Here, There, Everywhere

"When you say 'I'm from here,' do you mean you're from Washington State or do you mean from this part of the U.S.?"  my new hair stylist - - thirtyish, wearing a crisp white shirt, a black velvet vest and jeans stuffed into green very chic cowboy boots,  not to mention her wonderful bangs which were thinned and styled just right, not like my big bang clumps dropping down from someplace near the middle of my head.  "Because," she went on, "some people, when they say they're from here, they mean Oregon, or Idaho. California, even."

"No, I mean here," I replied, "or pretty much here, as in some thirty miles away.  I mean, I'm from Silverdale."

"Wow," Penny said, her head hanging down nearly to my side and looking upwards as she cut what she called an angle into my hair, "and where did you come from before Silverdale?"

"Nowhere," I said.  "Just - - Silverdale. I was born there. My father was born there. His father came there as a teen. My grandfather came here. My great-grandfather came here.  All my cousins are from Silverdale.We grew up there. Of course, nothing was there in those days but a feed store, a Chevon station, a bake shop and a kind of variety store. Anyway, Bainbridge Island was here, and we lived - - there."

She stopped her hair cutting.

"But - - " she butted.

"Yes?" I yessed.

"That can't be. I mean, you're so - -fashion forward!"
Of course I can't have been from Silverdale because I am, at sixty-eight years old,   so- -- fashion foward.

She dropped her head way down low again, but now on the other side, and asked the question that made me laugh for the rest of the day.  The question she asked was, "Are you sure?"

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      Grief does not end and love does not die and my Jim dreams have begun again in a new and, for me (and for poor Jim, if dreams were really real) awful way.  For the past month and a half Jim is alive again, but the bargain made is that he gets to be alive and engaged with his life and his friends and me and his children and his paleontology and everything he loves - - and then he has to die all over again and he has to know this and to face it and knowing this is terrible for all of us.  And I just keep looking at him and wondering how he can bear to deal with this truth.

     I don't want to dwell on this, but when one lives along one has to tell someone and I've just decided to begin to blog again. So just two or three more lines on this. In my office, I discovered the diary I kept of the year that ran from Jim's diagnosis to Jim's death. All the quotes. All the biopsies.  All x-rays. All the margins. All the chemo. All the dinners brought by friends.  All the hope. All the lawyers. Me and my kids chasing the lawyers out. Tom  Clouthier carrying Jim around. Jim and I saying our vows again, serving pumpkin pie and champagne. Kelly, Erin, David and Kevin coming home.  Kelly, Erin, David and I, there, on the last day.  Rachel. taking care of me, afterward.

Okay, that's it. But it's powerful stuff, because, see, I hardly remember any of it. So it has brought it all back to life again for me. I guess, then, I am "the Jim" in the dreams.
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                      Here are some of my best most recent Bainbridge quotes:

"Are you sensitive to meatlike consistencies?"

"Have I told you about my mother, who tried to dial her micro-wave instead of her phone?"

"Just eat a live toad in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day."

"My own death? Are you kidding? I'm already missing myself!"

"What do you mean you didn't love Eat, Pray, Love?'
 "I mean I didn't love it."
" But what does that even mean?"
" It means I thought it was shallow and vapid."
"I think that means we can't be friends anymore."
"Okay."
"But don't tell anybody, okay?"


"Hey, look, stop it! You're making me feel like I'm the last car on the ferry!"

"Would you like your white wine with ice cubes or would you just like it cold?"


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                         And a poem a patient brought last week:

After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand
and chasing a soul and you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and company
doesn't mean security and you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up
and your eyes open with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child
and you learn to buid all your roads today because tomorrow's ground is too undertain
for plans and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much
so you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting
for someone to bring you flowers and you learn that you really can endure
that you really are strong and you learn with every good-bye you learn.

                        - Anonymous

So goodbye from the colored condo where it is never too late to learn how to live.