January

I seem to be in a very verbose frame of mind today. Perhaps it was getting off early that set me on this course. Maybe the snow and the quiet and the warm room have all combined to generate this unremitting desire to say something, to pour out something. Since I have no idea what it is, I can only dash off a blog and hope that something meaningful spills onto the page.

What I really hate is this directionlessness, as if I'm in an open field wandering aimlessly first to the left, then to the right, then in a circle and back to the left and right and... that's how it is. When I wake up, when I leave the house, come back and go to bed, always this sense that I'm simply wandering around with no thought of where to go or what to do.

I do not know what this stage is called. I have no idea where I am on the scale. Eighteen months to two years is the range they gave me for recovery. Is this the anesthetic wearing off? Is this the confusion and disorientation you feel coming out of open heart surgery? I've no idea.

I only know that at some point I ought to wake up and it will be daylight. I will get up. My head will be clear. I won't feel like I'm a buried under a truck load of dirt. I won't get sick at the sight of a photo, the sound of a song, or a random memory. I will walk in the rooms of my house and know why I enter each one. I will read all the books I've left lying around for two years and get past the first chapter. I will write more than two paragraphs of new novel and pick back up on the other four I left behind. I will be able to look at Sarah without feeling a sense of loss that was not mine but is.

I was looking at some sites about stages of grief and there is no real consensus about any of this. It is either three phase, five stages, or seven stages depending on who wrote the article. Doesn't matter. The three phases sound much more familiar.

• Numbness (mechanical functioning and social insulation).
• Disorganization (intensely painful feelings of loss).
• Reorganization (re-entry into a more 'normal' social life).

I seem to be somewhere between N & D. Wandering around, of course, on that great plain. I can't reenter a more "normal" social life because what is normal for me is not possible. I wasn't actually very social to start with. Really. I spent all my time with my family. Now, I spend all my free time, most of it anyway, alone. I work 40 hrs a week with people I've know more or less 13 years but frankly, do not actually see except for work duties that may arise. Mostly we stay in our offices. My largest outside contact is with people here.

Honestly, October was horrible because of the renovations. That was traumatic and stressful because he wasn't here to deal with it. November was stressful because the holiday season began and Jerry was absent. December things became worse for me, particularly when I was alone.

But January has been terrible emotionally. My anniversary on the 11th of January passed unnoticed by all but me. It's o.k. really because most people never noticed anyway but Jerry and I. Even the kids never got it. I was at Court Street that day and was talking to a girl there. She wished me a happy anniversary. But it wasn't really. He's dead so there are no anniversaries. There are "would have been married's". This year would have been 37 years. He would be 62 this year. He was getting close to retirement age and was so excited about that.

Now, January 29 will arrive in a ten days. It is our second anniversary.

I hate January.