Worth Writing


December, 10:07 pm
Filed under: dying, living, seanna

It is time for you to understand and admit that you do not need to eat chocolate just because it’s Christmas.

Excuse me for talking to myself out loud there for a moment but the situation was getting completely out of hand.  There are three of us co-habitating for the holidays and the other two crazy people keep leaving their hordes of chocolate lying about…alone, lonely, unguarded…vulnerable to attack.  *smile*

 It’s a relief  to be able to joke again without having to choke it out.  The funny fate of the chocolate is bittersweet, though.  So much sweetness has gone out of my life with the deat of my Seanna that I find myself indulging – overindulging, really – in the rich and sweet ingestible delights in an unconscious effort to reclaim the delight that died with my beloved.

 What a year.  I’m not ready for another one yet.  (Too bad, so sad, sorry for your luck, Chuck!)  Seanna loved to say that.  She couldn’t speak in complete sentences unless they rhymed or she sang them.  Yes, she was interesting.  And yes, life is infinitely dull without her.  Regardless, I know it’s time to get busy living or get busy dying. 

 On January 19th it will be one year since I bought my new home in Hamilton, and it’s still a half-finished renovation disaster area.  It’s going to stay that way for a long while, too, because my renovator’s truck was stolen a few days before Christmas.  So here I am.  I can write endlessly about what was, and muse happily about what will be, but there is no “is”.  At least there doesn’t feel as though there is an “is”.  I’m just sort of…here.  I can find plenty of things to do, but they would just be busy-making activities.  My present is purposeless.  No one waits.  No one needs.

 Oh wow.  I keep forgetting to add myself to the category of “people in my life”.  I wait.  I need.  For?  I wait for the energy of enthusiasm to reappear.  I have a need for a spiritual fire to relight itself and lead me somewhere, anywhere.  I have sat at this computer day and night for weeks now, reading everyone else’s comments and communications, but only rarely have I been able to move myself to make a noise or a contribution.  All that is in me now seems so unnecessary to the world around me that I am not inspired to remark or recount.

This is just perception of course.  A misperception, surely.  Nonetheless, while others celebrate the miracle of the birth of the baby Jesus, I’ve been tampering with a miracle of my own: struggling to give birth to myself.  Wish me luck.

Steph

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dancing into the light
December, 5:05 pm
Filed under: art, dying, living, seanna

seanna 

The sun is shining today, a shockingly delicious treat considering the endless gray of late.  There is nothing bluer than a bright sky so long unseen.  Criminy, it’s like the dawning of hope itself.  (yes, it has been VERY bleak for a while) 

And so…I rise.  Before noon even.  Also a rarity these days.  When Seanna left she took all the fun out of our lives.  She was the ringmaster, the clown, the lion tamer, and the entire high wire act.  Every moment was either tragedy or ecstasy, but no one can deny that she lived her life dancing into the light…of oncoming trains and heaven both.  Regardless, she was The Show.

 And now…I rise, and wait for the show to begin, and grieve because the show is over, and wonder what the next act might be.  Supposedly I’m the star of my own life story now, but I could never be so charming and horrifying and outrageous as the former star, though I’m tempted to try.  There is no way to carry on without her.  She was our lives.  She and her sister, Indra.  They were the center of it all.  Without them an entirely new Show, new Life, must be designed.  I was hoping Indra would come back into the center of her father’s life, but it seems not to be.  A shame.  A silly shame.

 Forgive me for so seldom mentioning Indra.  It is not that she was less important, because that’s ridiculously untrue, but she was important to me in ways different from her sister.  An entirely different relationship that was so sadly not a success, but not for lack of trying.  It just wasn’t meant to be. 

 I wish I could take on the spirit of Seanna and spend the rest of my life dancing into the light, but I’m more quiet and curious by nature.  My own recklessness and rebellion is directed toward my art rather than my relationships.  And so that is where I must begin.  With my art.  When I find out what that looks like in the physical absence of my Muse (Seanna), I will share it with you.

 steph

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Getting Plastered (on ice cream)
November, 4:40 am
Filed under: dying, living | Tags: ,

Last week was Seanna’s birthday.  She would have been 16.  16 and most certainly not sweet.  *smile* We loved her dearly for that gorgeous wildness.  Truly, Seanna was the Wild Woman I want to be again.  I was overly optimistic about the day not being difficult for me, for us.  We didn’t celebrate her birthday grandly mainly because she didn’t understand that particular marking of time.  It meant nothing to her.  As far as she believed she had always existed and so had we.  But this year it meant everything to me.  Just everything.  I completely fell apart and haven’t quite done up the seams yet.  I miss her so much I feel sick to my stomach.  I dissolved into tears and they flow still. 

Grief is not like a broken arm; it does not heal in six weeks.  There is no cast, and if there were certainly the heart and soul would not be made whole again within six weeks, able to bear the weight of daily living.  No.  There is something interesting about that six week mark though.  I stayed in bed about that long after she died and only at six weeks did the tears and pain crash over me.  A week since her birthday, I’ve not been out of my pyjamas for two days now and am nearly to the bottom of my second bucket of ice cream.  Bucket, darlings, not “bowl”.  I keep Clarissa’s “Women Who Run With Wolves” nearby and dip into every few hours.  She’s writing this for women *exactly* like me and there is so, so much to digest.  So much that is difficult.  I can’t concentrate for the pain it brings to the surface.

Steph

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Saying Goodbye
August, 3:48 pm
Filed under: dying, living, worthwriting

sleepy summer couch days with dad 

In early December I moved away from my beautiful home in Dundas, and away from the children I raised for ten years.  Too heartbreaking to explain the reasons right now, but I couldn’t live with the wild, angry youngest teenaged daughter anymore.  My older daughter – and make no argument, for in all my heart and soul she is – was hardest to leave.  And now she has left me.  I buried my beloved Seanna (aka Stephanie’s Monkey) on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007. 

Just as falling in love with her was a process, so is saying goodbye to her.  She was tough to love, tough to leave, and I don’t know how to begin to grieve her.  She lived for 15 years, and I had her for ten of those, so I suppose I start the process with a holy Thank You.  Sleep well, Monkey Me.

steph

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