NaNo and Personal Updates
As expected, I’ve fallen far short of the “official” 50,000-word goal of National Novel Writing Month. But I’ve written more in November than I did the month before, and I still have a few days left. So from that perspective, I’ve already gotten what I had hoped to get out of this. It’s all very rough, and will need more work, but it’s progress.
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As for my personal life, well … last week sucked. I’m not sure why everything hit me so much harder, but I’ve got lots of theories. It could be that it’s been a year since Amy first started showing symptoms of cancer, even though we thought it was just spine trouble back then. Or it could be that I’ve finished all of the immediate work I had to do in terms of cleanup and sorting through paperwork and belongings, and now I’m more aware of the emptiness. And of course we’ve got the holidays coming up, as well as her birthday…
We’re gonna be taking a vacation this year over Christmas. Better to get away and do something fun and new than to wake up Christmas morning and have to deal with everything being so wrong.
Side note: vacation planning is hard. But I’ve got flights, rental car, three different hotels, and reservations on activities that required ’em. I think there will be really cool things for all three of us to enjoy.
The whole time I was planning things, I was wishing we’d done this before, when Amy was still with us. But I know she’d be happy we were getting to go. I suspect a lot of things in the foreseeable future will be bittersweet that way.
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Friday will be three months since Amy’s death. I still think about her throughout the day, every day and every night. I hug the memories of being with her, and I wonder what life is going to look like in the future.
I think that may be another reason last week was so hard: the idea that this is it. This is what my life is from now on. Trying to be the best parent I can, to take care of my kids and justify Amy’s trust in me. I think I’m doing pretty well, but it’s exhausting. I’m behind on emails and other correspondence because I just haven’t had the spoons for it all.
I miss my wife, and I’m lonely. I’ve realized that the Venn diagram of these two things isn’t quite a perfect circle, which opens up other questions about whether one day I’d be ready for another relationship, and all of the complicated guilt and loneliness and hope and confusion that comes from thinking about that.
It feels like it would almost be a kind of polyamorous relationship. I’ll never stop loving and missing Amy. But maybe someday I’d be able to love someone else, too?
Or maybe not. It’s a bizarre thought to even poke at.
All I know is that right now, things are hard. They’ve been that way for a year. And I expect they’re going to stay that way for a long time yet.
Alex Bledsoe
November 26, 2019 @ 7:27 pm
The trip is a great idea. We did that last Christmas, which was our first without Charlie. I think it was all that saved me. The memories hit hard enough without the constant reinforcement of familiar surroundings.
All good thoughts your way.
Heather Grove
November 26, 2019 @ 7:46 pm
Thinking of you. I hope the vacation helps you get through the holidays.
James Kilbride
November 26, 2019 @ 8:13 pm
Jim, good luck. Sounds like you and the family may need a little ‘thinking of’. And I do so every time I pick up and reread one of your books.
MWT
November 26, 2019 @ 8:46 pm
My family did that. My dad died in November (25 years ago now). In December we went to Los Angeles for a week or two, visiting all my aunts and uncles and cousins and etc. LA is a very different place from Indiana, and it was my first time in California as an adult. We were officially there to bring his remains to a temple (where my grandmother is now also buried), but it was such a tourism-filled, hectic, and distracting time of getting “not lost, just misdirected!” on all the interstates every single day while stuck in a rental car with each other.
Anyway, I guess I’m agreeing that a vacation is a great idea.
I also think that 3 months in was probably the hardest time, especially for my mom. By then the funeral was over for everyone else, my aunt (mom’s sister) who’d stayed with us for the first month or two had gone home, and THEN we were left with ourselves.
Ziggy Nixon
November 27, 2019 @ 4:23 am
Seems to me that you’re doing ‘great’ even though obviously the definition is skewed right now. It wouldn’t be so hard if she hadn’t meant so much so give yourself, your work and naturally your loved ones around you time to heal. But even being able to realize all this and function like you apparently are is a huge step in the right direction!
Kath Duguid
November 28, 2019 @ 11:12 am
I think it’s a really good idea to have a completely different kind of Christmas, and part of the healing process for your family.
I understand people who have been happily married are far more likely to form new relationships because they know just how good being in a partnership can be, so it may well happen for you again at some time in the future. There’s no need to feel guilty about it. You don’t love a first child less because you have a second child. They are different people and loved differently. It’s the same with a relationship. No need to fret.
Patrick
November 28, 2019 @ 12:26 pm
My mom remarried three years after my dad died 44 years ago, and she still talks about my dad like they are still married. She never stopped loving him, she just found someone else she loved as well.
Your christmas sounds awesome. Can I crash it?
Stay well
KatG
November 28, 2019 @ 10:40 pm
Thank you for your open account of what you are going through. It is like you — and like your wife as well — to try to help others by talking about it as you are dealing with the experience yourself. I hope your family has a peaceful trip that builds good memories.
Dana Lynne
November 29, 2019 @ 9:06 pm
Thank you for the update. The vacation sounds like a great idea for Christmas. And thank you for your musings about love and relationships. Thinking of you all.
Susan
December 15, 2019 @ 5:44 am
Very much not the same situation, but after my parents separated (and eventually divorced) very messily when I was young, the worst part of that first Christmas After was the attempt to make it the same as always, when my father’s absence made it so very much not-the-same. I think a vacation and completely new things to do are a brilliant idea.
Separately, you might find this essay by Emily Yoffe about being the second wife of a man whose first wife died of cancer meaningful and moving. Maybe too moving; it always has me in tears, and I have no personal experience of such a situation from any perspective. Relevant quote: “I heard from others how protective, tender, and devoted he was to her. Because of their relationship, I knew that this was a man who could be trusted, who stayed, for better or worse. I also knew that it’s possible to have more than one love of your life. I am the love of his, and so was she.” Echoes your thought about it being sort of polyamorous.
(hoping html in a comment doesn’t make a total mess…feel free to edit if it does)