Author: ferylfiles

There are things on my to-do list that I have a frozen response to. Hey, we’re at least past the fainting goat stage of things. (HA! Laugh with me.) Paperwork, Bryan’s office, his service, home repairs, bills–I navigate these things the best I can as the bandwidth or urgency dictate. Bryan’s service was just a couple of days before the income tax deadline for filing. I had to file for an extension because I simply could not do all of it at once.

Bryan typically did our taxes. We worked on getting materials together for his private business and mine as well as our W2s and everything else. But when it came down to it, he got the software and he did the filing. And now, like the lawn mowing, I decided to call upon someone else’s expertise. I met with a sharp, kind accountant today. The ball is rolling and I’ll tackle this, too. Finally.

I have other big items on my list. I still need to figure out the rest of today, this week, this month, my five-year plan. Good grief, it all sounds so daunting. It’s not that I’m incapable or that it’s impossible, I’m simply not used to the new method by which I must proceed–alone. I am so thankful that I only cried once in today’s meeting. Nothing like dad jokes and a jovial attitude to put me at ease. So maybe not quite alone…

On a side note, friends have encouraged me to find ways to make a living from writing–everything from writing a book (I have ideas…), to getting paid for the advertising on my blog. Out of that encouragement, I put a “tip jar” up on this site which is really a link to my Venmo account. This blog is free for anyone to read or share. The tip jar is there if you feel like you get something extra out of my writing. I also make jewelry and art and am back at it. So if you’re inclined, great. If my style is not your style, no worries. It’s all a little awkward to put myself out here like this and I won’t make a habit of it. As a dear friend said, “we all try to find a balance of doing a job we enjoy and paying the bills.”

https://account.venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Lubbers-1

https://feryldesigns.etsy.com

I live inside my head a lot. I don’t know if that’s a result of being the youngest of four by a large margin and having a lot of time to myself. Maybe it’s the side-effect of being creative. Living alone with three cats ensures that I spend a lot of time inside my head, too. Reading, gardening, painting, baking, walking in nature give me a chance to live outside of my head for a little bit, but even then the ruminations creep in. The last several days and yesterday in particular had me deep in thoughts. The most significant was the question “was any of it real?”

Memory and imagination are tricky bastards. Memory isn’t the brain’s archives where we can pull a reel or microfilm off the shelf and play it back. It’s more like photocopies of photocopies couched in emotions and accumulation of experiences. In many ways our memories and our imagination overlap. Humans make terrible eye-witnesses because we see things filtered and we remember them filtered even more.

A few weeks ago, I was walking home from my friends’ place. Coming up the back alleyway into the backyard, I remembered Bryan and I often walked this together, holding hands, laughing about our conversations, appreciating time with friends. And I could feel myself saying out loud trying to convince myself of a truth. “It was real. It was real. It was real.” Yesterday, while painting little watercolors at my dining room table, my memory thought of times Bryan and I would stop in Hood River for a meal and a beer on our way to and from Portland. This time I said, “Was it real? It was real. Surely, it was real.” And then the crying jag started in again.

I cried a lot yesterday. I’m crying this morning. The heartache is real. The longing is real. The boxes of tissue I search for in every room are real. The swollen eyes are real.

Yesterday afternoon, I planted some mums and did some pruning and weeding in the backyard garden. I found a little anchor to hold onto. Becci, sometimes we can’t see something or someone, but we can see the effects. I know it was real because I am changed. I know to my bones what it feels like to be loved for exactly who I am, flat sides and all. I live in a house that has a front porch that my husband made sure got built because he felt like we had a responsibilty to make our neighborhood and community more cohesive. This plot of earth at 707 Newell Street has twelve trees–10 Bryan planted and two that volunteered. I have friendships with people I may not have ever met had it not been for Bryan. I live in a neighborhood with neighbors that are like family because Bryan wanted to live in a space where he built durable relationships. And above all, I have Mary. And she’s the most real of any of it.

Loss is such a trip. I think it’s very human to mull over all these things, to feel them. My eyes are protesting and telling me, “could you feel them a little less?” Sorry, little buddies. Nope.

When I was little, we used to live in Yakima, Washington. At the time, there was a Nordstrom and a mall downtown. One Sunday, my mom took my sister and me shopping, a passtime they thoroughly enjoyed. As we were headed back to our parked car in a downtown lot, a woman in jeans and a tshirt carrying a handful of toiletries was trying to walk away from a man pleading or arguing with her, certainly trailing her a bit like a lost, grumpy puppy.

Two things happened that I remember on this walk back to the car. One, my mom started singing hymns loudly in her rich alto voice. Two, the man said something to the woman that sounded a lot like “I’m not just one of your johns.” Put a pin in this.

We got to the car, my mom locked the doors and clenched the steering wheel. At first her shoulders were really strained and tight. She had been trying to protect her girls from the darker elements of the world. And then, her shoulders started shaking, not with fear, but with laughter. For whatever reason, this moment in time was a key that unlocked a previous mystery.

My sister and I looked in wide-eyed wonder at our mom trying to figure out what just happened between the walk to the car, the hymn, the man and the woman fighting, and now our mom’s laughter. When she finally collected herself, she proceeded to tell us a story that didn’t seem to have any connection.

“Months ago, I was volunteering at the Red Cross here in town.” (Mom was an RN and a teacher, so often did volunteer and missionary work.) “A man came in to donate blood and he was very good-looking and reminded me of my dad.” (Mom’s dad was named John Jensen. Her brother is named John Jensen, Jr. One of her sons has the name Jonathan in his full name.) “So I told him, you look like a John to me.” To my mother, this was high praise. This was an honorific. This was a compliment of the highest order. You remind me of my dad. That’s beautiful. Except, she explained, the man gave her a dirty, quizzical look as if to say, “what the heck do you mean by that, lady?!”

And now, instead of looking through a glass darkly, all was revealed and my Mom connected the dots in the most MariAnne fashion. It’s one of my favorite stories of her because I can so relate to the naive earnestness getting turned on its ear in the funniest way. She was smart and worldy and simultaneously very innocent and she could chuckle at her own foibles. It’s the only way to proceed.

A friend of mine from grad school had an epiphany after 9/11. Knowing that security is not guaranteed and life is uncertain and short, he decided to pursue his dream as a musician. For the last couple of decades, he has been a hammer dulcimer player at Renaissance faires and festivals, an international busker, and a successful recording artist. He uses his history degree in researching music, educating festival goers, and navigating archives in cities around the world. In short, he chooses to live and create deliberately. He’s a tremendous role model for me and I encourage folks to check out his music and travel dates here: http://www.vinceconaway.com/

Because of Bryan’s forethought, I’ve been given time to figure things out. I fully realize, acknowledge, and am so grateful for the gift of that time. I know it is a privilege that not everyone is afforded (although they should be). I know of a certainty that art and creativity will always be the core of my living deliberately. Will this provide me with an income I can live on separate from an office job? That remains to be seen. I do know this, my life isn’t work. My life is the time spent with people I love, creating, imagining, digging in the dirt, cooking, sharing, laughing. I’ve seen firsthand what it looks like when a person’s entire identity is tied up in their profession. When retirement comes, it’s devastating. I reject that kind of life. In social gatherings, I try to ask less “what do you do for a living?” and ask more “what do you do for fun? for joy? to live deliberately?”

The question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” is a question I still ask myself. And I think it’s a problematic question. I want to have great stories and experiences, not a career trajectory. I didn’t have things all figured out at 18, 25, 30, or now, but I have a whole lot more grace for the notion that the plans and the knowing are far less interesting or helpful than the being and experiencing.

And these are all great, but at the end of the day, I still have to pay the vet bills and the house payment and health insurance. So how does it all stack up? That I don’t have figured out completely, but I’m on the right path.

Chores, tasks, errands, groceries, laundry, dishes, cat care, garden care, taking out the trash and compost, oil changes, paying bills, thinking about work and health insurance and Swedish Death cleaning–these jog right alongside grief and don’t stop. There’s some comfort in knowing that life goes on whether we like it or not. And then there’s the sensation of being overwhelmed still? All over again? We did these things together and facing the minutiae of daily life made it fun, less overwhelming for sure.

Seamus, our indoor-outdoor Maine coon that adopted us at Pioneer Park the summer of 2014 has a habit of getting into scuffles (no awareness of boundaries when he’s got people to meet and hands that haven’t petted him yet). For a while, Bryan and I were taking him to the vet every three months for stitches, a drain, and a shot of antibiotics. Have mercy. It’s been a while, but he managed to get another infected bite recently. The Animal Clinic East crew have taken care of him and he’s home with the cone of consequence. Bryan’s stoicism in the midst of these sorts of things was something I leaned on really heavily and I miss it so much. I’m an emotional whirlwind and it gets worse with stress and lack of sleep. His confidence and his assurance helped settle me. And now I have to do these things alone. And I HATE IT.

I don’t mean to paint such a picture of woe, because it’s not always like that. For example, yesterday evening Mary came over to help me prepare dinner for her best friend and her wife and daugther. We made chicken parmigiana and peach cobbler. Mary had brought a boule of homemade bread she had made that morning. Watching a little toddler dance and try to sweep and eat tomatoes was so joyful. At one point, they all went outside to collect basil and I observed them from my kitchen window. Here were grown women and a little girl and I got to see the circle of life in the place where they had grown up playing, imagining, loving each other. It was so incredibly precious. Practical matters and routine get bounced for really hard stuff AND for extraordinarily beautiful stuff. Most of the time, though, it’s all happening at once.

My heart is heavy. My heart is full. My heart aches. My heart sings.