8/13/23

 Sunday, August 13, 2023

In bed around 9:30, up at 4:20.  64℉, high of 72℉, clouding up throughout the day, AQI=27!  The wind is NNE at 8 mph, 3-10/15, DPs 60 to 63.  Sunrise at 5:54, sunset at 7:57, 14+2.

Dinner with Caela last night was lovely but it's hard to see her suffering from grief and all that entails, living with suffering.  Surviving spouses of long-term marriages carry a heavy load, a load usually not visible to an onlooker's eye but a persistent heartache and loneliness, and sometimes much more.  We don't think of it while we are living in it, but the married state is a form of continuing life therapy(I suppose 'support' is the better term, but still . . .) simply by virtue of the continuing companionship of which it consists.  In a marriage that is still living, the partners communicate with each other and help (and challenge) each other in many ways, some obvious (division of labor stuff) and some not-so-obvious.  When one or both partners experience loneliness within the marriage, the marriage is in trouble, maybe dead.  Loneliness within a marriage is easy enough to happen when partners 'drift apart' from each other, not only living very separate lives but sharing little other than the roof over their heads at night, some jointly-owned property, and perhaps their children.  Whatever togetherness married partners are fortunate enough to share ends with the death of one of the partners when the survivor is left alone, bereft, forlorn, lonely, perhaps laid low.  I think of my father when my mother died at age 51.  I think of Jimmy A. and Jimmy C. when their Nancys died.  And of course, I think of Geri and me and do so with some dread.

Othwewise by Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed / on two strong legs. / It might have been / otherwise.  I ate / cereal, sweet / milk, ripe, flawless / peach.  It might / have been otherwise.

I took the dog uphill / to the birch wood. / All morning I did / the work I love.

At noon I lay down / with my mate. It might / have been otherwise.

We ate dinner together / at a table with silver / candlesticks.  It might / have been otherwise.

I slept in a bed / in a room with paintings / on the walls, and /planned another day / just like this day.

But one day, I know,

it will be otherwise.

Love is Not Everything by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 

And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 

Yet many a man is making friends with death 

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 

. . . . .