Ajax Minor's Blog

Loss: the Paranormal

I like to tell stories. That, of course, must be obvious from my website, which has links to my three novels as well as Short Stories, Poems and Blogs, which are really essays.

So I have three incidents to relate to you. I suppose this is technically an essay, since it is a Blog post. However, the unusual nature of one or more of my experiences may become the basis for fiction.

Our daughter, Katie, died in September of 1992, having suffered a severe birth accident in February of that year. This event was the basis for my series of three fantasy novels, The Ur Legend. But what was the motivation for me to write fiction, something I had never attempted?

About a month or so after Katie died, I was driving home from work and all of a sudden was in the grips of extreme sorrow. I pulled over at the top of a hill overlooking our house and just put my head down on the steering wheel. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure in the passenger seat. It was of human form but was grey, with no other distinguishing features. I lifted my head off of the wheel and cocked my head, as if to rest it on the shoulder of this apparition.

Immediately, I felt better, rejuvenated. A few months later I had an idea for a short story that became a novel that became a series of novels, giving Katie a fictional life since she had been deprived of the real experience. Did this entity serve as motivation? I don’t know, but I would like to think so. And I believe it was one of the characters in my books, who reveals his true identity near the end of Book 1, Sun Valley Moon Mountains. No spoilers!

My sister is psychic and an empath. She has had numerous paranormal experiences. However I don’t share her gifts and never again had an ‘unusual’ encounter until my wife, Linda, went into hospice in early November 2023. She was alert and doing well the evening she was admitted to CHOMP hospital on the Monterey Peninsula. So I decided to spend one last night in my own bed before she was entirely sedated.

I left the hospital around 3 AM and took the short ride back to our house, only five minutes away. As I went through the gated entrance to 17 Mile Drive and drove down the rather steep hill I saw the most unusual thing. A person on a bicycle riding up this very steep grade. They were aware enough to have a light attached to the handlebars. ‘What in hell!’, I thought. The person was definitely ‘off”. But I later changed my opinion.

Linda died the next Sunday morning in the wee hours, around 2AM. I had awakened at around 1 and after a pit stop gave her one of those little sponges on sticks so she could have a little refreshment. Reflexively, I guess, but enthusiastically she sucked on the sponge, though she was sedated. The nurses awakened me just before 2 to tell me she had ‘passed’. I spent some time alone with her and was deeply saddened by the fact that I had not been awake and holding her hand when she took her last breath. Why I felt that way I did not know and still don’t.

But a paranormal experience also happened the evening before, Saturday, around 6 PM. All of the power in the hospital went out, as it did elsewhere on the Peninsula. Odd. My sister was adamant that this was her life force leaving her body. Perhaps.

But when I drove home from CHOMP that Sunday morning, after a glass of wine I pondered those two incidents. As I said, my sister gave me a valid explanation for the power outage. But the bicyclist… What or who was that? I have come to the conclusion that it was Death riding up to the hospital and went there for Linda.

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Loss: Ghosts and my Furniture Family

I am not actually talking about REAL ghosts. However, I have found that over the past few months the loss of my wife, Linda, has brought up thoughts and feelings about other deaths. Not all of my deceased friends and relatives, but specifically my daughter, Katie, and in the past few weeks a miscarriage we suffered in 1985 in Switzerland of a child in the first trimester. That I must admit surprised me.,

In Katie’s case, one would think that I had dealt with that by writing three Fantasy novels, collectively ‘The Ur Legend’. But those were attempts to give her a life she never got a chance to live. And Ur was a Highly fictional character. But Katie was difficult to mourn in a traditional way because of the way her birth accident presented. It was believed that her umbilical cord was too short and when she turned it restricted the flow of blood and oxygen to her brain. As I have probably recounted, she was born dead and then resuscitated. She lived seven months. The condition was HIE, or hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. Basically it fried her entire brain. She was cortically blind and deaf, had high tone/low tone cerebral palsy and was subject to seizures that required steroids. It was ugly.

So much of Loss involves the retrieval of and reflection on memories. But in Katie’s case there were almost none, for she was, though this may sound a bit brutal, a turnip. Nonetheless I have begun to think of her more and more as a person, not just a fiction, and the type of young lady she would have become.

As for the miscarriage, I had rarely given it a thought, though many people grieve as much over that brutal event as the death of an infant. Maybe that sounds thoughtless of me but that is the truth of it. I always thought that child would have been a boy but who knows? If a boy we would have named him Oliver or Olivia if a girl. So I now refer to the child simply as Ollie.

Loss results in many behaviors that might be considered flaky, except to those who have experienced them. In my TV room (which is a real 50s size TV room about the size of a broom closet, with space for only a 34″ television), I have what I call my ‘couch family’. Linda is a beige blanket draped over a chair. Katie is a purple pillow on a couch of the same color and Ollie is a little polkadot throw pillow. After dinner is what I call my ‘stupid time’. No reading, no writing and no singing. Just watching every episode of every Star Trek ever made, a Hallmark on the weekends, PBS series from Nova to All Creatures Great and Small, and stream a few series that engage my interest. Just finished ‘Six Feet Under’. Pretty apropos huh? Often a line of dialogue or a beat in the story will spark a thought and I will hit pause and talk about it to my ‘furniture family’. Sometimes I cry. That is unusual since Linda and I were never criers and often said we would cry twice a year for practice!

I think it most interesting that I have begun to have a relationship with my two dead kids after all this time. Loss works in mysterious ways.

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Loss: holidays and anniversaries

We have just finished the longest Holiday season of the year. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day all smished together. Some calendars even highlight the dates in red. These days are significant. And they can be especially impactful on people who have suffered a Loss.

Often people are at their lowest point after a loss during these times, as well as anniversaries like Birthdays, Wedding Days and even dates of death. Do I know for a fact that most people react like this at special times? No, I don’t. The only metric is friends and acquaintances all of whom seem to ask: “Are you doing alright?”.

I must admit that I am not affected by malaise at these times. Rather, as I wrote in one of my first Blogs, I turn the sadness on its head and think of the happy times that I mourn. And in fact they will always have been in the Past.

But there is also the empty feeling that these happy times will never be shared again with that person. All I can do is rejoice in the memory of what we enjoyed. Death is the bringer of paradoxes. So I will share a poem about that:

PARADOX

The House is empty

The House is full.

A paradox?

No

DEATH

You are gone

Except for a tiny plastic bag

Of ashes

Placed in a pot

Crafted for the dead

Four thousand years ago

But your fingerprints are 

EVERYWHERE

Though a palimpsest

Which must be rubbed by memory

To be seen

WHERE are you?

I sit in the dark

In the wee hours

Waiting

Silence, silence,silence

Sadness is a bellows

That presses on my chest

Blowing tears that wash my eyes

But the sadness fills me with

JOY

A remembrance

No longer can my hands 

Rub your long, slender arms

Like canes of bamboo

Blown by your breath to hug me

No longer can my lips 

Press against yours

To show my LOVE

Sadness over brilliant times

Brilliant adventures

Washes over me but like warm water

I smile

How else can I show you I love you

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Loss: The Second Year

I have read and have had some people say that the second year after a Loss, the death of a loved one, is harder than the first. In my experience it has been HARD. Not necessarily harder but different.

When we lost or daughter, Katherine, to a birth accident in 1992, I was inconsolable. For a couple of days. Then I screwed myself up and realized I was her father and had to adopt that role. I also had the obligation to bring home a paycheck. So I put my Grief on hold. Until Katie died in September of the same year. After that the floodgates opened and I began a year of introspection and mourning that finally peaked on Father’s Day 1993.

Unbeknownst to me, my wife, Linda, had awakened in the middle of the night, every night during Katie’s life, and cried her guts out in our master bathroom. I needed to get up at 4:30 AM since we were on Mountain Time and I was a Wall Street trader and had to operate on New York hours, arriving at the office at 6 AM MT.

This experience of Linda’s is chronicled in the first chapter of my novel, Sun Valley Moon Mountains, the first in the trilogy I wrote, The Ur Legend, where I tried to give Katie a life she never got to live.

So when Katie died on September 9, 1992, I was finally able to begin the process of dealing with her Loss. So, yes, in that case the second year was harder because I delayed grieving for almost a year. And Linda was seven months ahead of me in the process. But we dealt well with the fact that we were sometimes out of phase.

The Loss of my wife, Linda, to ALS in November of 2023 was different. The first year was stressful and chaotic for me. Those of you who have lost a spouse can relate. First, even though Linda’s death was anticipated because of her condition, there was still an element of shock. And the blizzard of detail that had to be dealt with was dizzying. Banks, brokerage accounts, IRAs, taxes, insurance and always the lawyers. To an extent those demanding tasks were a diversion from the enormity of the event. Still, every day, countless times my chest would tighten and my eyes would tear up. It was nonstop.

At last all of the crushing detail subsided toward the end of 2024. Then I woke up on Jan 1, 2025 and stood in our silent, empty living room. It hit me. A question. “So this is it?” I still had to deal with the mundane quiddities of daily life but without someone with whom to share them. I experienced a state of Anhedonia, an absence of pleasure. flatness.

Is this year ‘Harder’ than last? I wouldn’t say it is, but it is hard in a very different way. It is not easier. Again just different. Will it get better? Sure. Time heals all wounds to an extent, but never completely. Time just leaves a scar.

The post Loss: The Second Year appeared first on Ajax Minor.

Loss: holidays and anniversaries

We have just finished the longest Holiday season of the year. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day all smished together. Some calendars even highlight the dates in red. These days are significant. And they can be especially impactful on people who have suffered a Loss.

Often people are at their lowest point after a loss during these times, as well as anniversaries like Birthdays, Wedding Days and even dates of death. Do I know for a fact that most people react like this at special times? No, I don’t. The only metric is friends and acquaintances all of whom seem to ask: “Are you doing alright?”.

I must admit that I am not affected by malaise at these times. Rather, as I wrote in one of my first Blogs, I turn the sadness on its head and think of the happy times that I mourn. And in fact they will always have been in the Past.

But there is also the empty feeling that these happy times will never be shared again with that person. All I can do is rejoice in the memory of what we enjoyed. Death is the bringer of paradoxes. So I will share a poem about that:

PARADOX

The House is empty

The House is full.

A paradox?

No

DEATH

You are gone

Except for a tiny plastic bag

Of ashes

Placed in a pot

Crafted for the dead

Four thousand years ago

But your fingerprints are 

EVERYWHERE

Though a palimpsest

Which must be rubbed by memory

To be seen

WHERE are you?

I sit in the dark

In the wee hours

Waiting

Silence, silence,silence

Sadness is a bellows

That presses on my chest

Blowing tears that wash my eyes

But the sadness fills me with

JOY

A remembrance

No longer can my hands 

Rub your long, slender arms

Like canes of bamboo

Blown by your breath to hug me

No longer can my lips 

Press against yours

To show my LOVE

Sadness over brilliant times

Brilliant adventures

Washes over me but like warm water

I smile

How else can I show you I love you

The post Loss: holidays and anniversaries appeared first on Ajax Minor.

Loss: Writing and A Poem

First an apology. This should have gone out weeks ago but travelled to visit family in NJ for T’Day. And then caught a three week bug!

Speaking of Holidays I will be writing about Loss and Holidays and Anniversaries since the season is upon us. People have very different reactions.

Anyway, Writing is essential. We all think we understand our own beliefs whether on politics or religion or relationships. But when we sit down to put our ideas on paper we often find our thinking is not as crystal clear as we had believed. We are all lazy about belief systems. So WRITE!

Below I publish a poem about life in an empty house; Linda, as I have written in earlier blogs died last November of ALS. One of my nicknames for her was Koba. Koba was also Stalin’s nickname. Say what?! Linda was totally interested in the entire world around her. And when she engaged a person in a conversation she was completely focused on what they were saying, not thinking about what she was going to say next. In that way she was, as many people referred to her, sweet. But not sugary.

But when she was in a serious discussion, say with a contractor or a lawyer or on any financial issue, she could slice them onto pieces, calmly and rationally with all the facts at her command. I was a Wall Street trader and sometimes her conversations could make me cringe. So when she was in that mode I’d call her Koba. And I loved her just as much!

KOBA

           

                                    Smoke goes up the chimney

                                    But there is no fire

                                    The sun shines brilliantly, magnificently

                                    Glinting off the sparklinglass windows

                                    But inside the rooms are dark

                                    The furniture is cold

                                    Then I feel the full heart you gave to me

                                    And it is an ember

                                    To keep the beauty of you alive in my soul

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Loss: Anger

Is it okay to be angry when dealing with Loss? Hell yes! When dealing with a Loss pretty much anything goes. Whatever works. Except of course self harm, harm to others and spiraling into addiction.

We all develop strategies. I have been talking in these pieces on Loss about my own methods. They don’t work for everyone but I felt it important to lay them out there. I have found that I look not for complete answers but try to pick out one thought that resonates and add it to my repertoire of ideas that I incorporate into my strategy. Might be just one idea I get from a 200 page book but it’s worth it. I’ll be talking more about books in the future.

So what about Anger? I get angry. It’s not directed at anything or anyone in particular. Blaming someone or something for what happened is as futile as asking the question ‘Why?’. There is no answer to that question and there is no agent responsible for the Loss. I have said that our answer to ‘Why’ when we lost our daughter was from the Tao te Ching:

Nature does not play favorites she regards her creations without sentimentality.

Nature is not good or bad, warm to cold, she just IS. And so with Anger. It’s okay to just pound the steering wheel of your car or scream out. A primal scream or maybe a phrase of frustration. In my case, yes, I have pounded the steering wheel. I have also screamed out a line from the 1980 movie ‘The Christmas Story’. If you haven’t seen it, make sure to watch it this Holiday season. Beyond funny and also just, well, nice.

Anyway the dad in the story is constantly tormented by a pack of hounds owned by one of their neighbors, the Bumpuses. And he would scream out ‘Son of a bitchin’ Bumpuses.” Anger just comes randomly for me. Out of the blue I will just stand there and scream ‘Son of a bitchin’ Bumpuses!!’ It is transitory but I feel better after the primal scream.

So let it rip when the urge strikes.

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Loss: Grief, a condition or an emotion

As I have said in previous posts, each person deals with Loss uniquely and deals with every Loss they experience in a unique way. So I have developed my own lexicon. The entire landscape, as I’ve said here before, is Loss. Sadness, depression with a small “d”, technically termed anhedonia, and grief sit within that landscape.

Often the complex of experiences following loss is termed Grief. In fact, the category for my posts under Blog on my site is called Grief. Many books about the experience have Grief in their title. But for me Grief is an emotion set within the context of the entire landscape of Loss.

I think of Sadness as a feeling brought about by thinking of happy moments with your deceased loved one. For example, I recently took a trip to Ketchum Idaho, aka Sun Valley, and fished with Linda and our guide and friend of 40 years, Scott Schnebly. One day we went to the Lost River east of Ketchum, Linda’s favorite “fishing hole”. I recited a verse from her beloved Tao te Ching, spread some of her ashes, which fanned out in the most amazing abstract pattern and sang Babe, by Styx. I felt Sadness but it felt good. It was brought about by a remembrance of happier times.

Linda’s form of ALS was genetic, which accounts for about 10% of all cases, and it’s ‘presentation’, as docs call it, was Spastic. Meaning extreme stiffness of her muscles. She was able to stand and walk, though with greater and greater difficulty, right up to the time when she went into hospice. When I walk into our bedroom, I often can ‘see’ the bedrail she used to pull herself up and out of bed and grab her walker. The effort she expended was huge. While it might take most of us 2 minutes to go to the bathroom it took her 20.

Then she would have to get back into bed, holding onto the bedrail and pushing with her legs against her walker while I held it in place, and pulling herself into a comfortable position in bed using the bedrail. For me, when I ‘see’ that image of the bedrail, I feel an intense negative emotion as my chest tightens and I tear up. Unlike Sadness, there is nothing redemptive about that emotion. No good side to it. For me that is Grief.

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Loss: Introspection

I have Blogged the past few weeks about Loss, often referred to as Grief. I consider Grief to be a particular emotional state set within the context of Loss. I will write more about Grief in my next Blog.

As I have mentioned I lost my wife, Linda, last November to ALS and my daughter, Katie, at the age of seven months to a birth accident in 1992. I have recently posted about Loss and Sadness, small “d” depression or anhedonia, and will be discusssing Grief and Anger in future posts. But one of the things Loss, especially of a person so significant in one’s life, does is cause reflection on your personal past. Regrets, remorse, things we wish we had done differently and wish we could change. Basically have a ‘do over’.

While time moves in one direction and ‘do overs’ are not possible, I found that my Loss of Linda made me think more deeply about my own past. We all have demons. Most of us may have things we’ve done that we would never wish to be revealed. But we have to reveal them to ourselves, root them out and examine them. How else could I come to grips completely with the Loss of a life partner without reflecting on my own life. So instead of continuing the essay I am simply going to offer this poem for you, the reader, to consider:

                                                Dark Corners

Dark corners make for dark spaces

Dark corners collect

Dark thoughts, dark feelings

Misdeeds we are loathe to share

Even with ourselves

Dark secrets we all harbor

Slights to others that shame us

Missteps, regrets that haunt

Surface randomly when least expected

Or wanted

These dark, diaphanous wrongs hang

Like bats

Sleeping, until they aren’t

Then flitting through your mind

Seeping into your soul

Spreading like a stubborn stain

Which will not come out

Will not wash away

Can we ever sweep out the dark corners?

Maybe if we learn to love or at least like ourselves

SO hard to do

To forgive ourselves perhaps

Even harder

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Loss: the landscape

Having lost my wife, Linda, nine months ago and my daughter, Katherine, in 1992, I am writing a series of short Blogs about the experience.

With Katherine, she inspired me to write the fantasy series, The Ur Legend, to give her a life she never got to live since she dies at seven months old.

The experience of losing Linda has been different. She was my soulmate and mindmate for almost 50 years. However, as I have said, everyone deals with Loss differently and with each Loss differently. Since Linda was such a large part of my life I have confronted her death by developing strategies and concepts to help me heal. Not a big surprise since I happen to be quite analytical.

Many, maybe most, call the experience of Loss, Grief or Grieving. I’ve developed my own viewpoint and lexicon. But that’s okay. As Megan Devine says in her book, It’s Okay that you’re Not Okay, there is no ‘right way’ to handle Loss.

For me Loss is the landscape in which or on which Grief, Sadness and Depression sit. Ideally with Sadness, in my last post, I have found it to be a balm for me. When I am sad it is often about happy times spent together. If not, in any event, since I can no longer touch her or speak with her it is the only way to let her know I love her.

A therapist I have been working with said many people say they would rather be ‘depressed’ than sad. He wasn’t saying being it was a good thing to be depressed it was merely a choice in the hierarchy of strategies. He was merely saying that sometimes ‘depression’, with a small “d” (not horrid big ‘D’ Bipolar type), allows people to numb themselves for a while and take an emotional break from the trauma caused by Loss. It is a sort of psychological Lidocaine. It can be understood, at least I experience it, as a ‘flat’ feeling. The quiddities of everyday existence aren’t uplifting, nor are they ‘downers’. I don’t personally care for the feeling but when it hits it’s not something I can control. I just accept it.

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