Tag Archives: Peg

Day in and Day Out

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I am enveloped in a fog, a mist; I reside in a magical place, a place between two worlds. One commonly spoken of as reality, and another place, the dream world where I can once again live with Peg.

It is dusk now, figuratively in the sense that I am coming to the end of my own life, and actually dusk, a forbidden time for me. Dusk can be a time of incredible beauty or a time of great sorrow. A time for crying and for dying. A time of gratitude for a day and a life well lived. Or a time spent reflecting on a great loss.

The yin and the yang, happiness and hopelessness, richness and loss. A jumble of emotions, which overload my neural networks and cause me great confusion. A place of in-between.

I have been living here, in this place of in-between for months. Not fully being able to understand what happened to me, what happened to us, the us forged over a lifetime of living in each other’s company. 

It is worse now. Four months from when she died and my daily grieving is unrelentless. Everything I think about, even my dreams, trigger my realization that Peg is gone. The worst times are when I awake from a dream state where I actually can hear her and feel her body next to mine, exactly as it was, perfect in every detail as if I had gone back to the morning when we both got up to start the day, the day when she died.

Grieving upsets my whole body, not just my mind. My body has been finely tuned, tuned to operate on a schedule learned and reaffirmed from all of my daily experiences. Tuned to live everyday with Peg. With Peg’s death, my mind and body suffered a terrible shock. Now nothing is as it was before. A huge part of me, the part that was Peg, is now missing. I can barely function with the pathetic part, me, that still exists.

It is common wisdom that the longer our loving relationship was, the greater the depth of despair.

Looking through the research online offered for the bereaved, I found a number of similarities to my experiences and the experiences of other widowers. Confusion, chest pains, headaches, heart aches, shortness of breath, depression, unexplained body pains, weight loss, weight gain, nightmares, not enough sleep, too much sleep. The list is endless, all caused by a mind/body combination seriously compromised by a great trauma. The trauma of losing my dearly beloved.

In the first month after her death I was stunned, falling into a condition of doing the daily chores and finishing the needed paperwork caused by her death, I was on auto-pilot. Then as weeks wore on, I was forced to create a new daily routine without Peg. The persistent reminders of our life together and the realization that she was never coming back got the best of me.

One day the pain in my chest became very great and would not subside. I knew I didn’t have heart trouble, for in the past I kept a regular schedule of physical exams, no heart abnormality was found. I began to believe it was the well-known broken-heart syndrome, Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Although serious, I read the symptoms tend to lessen over time. I decided not to pursue it with a cardiologist, preferring to wait longer and call my doctor. 

My doctor, a man younger than I but experienced with the elderly, returned my call promptly. I told him of my plight. My doctor knows I prefer not to take prescription medicines unless I absolutely have to. He prescribed a medicine used to treat surgery anxiety and pain. The medicine did not have to be taken every day to be effective. I could use it on demand. The downside is that it is a powerful sedative and I shouldn’t drive or expect to be a productive writer while it is in my system. One pill a day when needed is the prescription. It is very effective. I take it on occasion when my grief becomes overwhelming.

I know what I am doing, I am buying time to allow me the needed consideration of what has happened. Time to piece together a new life, a life without Peg.

***

It is 4:30 a.m., I awake fully expecting to hear and feel Peg lying next to me. It is not to be, she is gone and never coming back. I burst into heaves of crying, tears upon tears, sob after sob without any breaks until I am finally spent of that memory, which triggered such strong emotion.

I lie in bed not wanting to get up, time passes, 5:30, then 7, and my Protestant work ethic prods me from my tear-stained pillow and the warm comfort of our bed. It will be another day of very little productivity and great pain. The medicine works well, almost too well. My chest pain subsides and I enter into a quiet, peaceful wakefulness.

I talk to Peg, asking her to wait for me. I will be along soon enough. I ask for her forgiveness for any transgression and pain I may have caused her during our time together. No answer is immediately forthcoming, I wish it was. These are the questions I will have to answer on my own, making the pain of her loss much greater.

To those of faith in the power of the Universe, it is known the answers may not come immediately, nor in a form I would expect, but the answers will come over time. Time is one of the problems. The first two years after a great loss is a dangerous time for widowers. The odds of taking my own life to be with Peg are very high. The thought of being with her considerably outweighs the life of pain I am enduring now.

Several years ago, Peg and I put together a plan of yearly spending in case we needed help several times a week or daily to keep us in our home as long as we could. Those plans and the proper papers to allow an orderly transfer of joint assets to the survivor allowed us to create a budget to pay for the needed help. We have been fortunate in having a number of qualified people willing to serve us if the time and need came. Well, that time and need is here.

The way I feel now, grieving so intently, I wouldn’t be able to care for myself easily without help. I do not want to burden our children or our friends with what has become my daily needs.

Our world is in the grip of a global pandemic, Covid-19, greatly complicating my basic needs of shopping and housekeeping and taking care of the cats and our goat, let alone satisfying my need for contact with another person. The nights are the worst, I am alone.

When Peg had her stroke in October of 2020, the Covid-19 lockdown had been lifted at the hospital, I was able to be with her in the ICU and arrange hospice. I came to the realization Peg would not want to live with her considerable infirmities caused by her stroke. Peg’s health power stipulated she did not want extraordinary health care intervention. Peg would rather die in the comfort of her home with her beloved cats, her children and me.

Peg passed away within four days of bringing her home. Still, I ask myself daily if there was anything I could have done, in retrospect, that would have created a different outcome for Peg. These are the questions that make my grieving so difficult as well as the constant vision and remembrance of Peg’s last hours.

During our fifty-two-year relationship, we were together most of the time, except for nights when I traveled for business or the few times I indulged in a hobby where I would need to stay away overnight. We were always together, which included the fact we slept in the same bed for our entire relationship.

Peg and I often discussed the cases of elderly couples dying within hours of each other. We felt we were always connected to each other’s hearts. I seemed to know Peg’s thinking intuitively without asking. In our bed during the night, I was awakened before Peg moved around in bed. She would ask, “Did I wake you?” “No,” I would reply. “I was already awake.” Which was the truth, I had anticipated the change in Peg’s natural sleeping rhythm even as I was sleeping.   

In a study done by Emilio Ferrer, a UC Davis psychology professor who conducted a series of studies on couples in romantic relationships, he found that couples connected to monitors measuring heart rates and respiration get their heart rates in sync, and they breathe in and out at the same intervals. This fact was important to me when I read this quote from Mimi Guarneri, MD, “Couples at night, their heart rhythm goes into a synchronized pattern, which raises some very interesting issues. What happens when that pattern is broken? Or it’s not there?”

Peg is no longer here with me. Not only is the synchronized pattern broken, no familiar pattern exists for me. I am broken, trying desperately to make a future out of the torn remnants of our past.     

Prophecy

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Prophecy

I consider many of the stories I write are a prophecy of things to come. I believe this because I believe in the quantum of quantum physics.

There is a possibility of many parallel Universes in existence at the same time. They are completely identical except for the outcome. Within this line of thinking, I become responsible for my future and its outcome.

For me the quantum part means that I see quantum physics as if it were two parts: the unknown magical part, quantum and the physical part, science, known as physics.

All new concepts and discoveries are not believable at first. However, over time these ideas gain credence. I have my reasons to believe that I am one of many who have a glimmering about the magical part of quantum.  

I believe that some of these multi-universes operate in the realm of the supernatural as we are becoming, however rudimentary, to understand. The realm of the spirit world of angels, demons, souls and spirits. The all-knowing Universe that I write about. 

Peg was my lifeline, analogous to the ‘line’ in my story, The Tight Wire.

Peg saved me by being my ‘line,’ which I held onto for dear life. Alas, she was also my safety net, which allowed me to take chances and walk a different line. With her I was able to constantly, but carefully, step outside my safety zone.

With Peg’s passing, my lifeline wire is fraying.

I believe Peg’s arrival in my life was by design, design of my own making, a quantum design, not the responsibility of my beloved Universe. I am prophesying my own future in the way I conduct my daily life and, in my thinking, and writing. I simply do not know the outcome in advance.

Now that Peg is on her next Journey, my lifeline is no longer connected to any substance. I am falling.

I am desperately trying to find my way without the aid of any light; falling through an endless void with no compass. My Angel is not there to illuminate my way, she is there only to help me complete my earthly journey, no matter what the ending will be.

In my story, I Make my Future, I address my own need to make my future by envisioning many quantum outcomes. The one I choose will be the way life goes for me.

There is no bottom to my fall this time; this is it. I am prepared to join Peg, or make a different outcome.

Excerpts from some of my stories are set below. I leave it to you to see the intimate connection of the words, which are there only, because as a writer, I am compelled to write the chain of words even if I do not understand them and their connection with the future.  

Excerpts from The Tight Wire

There was less than a thousand feet to go. The wire was heating up, the grease working itself out between the fine strands. During all the years he had spent learning, he found the wire had a life of its own, telling him everything, telegraphing its feelings through the buffalo hide soles of his slippers. But now, the wire was telling him it was dying.

Prepared in France, the wire was the finest of its kind, very strong, attention had been paid when it was woven. As always, he had supervised the rigging for this walk, spending hours going from side to side checking the tension and the security of the anchors. This change in temperature was unexpected. He had waited for three days for overcast, cool weather, with no wind. Halfway through, the sun broke through the clouds and warmed the wire. Had the gods parted the clouds to peer down at his walk? The tightwire began to slacken from the heat; a fresh breeze made balance difficult. He must have offended the gods; one cannot walk wire without the consent of the gods.

Walking was the province of the gods. You must always be in grace with the gods because only they prevented your fall.

Wallenda fell in South America, they said he didn’t supervise the rigging. He had offended the gods by calling it, `The Last Great Walk.’

He had been afraid before. At first, he felt paralyzed, his legs turned to lead, he stopped and balanced. The braided wire dropped one inch; the ends of his pole deflected up one inch. He began to walk and then run across the tightwire, the weight of 38 years of life left his body. He was light; he flew across a wire that was no longer pressed against the callused, godless soles of his feet.

When I wrote these words, I intuitively knew my life was intertwined with Peg. If Peg passed, my lifeline would become unraveled. How would I be able to exist without her?

Excerpts from I Make My Future

My future does not exist until I do something to move from my present energy place to some other energy place.

Tomorrow is an empty place. It doesn’t exist until I fill it. I can fill tomorrow with today or I can fill tomorrow with something new.

I have the power to change tomorrow by changing the energy of tomorrow by my greatest power, my thoughts.

This is my example of the power of Quantum thought. I think it, so it will be. My current state of grief is causing me great mental and physical harm.

My conundrum: here, with Peg’s infinite living energy around me and finish out my life on earth, or leave my earthly life now and join Peg in completeness in the Universe.

I believe in Life after Death but still, while currently falling through the void, I must find a reason to want to stay here. Only with that reason will I be able to arrest my fall.

 

Excerpt from Life after Earthly Death

It is said: physicist Stephen Hawking’s believed that after death, we simply turn to dust. If I believe his teachings and I have something important to contribute, I need to contribute it now. Or, is there an alternative?

 

Apparently, Hawking’s also believed that the Universe and Time all began at the same moment, the moment of the Big Bang: a theory that is all his science can prove, so in a way, as great a thinker as he was, he was held hostage by his science.

 

Personally, I am not held hostage because I do not need to prove anything and I have a different understanding of Time. Although rarely discussed, Time is the important part of the puzzle. The Big Bang was 13.8 billion years ago: an unfathomable period of Time for a human, but perhaps a mere blip in the life of a spirit or an Angel.

My explanation and knowledge of Time is why I know I will be back. I won’t need to wait another 13.8 billion years, because new Universes are created all the time. Other Universes are running concurrently with ours. Everything I do, say, or write is flowing into the other Universes as wisdom.

I am here, and there, in the same moment, but nevertheless, different. My contribution is made now, here, and in a different Universe concurrently. My spirit is in multiple Universes at once. I know.

 

Two Doors

Two doors in front of you stand closed.

Which to take? One enters on the realities of life, atomic dirt and strife.

The very thing you now despise.

The other enters upon your dreams, mystic clear and clean.

The very thing you idolize.

Now you must decide.

Each is clearly marked.

Some will choose the door marked life, to conquer all its dreadful stink,

and by winning self-esteem find the door marked dreams.

Some will open the other door and through the power of their dreams,

gain the strength to stand before the door marked life.

Some will exist forever, their hand outstretched into the air, and never open either door.

They will need no life, nor have no dreams.

The point: I find it is possible for me to live in the boundary between the multi-universes. I only know I live in this boundary after I read what I write, otherwise I consider my existence in this boundary normal and realistic and not magical thinking. My wish is that the above explanation will give you new insight into my thinking and how I believe I make my way through life by living the ending in advance. I will, therefore I am.