Spicy Dragons & Dinosaurs

I put up the screen to write an entry at least four times today. It was a good day, and I did good chores and studying. I felt very strong today. And strangely, I felt more like I was living some half life, some fantasy than I have ever felt before.

How to describe?

I was not sad today. Simple. Sadness seems such a part of my days that the lack of it feels like something important is missing, like a foot or that last ten pounds. I dreamed last night and early this morning. The first remembered dreams in a long time. The first light and silly dreams since David died. Believe it or not, one dream was of kittens and the other of very small dogs, not quite puppies but close. And walking on a campus that I knew well -- some place that I have dreamed of before with parts of my grammar school playground and convent in it.

I spent the day in chores -- bills, phone calls, emails, letters, and then studying. I went through a huge list of items on my to do list. I took a bag of clothes to good will and visited the bank. Not an exciting lot of activities, but productive and busy. It felt good to get those things done.

While I worked my brain was awhirl. I was watching myself at times. I was aware of how I moved and how what I did felt. I was a character in a story I was writing. I was living someone else's life. I was struck by a strange feeling that (1) David was traveling somewhere and would return at some point in the future or (2) that the last 35 years happened in some completely different way than what I remember. Am I desperately trying to hold on to my life with David and if that fails, it deny all sadness by denying that I never lived that life. Mind you, all this was feeling, not thinking, and so, it was stranger and less explainable than words made it sound.

For today, I was in another place -- a move, possibly sideways, but away from the intense grief of the last almost three months. I would not say I was happy, but I was not sad. I instinctively started making plans -- for the weekend (yard work), for thanksgiving (looking at flights to Maryland). I was enjoying being alone. That was the most remarkable part of the day. I enjoyed being alone and doing my work. I was not achingly lonely alone, as I have been since David died. I was as I always have been alone.

And yet, I am still so shocked when I type those words, "since David died." How could that ever have happened? How could we have been planning our summer one day and calling 911 the next?

I have not thought about the week before David died since it happened. I am beginning to process it now. I am beginning to remember. It is as if I walked though it as an actor, as if some shade of mine did all those things. I am both connected and disconnected from all that I lived through.

I ramble but this is the whirl that has been going on all day inside. And I still say, I was not sad today.