a little less weepy

Maybe the coffee helped.  Who knows.

Well, I just paid off the scooter and wrote checks to pay off Matt’s Vanderbilt bills.  Still have one more left to pay down because I don’t remember how much is left on that balance, but once I get another statement in the mail all Vanderbilt bills should be taken care of.  I think I felt my blood pressure rise as I was writing the two checks for Matt’s 2/21 visit.  I wanted to include nasty notes about how I can’t belive they’re charging me for that (apparently they intubated him when he arrived…probably nothing much else though); why would they have expected him to live with a gaping hole in his head?  On the other hand…I probably would have wanted them to try everything they could if I had been there, frivolous as I may have known it to be. 

But anyway.  Those bills are gone and I’m glad that I don’t have to look at them again.

It was a year ago yesterday that I had my little scooter accident.  I wish Matt was here to celebrate paying for the scooter in a year.  I wish he was here for everything though.

I’m reading this book called How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies.  I might have mentioned it here…can’t remember.  It’s really good. 

“It is not an easy task to withdraw emotional energy and investment from someone you love.  It takes a great deal of time and effort.  It means that all of your ties to that person — your needs for and your feelings, thoughts, memories, hopes, expectations, and dreams about that person and your relationship with him — all must be brought up and revived.  Then each one must be reviewed and felt.  In this way the emotional charge is loosened or defused.”  (231) 

“There are countless ways in which you can [keep your loved one alive through your own life and actions].  For example: Talking about your loved one; Acting on the values and concerns you took from him; Thinking about memories you have of him; Enjoying and appreciating life because of having known, loved, and been influenced by the deceased; Being and acting who you are because of what you were given by your relationship with this person. 

“All of these are ways of keeping your loved one alive through you.  Since he was a special part of you and vice versa, you actually are a part of him that contines to exist in the world despite his death.” (237)

Oh, life.  It’s not fair.  “In the face of all aridity and disenchantment love is perennial as the grass”; but it would seem that love is not the only thing perennial as grass.  I suppose that in the interest of looking at the glass as half full, I should acknkowledge and be grateful for the fact that as long as life will never be fair, at least there will always be love.