reason, she’d race home as well. In later years, we were inseparable, as much by choice as (towards the end of her life) by necessity, and let me stress this as strongly as I can: it was never — never — an imposition for either of us. There were no “craft rooms” or “man caves” in our home; if she needed to do some work on her sewing machine, I’d go and sit close to her, or she’d bring the machine and stuff into the family room and work there. The only time we ever declared apartheid was when I wanted to watch a Formula 1 Grand Prix race or a Chelsea football match because the noise drove her scatty, and I’d go watch it in the bedroom. (And get back to where she was, in the living room, library or kitchen the minute the event was done.)

And here’s the problem. That intimacy, that pleasure in each other’s company was forged over many, many years. I’m now in my early sixties, and probably won’t have another twenty years to forge that relationship with another human being, even if I wanted to — and right now, even setting aside my still-active mourning and pain, I don’t want to. There is a feeling of not exactly pointlessness, but of, I don’t know, maybe despair at what life holds for me in the few years remaining to me on this planet.

Of course, I have several very good, very close male friends who are not only supporting me during this shitty period of my life, but have promised to help me achieve the (very few) activities that remain on my bucket list (a topic for another time). But I’m a man, and as much as I enjoy the company of men — and I do, very much — it’s nevertheless true that male companionship is by its very nature episodic and finite: trips to the range, drive trips, hunting trips, cheery conversation over pints of beer (or pints of gin) at the pub, and so on. All of those are wonderful, and I look forward to them with great anticipation and participate in them with considerable enjoyment; but at the end of the day (or evening), I still have to go home to an empty house, an empty living room, and an empty bed. Those are the Empty Times, and they’re lousy.

This is not, by the way, a cry for female companionship. It’s just that, as an old-fashioned man, I miss the intimacy of female companionship — but at the same time, I know that the odds of me ever finding same again are depressingly slim.

I suspect that most older men feel the same way I do, deep inside, and especially so if they’ve been blessed with the same kind of relationship as I was over the past couple of decades. I can’t even begin to think of what George and Barbara Bush mean to each other, after a relationship which has lasted over seventy (!) years. What I do know is that if “Bar” dies before GHWB does, he will follow soon after. That’s not a gloomy prediction: it’s an observation based on many similar circumstances of men like him.

When you reach that stage of your life, the question any man is going to ask himself is: what’s the point of it all? Why carry on?

Hence the title of this piece, and here’s the thing. To give just a few examples, captains of industry, successful and driven politicians or endlessly-creative men do have something to keep them going: their businesses, their idealism, their creativity, whatever. They have a reason to live. But they are the exception. Most men who have lived ordinary lives (such as I) don’t have any of that to keep them going, and they die of loneliness, of a broken heart, or of just plain despair.

I need a reason to live, and other than from my writing (which, admittedly, is a strong one), at the moment it’s hard to find that reason, that purpose. As I said at the top, this is not a cri de coeur or warning of a suicidal impulse — I’m a lot stronger than that, so don’t worry. And maybe this is all just a part of mourning and dealing with the loss of a loved one; I don’t know because I’ve never been here before. I’ll probably get past this mood because I generally do — I am an even-tempered man not susceptible to mood swings; but as much as I know that “this too, will pass”, it sucks all the same. And I’ll be really honest: many artists and writers find that pain is a catalyst for their creativity, but for me, it’s hard to be creative at a time like this. It’s easier to write a blog, which is reactionary writing and commentary, than to find the impulse to pen a new novel or short story.

I understand the appeal of religion, now, to people of my age and circumstance. It must be so comforting to feel the presence of some greater power that will soothe the torture of existence, or an afterlife which promises reunion with the love of one’s life. Sadly, I still can’t go for that, despite the temptation, because it’s just not realistic.

Reality is where I live, and right now, reality is pretty fucking bleak. There’s a very good reason I chose Max Bolotov’s The Setting Sun as the header of this new blog.