Peace and Remembrance

Yesterday was my eighteenth wedding anniversary, AKA the sixteenth wedding anniversary I’ve spent alone since my husband Michael died suddenly and without warning in 2004. Usually, observing this day and remembering how wonderful Michael was in all his allness crushes me. (I’m not going to lie.)

But this year was different.

(Why? I don’t know.)

I decided that I was going to do my best to remember Michael as he was. How he loved to make me laugh. How he enjoyed doing just about anything with me. How he wanted to hear whatever I had to say on whatever subject, and about how interested he was to hear about my day even when I had been sick for three days running and hadn’t even been able to go to the computer.

In short, Michael was an outstandingly good husband as well as an outstandingly good man. And I felt better for remembering him that way.

Many anniversaries, I’ve thought more about what I’ve lost than what I’ve gained. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, either. It’s how I felt at the time, it was authentic, and it was the best I could do to process my catastrophic level of grief.

But this time, I was able to think more about what Michael and I did together. How we wrote, together and separately, and talked our stories out together. How we watched current events, sometimes bemusedly, sometimes with great insight, and could talk them through in a historical context. How we were able to talk about spiritual matters, him being a Zen Buddhist and me being a spiritual seeker who probably best aligns with NeoPaganism (but isn’t NeoPagan enough for some because I still appreciate the life and works of Jesus Christ and try to make common cause with what makes sense to me, especially “love one another”). How we were able to forge a life together despite previous divorces…

Anyway, concentrating on what we were good at together, and how good we were together, helped me a lot. I was able to get through the day with more peace than usual.

I will always wish Michael were still alive, beside me, on this plane of existence. I wish he were still here, writing his stories, writing with me, helping me with my stories, and editing for other people. I wish he were able to tell me what he thinks of the state of the world — most particularly the coronavirus concerns and the #BlackLivesMatter protests, though I’d be interested to hear his (likely trenchant) takes on the current crop of DC politicians (most especially President Trump, someone I don’t think Michael would’ve cared for at all due to that gentleman’s previous experiences as a reality TV star). I wish he were still here so I could see his smile, hear his laugh, enjoy his touch, and get to watch and listen and observe how he got through the world with such serenity and optimism.

But as he’s not alive on this plane — though I do believe the spirit is eternal, and that love never dies either, so in those senses he’ll always be with me — I can only do what I can to remember. And yesterday, I chose to remember the good.

Musings on September…and Mortality

Folks, it’s no secret that I do not like September.

Why? Well, the main reason is that my husband Michael died during this month. So when the weather turns to fall (or at least the calendar does; in Wisconsin, we’re still in summertime mode for whatever reason), I start having trouble with all sorts of things.

You see, it’s hard to create when you’re fighting against grief. Because grieving takes energy. A surprising amount of it, actually…and even though I try hard to set that all aside, sometimes I just can’t.

Mind, I know my husband Michael would not want it to be this way. He was all about laughter, and joyfulness, and creativity…this isn’t the legacy he’d want, for me to feel terrible during the month of September.

Even so, I feel what I feel. Trying to change that doesn’t do any good.

So what do I do when grief gets to be too much? Usually, I read something amusing or divert myself with sports documentaries. (I’m quite partial to ESPN’s “30 for 30” series.)

Sometimes, though, I just have to experience the mourning. I don’t like doing this, but by accepting these awful feelings, I can better put them aside. (I learned this trick from Michael, who was a Zen Buddhist. He felt it made no sense to deny how you truly feel about anything. But if you accept the feelings, whatever they are, and then tell yourself, “I’ve heard them” or “I’ve felt them,” then it’s a little easier to set it aside. I’m not sure why this works, exactly, but it does.)

What’s frustrating is when I run into someone who says, “Barb, it’s been eleven years. Why in the Hell can’t you get past this?”

I know it’s been nearly eleven years. Yet some days, it feels like yesterday; on others, it feels like forever.

Michael was by far the most important person in my life, and I miss him every day. He saw me for what I was, loved every part of me (even the parts of myself I have a hard time loving), helped me create the Elfyverse, cheered me on while I wrote an earlier draft (or two) of CHANGING FACES…he was my biggest cheerleader, my biggest partisan, and my best friend, along with being the only man I’ve ever met who truly understood me.

Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to “get over” his loss. Because it truly is an incalculable loss, and I am well aware that it is. And I refuse to deny this truth, because if I did, I’d be a much different — and far lesser — person.

Besides, I don’t think you ever “get past” someone you loved deeply. I think all you can do is go on; you don’t “move on,” exactly — you go on, with the memories you have and the experiences you’ve had, and you do your best to build on them.

I know Michael would want me to continue to fight it out with CHANGING FACES, and he’d probably say in the end, no one will be able to tell just where I’ve struggled, and why.

So even though September, in general, is a bad month, I’m going to continue to do my best.

Michael wouldn’t want it any other way.

Commentary on Charleston, plus cover reveal for “To Survive the Maelstrom”

Folks, I’d planned to do this cover reveal today for my forthcoming short story, “To Survive the Maelstrom,” before the events in Charleston last night.

Because this story deals with loss, grief, and a soldier with PTSD finding a way to continue on with his life, I decided to go through with it anyway. I plan to release this story sometime next week in time for my thirteenth wedding anniversary.

But before I do that, I’d like to comment a little on the Charleston shooting.

My heart is heavy. I don’t understand why anyone would sit through an hour’s worth of Bible study, then calmly and coldly shoot nine people to death.

I know that the man who’s been ID’ed as the shooter is a self-proclaimed racist. I know that he wanted to “kill black people,” and left one person alive to explain just why he did this. I also know the shooter is only twenty-one years old…because I don’t like talking about someone so evil, so twisted, and so bizarre, I’m not going to give this perpetrator the dignity of having a name. (I think he lost that when he took those nine people’s lives in cold blood.)

Anyway, while I cannot understand the shooting in Charleston at all — a church, of all places, should be safe, even in times like these — I do understand how it feels to live after grief. And overpowering grief is very difficult to bear.

This is why I wrote “To Survive the Maelstrom.”

Note that Michael, my late husband, is credited for two reasons. One, I’m playing in his Atlantean Union universe. And two, I found the story of how Peter, my hero, met his weremouse (an empathic, sentient creature), to be uplifting and inspiring — and Michael had the bare bones of it in one of his unfinished manuscripts.

The blurb for “To Survive the Maelstrom” will go something like this:

Command Sergeant-Major Sir Peter Welmsley has lost everything he holds dear and now suffers from PTSD. He wonders why he lived, when so many others died at Hunin — including his fiancée, Lydia, and his best friend Chet.

Into his life comes Grasshunter’s Cub, an empathic, sentient creature known to those on Heligoland as a “weremouse.” Grasshunter’s Cub is nearly adult, and knows he doesn’t fit in with the rest of the weremice in his tribe.

Weremice are known for their ability to help their bond-mates. But how can this young weremouse find a way to bring Peter back from the brink of despair and start living again?

Ultimately, “To Survive the Maelstrom” is a story of hope and faith, told in an unusual way. I hope readers of military science fiction will enjoy it.

I also hope that showing someone who’s lost everything and found a way to claw his way back will be inspirational, maybe even heartwarming.

Because we need stories like this right now.

When Life is More Important than Writing

The past few days, I’ve not blogged, I’ve rarely spoken (except to good friends), and I’ve been unusually uncommunicative.

Why?

Well, my cousin Jacki passed away suddenly. She was only a few years older than me, and I hadn’t seen her in over ten years . . . but I always felt close to her.

Maybe it’s strange that I’m saying that, as I hadn’t seen her in years, hadn’t even talked to her by telephone since before my husband Michael died, and mostly had kept track of her doings online.

But I’d hoped to see her this summer. . . I hadn’t yet figured out how, as money is always a problem, but I still planned to go see her and my other cousins. Didn’t tell her, or my cousins, because I didn’t want to get their hopes up —

But now, I won’t have the chance.

Jacki is dead. And now, it’s left to me and anyone else who cared about her to comfort those still alive — most particularly her sisters and brothers.

Mind you, it’s hard to know what to say at a time like this, even though I’ve been through something similar. Grief is different for everyone, you see, and it’s a journey that I’ve intensely disliked . . . I’d not wish this on my worst enemy. Much less my cousins, who are normally full of life and all its joyous exuberance.

Even so, I will do and say what I can, at least at a practical level. That’s all I can do.

But anything I say to them seems pointless right now. I know it will not bring Jacki back.

This is a time when life has trumped writing. All of my words seem without resonance, without purpose . . . without life.

I know that’s an illusion, mind. Words are all we have, and perhaps by speaking of my cousin at her funeral, and by continuing to remember her, we’ll summon up some of the good memories — of which there were many.

Even so, my heart remains troubled.

I’ve had a bellyful of mortality. I’ve lost my amazing husband Michael, my best friend Jeff, several other friends, my Aunt Micki — my grieving cousins’ mother — last year, and now, I’ve lost Cousin Jacki as well.

This just does not seem fair or just, at all, no matter what the rewards of Heaven are said to be by various religions.