George; Reprise

One year ago today George left this life

Last night I took my wife out for a dinner to celebrate her 88th birthday. We went to Muramoto restaurant, which has the best sushi this side of Honolulu. I knew before we went that no matter how good a time we had, that this morning when I woke up, all the good vibes would be forgotten.

As much as I love Gracie, our remaining dog, seeing her this morning is just another reminder that George isn’t here.

I was talking to someone about losing George and the circumstances surrounding his accident. Like a lot of people in this overly litigious society she said “You should sue that place.” I thought to myself, “What, for allowing him to act like a dog, or breaking my heart because we had to end his life after the accident?”

It’s just life.  Sometimes it just sucks beyond words.  The older you get, the more you’ll lose. People. Pets. Jobs. I want to say something funny here but it’s just not in me today.

Because my wife is 14 years older than I am, just about the time my mother was dying of heart failure, her son was dying of a brain tumor. My mom was 45, so pretty young. My wife’s son was 6 years old. The trauma of that ended my wife’s first marriage, and she had to raise her remaining son and daughter on her own. Luckily, their father was as good an absentee dad as he could be. Child support, visits; that sort of stuff.

I knew that her sons death had a profound affect on her life. But it wasn’t until we were married on Valentine’s Day in 1987, that I realized how it was going to continue to be a part of our life going forward. The day after we were married, she was depressed and uncommunicative. After pressing her to reveal what was going on with her, she revealed that February 15 had been her son’s birthday. So that’s the way it was to be, every year.

Anniversary one day, mourning the next day.

I don’t have to tell you that everyone grieves differently. I’m one of those people that doesn’t grieve well at all. I shove all those feelings down into the ‘Big sack-o-bad-shit’. If you don’t see them, you don’t have to deal with them, right?

Is it any wonder that I had to be medicated all those years. You can’t put grief in a box and pull it out when you’ve got time for it. It will sneak up on you, push you to the ground, and spit in your eye.

So now we have another time of the year to celebrate one day, and mourn the next.

Birthday one day, mourning the next day.

I’ve had innumerable traumatic events in my life, some of which you can read about down my post tab. If you haven’t read about George’s accident, that’s in the story titled ‘Where have I been? Write here(NOT)’.

So this is one of the ways I deal with grief. I write about it. I haven’t published anything on Substack for three weeks. I’ve written some articles, but nothing felt right to post. It feels like something is blocking the flow. Maybe you would describe that as writers block, but since I don’t ever try to write anything that isn’t bursting from my brain, that’s not what it is to me. To me, there is something like grief stuck in my subconscious that says I need to get this out of the way first. So, I’m dumping this on you. Sorry about that, but maybe you will be able to pull some fractured logic out of this story, but I doubt it. I seriously don’t think there’s much here. Who knows, I’ve been wrong before.