Pat Bertram's Blog, page 21

Cogitation

It was supposed to rain last night and well into today, so I was going to take it easy and do nothing, and when I finished doing nothing, I was going to take a nap. Unfortunately, the rain did not materialize except for a few drops that didn’t completely darken the sidewalk.

I still took it easy, though I did have to water my grass and newly seeded garden. (I didn’t want to spend all summer looking at the gone-to-seed larkspur, so I pulled them up and planted marigolds and a few other flowers that should last until fall.) Even though it didn’t rain, it was a pleasantly cool day, so that was enjoyable.

All this taking it easy, unfortunately, has given me too much time to think about things I’d rather not think about, such as the ramifications to the recent Supreme Court ruling. From what I understand, a lot of the power behind HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) came from Roe vs. Wade, which protected the medical privacy of individuals, though that may not be as significant as I thought. I paused here to read a few articles about how private medical records really are now, before the ruling, and they aren’t as private as we’d like to believe. Although our records are supposed to be accessed only by those to whom we have given permission, health insurance providers, law enforcement, and the government are all able to ask for the records. And then, of course, any time we get lab work done, the lab pretty much owns whatever records they glean as well as the actual samples taken from our bodies. Still, the ruling does make the whole privacy issue a bit dicey.

Even worse, bans are not just about forcing women to carry babies, even unviable babies, to term, especially since the USA shockingly has the highest maternal mortality rate of all developed countries and is the only country where the mortality is increasing. It’s also about women who suffer miscarriages. Abortifacients are given to women who have miscarried to make sure the fetus is completely dispelled. I can’t imagine what those poor women who are already suffering from a miscarriage would have to deal with if they also had to contend with accusations of abortion.

I hope I’m wrong, but I see a whole lot of heartache for a whole lot of women ahead.

As for other medical issues, one that involves me more directly, is the opioid crisis. If Percocet is removed from the market because some people get addicted, I will have no recourse when it comes to pain. When I was in the hospital after I destroyed my arm, they tried just about everything, even morphine, and nothing but Percocet even dimmed the pain. I ended up with a lot more pain than I should have because although the doctor prescribed six pills a day, the pharmacists refused to honor the prescription until they decided when it was okay for me to get more pills. Even though I was on the pills for months, I knew I’d never get addicted. The drug never made me feel good and never took away all the pain (just made it bearable). They did, however, make me disoriented and constipated. And they made me itch all over.

I would think, if people and government entities and regulatory agencies wanted to get personally involved in people’s medical business, they would figure out a way to make such potent (and necessary) drugs nonaddictive, or barring that, figure out a simple test to see how someone would react before prescribing the drug. Instead, they are taking a shotgun approach and attempting to ban the drugs altogether. I can’t imagine what horror I would have endured without the one painkiller that worked.

Luckily, I am not in any pain at the moment except for occasional knee issues. And luckily, too, this time of cogitation will pass, and once again I’ll be focusing my attention on something I might have a modicum of control over — my yard.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Inequity

The only time I watch television is occasionally when the woman I am looking after wants to watch. Usually we watch Judge Judy, though sometimes we watch the news.

I’ve been feeling rather smug since the fear-mongering tactics of the newscasters don’t work with someone who’s already been there. For example, if the prime interest rates are the highest they’ve been in twenty years, as they said, that means that I saw even higher rates twenty-plus years ago. If inflation is the worst in forty years, as they said, it means that forty-plus years ago, I experienced a worse rate of inflation. Same with the ups and the downs of the Dow. Been there. Survived that.

I must admit, though, that any smugness was wiped out by the shock of yesterday’s news. Truly stunning — from one minute to the next, this country’s clock was turned back fifty years. I don’t see how it’s possible. I don’t see how it became possible, especially since it wasn’t that long ago various factions were trying to get late-term abortions legalized. Since in Roe vs. Wade, first trimester terminations were acceptable, but later terminations were acceptable only if the mother’s health was in danger, making late-term abortions legal would have effectively overturned part of Roe vs. Wade, but to overturn the whole thing, banning all abortions? What the . . . ?

It seems simple to me. If you think even first trimester abortion is immoral, don’t have one. But other than that, what possible difference can one woman’s struggle with impending motherhood have to do with anyone else? People who think pregnancy termination is murder, well, so is the death sentence, so is sending our young people to other countries to be cannon fodder in distant wars. So why not terminate death row? Why not stop sending people to war? While we’re at it, why not protect children in school?

Why not a lot of things.

I can understand taking federal funding away from abortion clinics, because truly, why should taxpayers who think abortion is immoral have to pay for them? But to completely remove the option of termination for any reason, even incest or rape (as will be the law in some states), is truly unconscionable. There could possibly be a case made for women who willfully participate in sex because they did make a choice (though the choice they made might not be the one they have to live with) but women — and girls — who did not have any choice in the matter shouldn’t be penalized. They were already penalized too much.

I have no idea what to make of any of this, especially since pro-lifers are only pro-life as long as that life is a fetus. Once it becomes a baby, those very same people stop caring. What is going to happen to all those unwanted babies? (Unwanted even by those who oppose abortion.) What is going to happen to all those mothers, especially those who are unable to support the children they now have?

And why are only women being punished? It takes two to make a fetus. If the woman is forced to be a mother, why isn’t the man forced to be a father? If the woman’s life and income are at risk, why shouldn’t the man also bear some of the risk? If pregnancy is God’s will, why is Viagra allowed — wouldn’t the inability to get it up also be God’s will? Couldn’t it be God’s way of preventing pregnancy?

You’d think from all of this that I’m a liberal; I am not, although I do hold some so-called liberal views. Nor am I a conservative, though I hold some so-called conservative views. But my bewilderment at the Supreme Court decision? That isn’t about being liberal or conservative. It’s about being intelligent and empathetic, seeing beyond the idiocy to the very real problems that will be arising. Some states are talking about banning women from going to another state to take care of an unwanted pregnancy, though to monitor such situations would be even more horrific than what is going on now. Other states are talking about banning morning-after pills; some are even talking about banning contraception. Does anyone else see beyond the politics and the immorality of the moralists to the insanity of it all?

I generally try to stay away from writing about the issues of today, but this most recent issue is so beyond the pale that I can’t get over it.

I suppose not having to deal with the specter of an unwanted pregnancy is a benefit of getting older. So not only have I been there when many of the worsts have happened, so not only was I there when Roe vs. Wade was put into effect to the revulsion of almost everyone I knew, I am also here at the end of that particular era.

I’ve survived all that. It makes me wonder, though, how many women won’t survive this inequity.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Seeing the Bright Side

Anyone who has read my blog for any length of time knows I am not a glass-half-full sort of person. Nor, to be honest, am I a glass-half-empty person. I’m more prosaic than either type, more realistic. The nature of a glass is to not remain at a halfway point. If the glass contains a drinkable beverage, you drink it and then refill the glass with the same or a different beverage, or you wash the glass and put it away. If the glass doesn’t contain a drinkable beverage, you toss out the contents and wash the glass or you toss out the whole thing — glass and contents. If you don’t drink the beverage, the glass still doesn’t remain half empty/half full. There is a thing called evaporation, which means that no matter what, the glass will empty itself.

Life, like the level of the contents in the glass, is in motion. A situation can seem bleak with no bright side at all, such as the death of a loved one, and while that situation never changes, you do. When Jeff died, I tried to tell myself that at least he wasn’t suffering anymore and though I suppose that is a realistic bright side, it didn’t help me at all in dealing with my grief. However, there does come a time — years later, perhaps — when a griever has to stop seeing only the bleakness of life and to try to find a brighter side.

In my case, it was the dance classes I started taking three-and-a-half years after Jeff died. Although I was still grieving for him, my grief wasn’t the only “side” in my life anymore. There was a brighter side, too, which helped light my way through the dark times.

I’ve never trusted people who only look at the bright side of things. It seems to me they are either delusional or indulging in dreams instead of reality. Besides, without dark, there is no light. There was an artist who found fame as a painter of light, but if you were to study his paintings piece by piece (as in a jigsaw puzzle) you will see that most of the painting is dark; the darkness is what makes the light so bright.

I do think it’s possible, because of one’s situation, one’s temperament, or one’s mental frame of mind, that it becomes habit to only look on the dark side. (Which means, I suppose, that for some people, looking only on the bright side is also possible.) If only the dark is apparent, it’s a good idea to try to see the bright side of things. In the case of grief, it’s more than okay to indulge in the bleakness because that’s how we learn to cope with life without our loved one. However, as the years pass, it’s okay to start seeing the bright side of other things.

Although I am still aware of the bleakness of Jeff’s being gone, I have looked for a bright side and in fact, looking for any brightness in my life was how I found myself in a new way of being. It wasn’t that I tried to find a bright side to his being gone — there simply is no bright side. It’s that I tried to find a bright side to my still being here. And there is much brightness in my life now — a house, a home, a garden, flowers, a lawn, friends, neighbors, a compatible town, a nearby library — so much so that I no longer need to find the brightness. It finds me.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Weird Times

This seems to be a time of weirdness for me, though if things come in threes as the saying goes, then by tomorrow, my life should be back to normal. Assuming, of course, there is a normal anymore.

First, there was the issue with someone trying to change my Facebook password. By itself, it’s not that weird, but at the same time, I was unable to get into the email associated with my website, and two concurrent anomalies do make for weirdness.

Second, there was the issue with Flagstar Bank and their security breach. Again, by itself, it’s not that weird, but their having my identity information is inexplicable. And yet, as someone pointed out, I will get two years of free credit and identity monitoring out of it, though it does seem a bit much since I have no credit to ruin.

Third, well, this third thing isn’t at all in the same category as the first two, but weird nevertheless. I purchased a plant starter at the local hardware store. The planting instructions mention that the plant will grow so densely that in two or three years, it will need to be divided. The instructions also included the caveat that propagation is strictly prohibited. In other words, I will have to propagate the plant by dividing it, but I am not allowed to do so.

That falls more in the category of irony, I think, than true weirdness, but it’s noteworthy all the same. Not that anything will happen to me if I do propagate the plant since here are no propagation police wandering around with magnifying glasses checking out people’s gardens to look for propagation violations. The warning is more for those who sell plants commercially, which, of course, I don’t do. I’m on the other end of the commercial spectrum where I shell out money for plants rather than raking it in.

And anyway, I should be so lucky as to have to propagate the plant. So far, the only plant that’s done well enough to need to be divided are my New England asters. Last fall I divided my single clump of asters and ended up with seven or eight clumps. Each of those clumps look as if they will yield another four or five plants, so I will have to figure out what I want to do with all of them. Right now, the asters are edging part of the swath of grass that sweeps from the side of my house to the back yard, and I’m thinking of continuing to edge the grass with the asters. Luckily, I have several months to decide what to do — I certainly wouldn’t want to jinx the poor plants by counting on their doing well right now when the weird times are in full swing.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Complications

I’m having a hard time adjusting to the new season, or maybe just to the cooler, damper weather. Whichever, I’m tired and cranky and not much interested in dealing with complications, but that’s life, right? Dealing with complications, I mean.

As wonderful as the internet is — a place to bank, blog, play games, learn, research, hang out with friends — it can also be . . . well, complicated.

Yesterday I had to deal with someone trying to change my Facebook password. I also had to deal with non-connecting issues concerning my website email.

Today I have another complication to deal with. I received a letter (an actual, physical, delivered-to-me-at-my-house communication) from Flagstar Bank telling me that they had experienced a cyber incident that involved unauthorized access to their network, and that one or more of the impacted files contained my social security number, account number, loan number, name, address, phone number, date of birth, or driver’s license number, and my financial institution’s name.

I had to read that several times, not just because of my seasonal adjustment issues, but because it made no sense. I have no idea what Flagstar Bank is, have never had an account there, and as far as I’ve been able to establish, neither of the banks I’ve dealt with in the past thirty years have any connection to Flagstar. (I’ve only had two banks in all that time, and both were privately and locally owned.)

I checked with a financial expert, who said that banks do exchange information. (So much for the banks much vaunted guarantee that financial information is secure!) They also suggested I follow with Flagstar’s offer of a two-year account with an identity monitoring service. So I did. I only had three opportunities to give the service the correct information proving I am who I said I was, which was a bit nerve-wracking. One of the questions listed several banks and asked which bank carried my home equity loan, which was confusing because they seemed to think I had such a loan, and I don’t. Another question listed several phone numbers and asked which, if any, of them was a previous phone number. How am I supposed to know that? I’ve had the same phone number now for fifteen years, and haven’t a clue what any previous phone number was, or even how to find it. Another question was where I applied for my social security card, and that at least I knew.

Luckily, I passed the identity portion of the sign-up process on the first try, but then I had to fill in all sorts of information such as social security number, phone number, address, etc. It seemed weird that to protect myself from a breach, I have to give up the very information that was breached in the first place, but I did it, and now I am (sort of) protected, even though I don’t have any credit to breach!

See? Complications.

On a much less complicated note . . . the first daylily of the season bloomed!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Happy Summer

The first day of summer? Really? It feels as if summer has been here for the past couple of months, with temperatures into the nineties and hundreds. Today, oddly, is a cool, misty day, with fallen leaves sprinkled about. Maybe someone is playing a joke on us, and it’s really the beginning of fall.

More probably, the joke is that we still have three months of heat ahead of us, and today was just a bad connection, where the weather couldn’t log in to the proper season.

I’m just being silly about the incorrect log in — and grateful for the cool day. What made me think of the bad connection analogy was that I couldn’t log into my website email, the one I opted to pay for. (Too many people and businesses and sites have that address for me, and it was too complicated to change. The good news is I don’t have to deal with any ads.)

I called my website provider, and after going through a series of verifications, a real person answered. A real American-English speaking person. It was such a delight talking to someone who understood what I was saying, and moreover, one who had patience with my inability to think of simple words. (Like address bar. Why would that have slipped from my brain?) They didn’t really do anything except take up enough time that the problem fixed itself, but at least the issue is on record, and if there is ever another instance of the same thing happening, I know where to send the screenshot of the very, very, very, very long 500 error code that basically said there was a problem connecting to the server but no one knew what it was.

I’m always leery when two weird computer-related things happen around the same time. I had just received an email from Facebook telling me that someone tried to change my FB password, and if it wasn’t me, to click on the link, which I did. (The link took me to a message that basically just said the problem was reported.) It seemed legitimate, a real Facebook notification, but since my website email address is my backup email for FB, I wondered if whoever had tried to change my FB password had somehow done something to my website email. The real person said the two weirdnesses weren’t related. They also looked up the email address on the FB email, and said that, as I had surmised, it was legitimate. So, whew!

But that’s not what this post was supposed to be about. I’d intended to talk about having summer before it was summer. I’ve spent the past couple of days cleaning up spent larkspur (because of the heat, the plants gone through their cycle and were finished for the year) and planting seeds in the cleared garden areas. When this happens later in the summer, I just let it go, but it seemed a shame to spend the entire summer with an empty garden patch, especially since summer just started today.

And oh! It’s not my imagination — my brown grass is greening up. I think it helped that the lightbulb finally went on, and I sprinkled the dead areas with mulched grass clippings to keep the heat and wind off the grass. (I’ve been moving the mulch around a bit so that the clippings don’t mat down and block air flow to the grass.) And it seems to have helped. Since this appears to be a problem area, I will continue with this light mulching until the cooler weather. If I had any doubts, I now know this is a cool season grass that does not like our summer heat, so I’m sure the grass is enjoying this lovely cool day as much as I am.

Happy summer!

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Reflection of What Goes on in My Life

When I blog every day, as I have for the past 1000 days, it’s hard to come up with blog topics, so if I think of something I might want to write about, I jot it down. One such topic on my very short list is “metaverse.” Apparently, the metaverse is like a three-dimensional internet experience where you can go into the virtual world and do things you do in the real world, like go to school or work, browse store shelves and shop, play games as if you were really there, and all sorts of other real life and virtual life experiences. There’s no such thing as a metaverse yet — so far, it only exists in science fiction movies — but all the big internet and computer and game moguls are working on it. (Which is why Facebook changed its name to Meta — it wanted a head start on the whole metaverse thing.)

I’m not really interested in such a concept. I have a hard enough time with the physical universe (to the extent that it’s physical, that is), and my internet usage is basic — blogging, researching, ordering things I need — so I doubt I’d ever be interested, especially if Facebook/Meta is involved. There are still blocking my blog, so I have to reblog it onto another blog and then post that link, but I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be doing that. Although I have a lot of friends on Facebook, I really do not like that FB is trying to control the narrative of our lives and our world and now, apparently, the universe.

Another item on my blog topic list was a quote from Thomas Browne: Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us. I like the quote but never quite figured out how to use it as a blog topic.

The last item was something I just added recently “Reflection of what goes on in my life.” Huh? What the heck was I referring to? I doubt it was the tarot because it certainly doesn’t reflect what goes on in my life. The refection of what goes on in my life doesn’t refer to the books I’m reading, filled as they are with violence, murder, mysterious happenings, weird phenomenon, and sometimes a bit of romance. Considering that my yard, lawn, and garden are what I am currently focusing on, I suppose I could have meant those, especially my lawn, but I have no idea why I thought any of those things reflected my life. If I remember what I meant, I’ll be sure to mention it, but since there’s nothing else on my blog topic list, I’m tossing out the list, so chances are I won’t even remember that I wanted to write about something that’s a reflection of what goes on in my life.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

1000th Day of Daily Blogging

Today is my 1000th straight day of daily blogging. It’s not my 1000th post, that happened years ago. In fact, this is my 3,476th post. That is a lot of blogging!

I would have thought that after coming up with something to write about every day for 1000 days in a row, that I would have been at a loss for something to say today, but luckily, my neighbors served up plenty of things for me to write about.

First thing this morning, when I was taking my mower out of the garage so I could cut the grass, my next-door neighbor told me if I ever saw a particular person — middle-aged, skinny, tattoos all over his face — to call the cops because that person tried to break into his shed where all his tools are stored. He said if he saw the fellow on his property again, the person would be dead. Not a good start to the day!

Later, I set out to walk an errand (rather than “run an errand,” because with my knees, I don’t run for any reason, not even from scary dudes with tattoos all over their face). A neighbor down the block was standing in his yard behind a tree where I couldn’t see him, watering his grass on the other side of the sidewalk, making it impossible for me to pass. I couldn’t holler at him because he’s deaf, so I waved my walking stick. He saw it, swung the stream of water out of my way, and smiled at me. Big doings! In the 1,200 days since I bought my house, this was the first time he ever acknowledged my presence in any way.

I turned the corner, and as I was walking down the street, another neighbor that I’ve had little contact with stopped me to warn about a couple of aggressive dogs that were loose. He’d called dispatch because those dogs are often out harassing passers-by, and although this town supposedly pays for a dog catcher, no one has ever seen the person, so basically, unless I wanted to go home for the weeks it would take for the mythical dog catcher to catch the dogs, I was on my own.

Those dang dogs did come running after me, though they couldn’t get close because I was waving my sticks around. (I don’t know about walking softly, but carrying a big stick — or two — is always a good idea when walking in this town.) Luckily, another walker came up behind me, and the dogs left me alone and started harrying him, which didn’t seem to bother the other walker at all.

Eventually, the dogs ran off, but they found me again on my way home. The same neighbor who warned me about them jumped in his truck and got between me and the dogs until the dogs lay down for a nap — too much excitement for them, I guess. On his way back to his house, the neighbor pulled up next to me and said he’d been talking to the deputy the dispatcher had sent, but before the deputy could do anything about the dogs, he got another call and took off.

When I got home, I noticed the deputy talking to my next-door neighbor. (Since the deputy was just around the corner, that was probably the fastest response anyone in this town ever got after calling the sheriff.) Turns out, the scary dude was hiding beneath my other next-door neighbor’s bushes. I tend to think the dude ran off before he was apprehended because I didn’t see anyone in the official vehicle. Maybe the escaped dogs and the escaped dude are hanging around together, though I wouldn’t know. I’ve decided this is a good day to make sure everything is locked up and to stay inside.

So, there you have it. Other people might be celebrating Father’s Day or Juneteenth or National Martini Day or even World Sauntering Day, but me? I’m celebrating a safe return home after my action-packed saunter, as well as my 1000th blog post.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Silver Linings

I read an article recently that claimed there is a silver lining behind all the dangerous weather this summer: that it’s showing the weaknesses in the infrastructure. I suppose that could be considered a positive side effect of the weather-damaged roads and bridges and such, but as comforting as that thought might be, it doesn’t seem like a good payoff. If the things that were damaged are rebuilt to be stronger and better, and if other places that didn’t have to deal with the damage takes measures prevent damage from happening, it might be a good thing. But that’s a lot of ifs.

Although I am not one to go looking for silver linings — they smack too much of positive-thinking phoniness — perhaps I should accept my wind-scorched grass in the same vein: treat it as if the damage to my lawn merely showed up the areas that need special care. That’s assuming, of course, that the grass will grow back. Otherwise, there is no silver lining.

Still, it does seem as if there is a bit of greening in the scorched area. To be honest, I’m not sure I can trust my memory, and I was too discouraged those first few days to want to memorialize the brown swathe, so the green might be more a sign of my hopefulness than of actual repair.

Despite being discouraged, I am aware that sometimes setbacks don’t mean a whole lot. For example, when I bought my car, I got a lemon. There were many things wrong with it, and the dealer wouldn’t take my word for what was wrong. (The thing I most clearly remember was that the transmission screeched when I switched gears.) Every time I took it in, they told me in exaggeratedly patient tones I wasn’t used to the new car, the inference being I was young and female and didn’t know what I was doing. Most annoying of all, they underlined in my owner’s manual the section about how to shift. It wasn’t until a friend of a friend who loved to fight took the bug back to the dealer and got someone to actually drive it, that suddenly the light dawned on them. There was something wrong with the car! Apparently, a synchromesh had never been installed, the very part that allowed for ease of shifting. So they fixed that. Not long afterward, the clutch cable broke, and then . . . you get the picture.

Yet here I am, still driving the same car fifty years later. I’m not sure what this particular story has to do with silver linings and dead grass, since it seems to fall more in the category of “you never know,” but it seemed to fit.

It’s funny that I seem to be acquiring a few VW Bug collectables when I still have the original vehicle, but I find these trinkets amusing. (Which is probably why they were gifted to me.)

I suppose in years to come, I’ll look back on this situation with grass in the same way I look back on my “lemon,” but for now, I am just hoping that with special care, the grass will cure itself. If that can be considered a silver lining, well, then, so be it.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Finding a Focus After Grief

Not everyone enjoys my gardening posts, especially those who have found this blog because of grief, and that’s understandable, but the truth is, almost all my posts, even the gardening posts, are indirectly related to grief.

The past twelve years, particularly the past five when the pain of Jeff’s death pretty much disappeared, have been about finding a focus outside myself, about making myself . . . bigger. Becoming more.

When you’re connected to someone in an intrinsic way, such as Jeff and I were, almost by definition, you’re bigger than just yourself. You’re part of a twosome, working together to create a life for yourselves. Your combined energy expands each of you beyond your life into something more than either of you would be individually.

When one half of a couple dies, the one left behind feels diminished. No longer part of a couple, you shrink back to yourself, and it simply doesn’t seem to be enough. At least that’s the way it was for me. At the beginning, my grief was so all-encompassing, my pain so great, my shock at how his death made me feel so intense, that it masked the feeling of smallness. Oddly, when my grief began to dissipate, I started to grieve for my grief because as it turned out, grief was something more, something beyond merely me.

And then one day, there I was . . . just me. No Jeff, no grief, no more grappling with the idea of death, no more feeling the winds of eternity in my face.

And it didn’t seem enough. I didn’t seem enough.

If I hadn’t had that connection to another human being for so many years, I might not have noticed that lack of “enoughness,” though come to think of it, before I met Jeff, I struggled with the meaning of life and was often plagued by thoughts of “is this all there is?” It wasn’t until after he died, and I had shrunk back into myself, that those thoughts returned. I missed Jeff, of course, missed our shared life, but as those memories fade somewhat, what I missed even more is being part of something bigger than myself.

Time has passed, as it does, and now I’m used to being merely me, but I still need to focus on something other than myself, to focus on something outside of myself.

Over the years, that focus has changed — from dance, to travel, to home ownership, to gardening — but always, it’s the act of focusing rather than the focal point that is important. It gives me a reason to get up in the morning, creates a semblance of meaning, lends a sense of “something more” to my life.

So yes, my posts often talk about gardening or my lawn or my house or the improvements I’ve made to the property because that’s what I’m focusing on. As I age, chances are my focus will become more about health issues or finding ways to do things that have become hard to do or maybe even just the weather because in an age-restricted life, weather is about the only thing outside one’s self that changes.

But even those posts, whatever they might be (assuming, of course, I am still writing) will be indirectly related to grief because if Jeff were still here, none of this would be relevant.

But he isn’t here, and I am. So I need something to focus on. For now, that focus is gardening.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.