6-22-06
Good Afternoon My Darling –
Sindy called and is lining up people to help her. It’s piecemeal, iffy and temporary, and I may have to renew my offer to drive “Mom” up to Portland.
Maybe I’m getting a bit better. Th e 20th passed two days ago without my noting, or having to endure reactions to the 9-month anniversary. Part of me is ashamed for missing it. Part of me is relieved.
Got $400 out of my ebay guy, so made a nice deposit at Citizen’s.
This has been the first paycheck in a long time where I haven’t had to dip into my savings to get to the next paycheck. So the raise is a big help. But upcoming are: 2 new tires to pass inspection, the inspection itself, the P.O. box renewal, and the resumption of car insurance payments. At least three come up in July, and the initial insurance payment will be high. So, more income remains my top priority. God damn it, this sucks! It’s like the mice are taking bigger nibbles….
The ebay guy has an autistic son in his early teens. Completely spacial. Anything he sees he can use and reproduce, and nothing else. Even language. If he’s seen words and phrases he can sort them out and use them, but he can’t generate his own language. Can draw anything he sees but nothing comes from inside. So strange and fascinating, and so frustrating to victim and parents alike….
The ebay guy is very disorganized and, I think, a procrastinator, but I believe and trust him when he says he doesn’t really know how much he owes me. I have to rely on my people-reading skills. I just have to prod gently, suggest and be patient.
Would you believe it’s going to rain, often hard, for at least four days starting tomorrow? Haven’t seen this kind of rain here. I suspect the skies are crying, like I am, over the loss of someone very rare, very special.
6-23-06
Hi My Love –
IBS strikes again, four trips so far (10:30, I’m at work) and at least one to go, despite 2 immodium. Have that sour smell you get when your system’s out of whack and you sweat. Felt obliged to apologize to coworkers.
6-25-06
Good Afternoon My Love –
Skipped yesterday — sorry baby — but talked to you a lot. Told you how wonderful it was to be in a relationship where each cared so much about making the other as happy as possible; how observant of each other we were, and how we let each other know we’d been pleased, and touched. I know I had in the back of my mind most times how I might keep bringing small pleasant surprises into your life, how much I loved pleasing you. Old stuff, but I thought it again.
I apologized, unnecessarily I suppose, for not having more pictures of you from later in your life. Of course there are basically none from the last nine months. Those images are burned deeply into my mind, and to see you that way would tear me up. Even to see you in the more recent years when the steroids puffed you up reminds me of all you suffered and the cruelty of the denouement. And I know you’d rather not have those pictures shown anyway.
But god, you were something even during the worst: tough, positive, sweet. Impatient, in pain, suffering. Loving, grateful, even horny. God broke the mold after He made you, baby, partly because you’re unique, partly because He screwed up so badly with your body (not that it wasn’t excellent on the outside — it was!)
Heard from Lisa, still fairly euphoric (if tired!) but still laudably cautious, and from Sindy, who’s getting help, at least for now, and is somewhat better.
Last week I made several unnecessary, brain-cramp-type mistakes at work, including putting postage on letters that would’ve been OK six months ago before they raised the rates, and forgetting to put postage on a 50-lb box to France, that will cause ECS’s petty cash account problems, since I had to pay the $150 or so out of my own pocket and will have to be reimbursed. Dumb. OK, I was sick and blue, but I always worry when I do things like that. Best way to calm my fears is to focus well this week.
6-26-06
Good Morning Beloved –
Love you.
Am feeling OK today. GI problems gone for the last three days, happily. Hope I can focus this week better than last. Screwed up several times last week — brain cramp stuff. Was numbering boxes for a shipment, and went 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10….Why? No clue. Priced several letters going to Europe at last year’s rates. Then I had a box going to France and got it to the P.O. before realizing I’d put no postage on it. Hope my unhappy GI tract was the reason. Immediately thought of Alzheimer’s.
Though there’s one story I’m maybe a third through and another I just began last week, I’m writing about your haircut at Jerry’s, that poignant, heartbreaking incident. Telling it through others’ eyes; just think it’ll be more effective, more layered and resonant that way. We’ll see. And yes, it’s taking its emotional toll. So be it. The story insisted on being told, so I felt I had no choice but to write it.
6-27-06
Good Morning My Best Baby –
I was a good Doogie yesterday.
Work, walk, writing, exercise, drawing class, a bit of winning poker filled the day nicely. The price: one sore left leg.
Almost finished the haircut story. Hope it works. It’s the first time I’m writing about you, other than this journal and emails. I want it to be subtly but deeply touching. We’ll see if it is.
Stanley’s getting antsy about my lyrics for your song. Imagines some big success. Sure! — well, you never know….
Hope you don’t mind that I haven’t kept in touch with J. I like and respect her to some extent, and am grateful to her (the $1K that helped so much) but because she has that flimsy excuse for never calling — the woman’s almost wealthy, and she won’t get a phone service that has an H.P.-to-Revere call be local? Gimme a break — I have to initiate the call and I just don’t want to. Nothing much to tell her, know what she’s going to talk about: Northeastern, and everything she has to put up with; the condo and everything she has to put up with; travel and everything she has to put up with; kids ditto. T. S. Eliot; Red Sox. I know she’s basically fine. So I don’t call. May email her. But sooner or later I’ll have to listen to her talk about how devasted she is by your passing, and I guess I don’t want to hear it.
Still a good Doogie. Worked, walked (6 quarters, 2 dimes, 3 pennies and a T token), finished the story. Will exercise.
I so want the story to be good. Much more than the others. I want people to cry a little, to hear an ambulance and think, as I do, what misery it means to someone’s life. I want them to pay attention to the small scenes of great dramas that are acted out all around them if they’d only see. And I don’t know who’s going to tell me whether it’s good or not, because neither Tom nor anyone else I might show it to has as much objectivity as I need, since like me they all knew and loved you and see your death as a loss to the world.
And yes, I cried when I finished it.
Will send it to Tom anyway, with a note discussing objectivity and asking him if he knows someone who can give a qualified appraisal.
I feel it’s good. I just don’t trust my feelings.
6-28-06
Good Morning Beloved –
Had a couple of emails that will interest you.
N. writes that she’s told Bryan to leave and wants a divorce. Girls OK with it — as is they hadn’t figured out the basics long before N. would accept them. N. speculated you’d be pleased. Of course, high fives should be withheld until we see if she actually follows through. Will write back to the effect that it’s wonderful/horrible/long-overdue/tragic news.
D. wrote. She and Abra are now openly feuding and refuse to contact each other any more, all over the headstone’s inscription which will say “loving godfather” but not “loving brother.” That was it for D. I agree with her, partly because I like D. a lot more than Abra who’s again revealed her self-serving side (while I admit she was great with Freddie), partly because in the last decade of his life Freddie did form close ties with siblings, and partly because Freddie was into inclusion, not exclusion, and was able to grow beyond his pain and alienation until his life encompassed you, D. and Stevie. Too bad Abra can’t demonstrate the same maturity.
Lisa finally read the laundromat and fever dream pieces, though she felt I expected her to critique them. I didn’t — unless she wanted to. I just wanted to include Lisa in this, since she inherits my history (and, in all likelihood, little else).
Have continued my small but disturbing memory lapses. Forgot to call in my hours with Janet on Saturday; remembered last night. Forgot to put away my pot paraphernalia yesterday morning; fortunately, Jimmy didn’t need to work in the place. Only consolation is that I remembered that I forgot. Scary.
Not sure what story to work on next. I’d gotten part-way through an incident where Jane had a migraine and I needed to keep the noise down. In fact it wasn’t much, except I took care of her instead of vice versa; it grew to include standing up to a boorish adult, a subtle turning point in a kid’s view of himself. But as it came out it couched itself in the context of Jane’s violence, an extraneous issue. Take that context away and it sounds more like a sit-com setup, where silence is what’s needed and noise is all you get. Think I may play it that way, with my prototype Me trying his best but being awkward, clumsy and nervous, making noise by mistake, then redeeming himself by standing up to the adult. Think I may have to deal with a beating directly, perhaps combining a run-of-the-mill beating with the incident where she probably broke my nose.
So I guess I have two stories waiting, unless another of our incidents forces its way to the front of the line at “A Haircut” did. The first candidate is the whole BI/MICU incident, focussing on your relationship with Lowney, his overconfidence and hubris, and redemption after I went to him. It’s a complex story and may be beyond me right now. Haircut takes place in one hour at one locale, but this covers two locales and several weeks, with some additional background. (May call it “Trust Your Doctor”.)
