Time Flies...Whether You Are Having fun, or Not...

Los Angeles, California

It is said that loss and death, like plane crashes, often arrive in triplicate. And so it was for me in 2014. At the end of 2015, celebrating New Year's Eve with Joel, Connie, and Curt, I raised my champagne glass for a toast: I made it all the way through the year without anyone dying. Connie looked horrified. No, that's a good thing, I said. And it was. A whole year with no death. 

Another eight months passed and more changes. A goodbye to the business and support I had on Main Street. Goodbye Chilitos and Richard. Goodbye Cafe K and David at M Street. Hello house. Hello empty yet messy, filled-to-the-gills house. Getting organized. This project started virtually before the last one has ended. So little to do and so much time, as Willy Wonka stated, backwards. How does one strike that and reverse it, as Willy says afterwards? You got me.

While not tempted by self-help books (really doesn't that strike you as funny? If you could help yourself, why would you buy the book?), I seem to drift to memoirs lately and find some solace. Maybe this came as a result of the thought of writing my own. When that seems ponderable I think of structure. And, I think of the story. It's not pretty, so why do I want to tell it? And that, as Hamlet said, is the question.

So what about having fun? After all, time flies... as the title of this post declares. All of what was once fun for me has ground to a halt: salsa dancing; travel; cooking; even writing this blog (although I have written many posts over the past twenty-one months that I have not "published" here). People keep telling me I should go away; get away when the business closes escrow later this month. But I keep responding that I don't have the energy to think or plan a trip, much less pack for it. I want to sit for two weeks and stare into space. I want to spend time decompressing. Meanwhile, as my transition schedule at the business is not daily, I am catching up, cleaning up, playing the piano (yes, I know you didn't know this about me), and beginning a daily practice of meditation (again, + good luck with that). My official friend (we call each other that because we transitioned from dentist/patient after her retirement), Lynnette, has, with her vast generosity of spirit, invited me to join her and her family for two (TWO!) cruises. And I am very much thinking about one of them but it is not until next May. Lots of time to do what needs to be done before then.

So, loose ends to be tied. Or, fit to be tied? No matter which, time does fly. And whether you fly with it or let it blow on by; the days, the hours, the minutes are all we have to fill it and measure it by. My next post, already written, entitled Moving On addresses this in an entirely different way. So, stay tuned. I'll be back...

Moving On

Santa Monica, California

No one comes from nothing; we are haunted by our past every day. Months ago, while dancing with Joel at our local salsa dive/club I caught sight of a man out of the corner of my eye. He was wearing my husband's shirt. Surely, it was not his shirt; the shirt from Banana Republic he is wearing in a photo of us taken at a Christmas Eve dinner in Monterey, back almost four years ago. But I was still near stopped in my steps, as I had given that shirt away to a local charity thrift store just before seeing this man, this salsero, the one dancing away in my dead husband's shirt.

In the beginning it happened a lot. I would see him driving on the 405 freeway, or hear him around the house. But he is gone. Gone from my life after three and a half decades. And as days pass he is even more so. Still, I sit at his desk, at my business, with much of him around me; his handwriting on files and file boxes; his Cholula sauce still in the refrigerator; the reading glasses at the bottom of a desk drawer. And yet. And yet, he is gone.

Sandra passed away two and a half years ago, and my mom, just two. Eighteen months since he has been gone. I live alone. And I am different. "Funny," he had said to me. "You used to be afraid to be alone." And sometimes still. But I come home late, after meeting a friend, or dropping J off at his home in Agoura Hills. Mostly, I have remembered to leave lights on. I don't always remember to close the gate. But I do my best as days, months, and now more than a year has dropped off. And I am leaving the business. Retiring.

My therapist speaks to me about moving on. My pilates trainer and friend talks about being mindful and present. You can get stuck, so you try not to. You try to build new memories on top of the ones that will always be there. You try to wipe what was bad, or, at the very least, let it go. Drop. In the beginning it was navigating a moguled course. There wasn't a flat space to catch my breath nor look around. You're strong so many people repeated. I didn't feel strong. I don't feel strong. Joel tells me that I don't have to feel strong; that people tell me that because I get up every day and keep going. I run the business, I administrate my mom's trust, and I do my best to keep up a house that is too much of everything.

Moving on means making decisions, not just getting up every day and going, strong or weak. I will try to make decisions before the end of the year: to stop being sad; to be more thoughtful to the people who mean a lot to me, especially Joel; to try to get on the road. I will try to sleep, laugh, and dance more and more. I do understand that moving on means deciding to live, and trying to really live each day. I am ready to move on. Or, as I have been told to think, I choose to move on. Are readiness and choice different? Must they come conjoined in this process? Regardless, I fear both are wishful thinking at this point in time while there are still the dancing ghosts who are wearing his shirts...