Samain and the Yule Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Rich Levine. Small Estate Affidavit. The arcane lore of the law. The law itself. Making and enforcing laws. Judges. Lawyers. Police. Detectives. Canon law. Bishops. Diocese. Bishop Joe Strickland. Life in spite of. A good life in spite of. Seed-Keeping. Soil. Roots and Rhizomes. The Light-Eaters. Zöe.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Boulder

Kavannah: Perseverance and love (ahavah)

One brief shining: As I drive down the hill, and everything is down the hill from my home on Shadow Mountain, the lights have gone up, pushing that holiseason instinct to brave the advancing darkness by illuminating it, brilliant tiny bulbs of all colors strung along eaves, up a forty-foot Colorado Spruce, on wires from a tall pole to form a tree of lights, we are still here they say, look at what we can do.

I have only one thing that carries a weight for me. You might think prostate cancer, but no. That’s not it. It’s transferring the money from Kate’s 529 accounts for Ruth and Gabe to my own. I want to start giving Ruth money. Since last August. My formophobia notwithstanding I have dutifully sent off three packets of declarations, forms, and certificates. Still no joy.

Dealing with it makes me tense, jaw tightens. Teeth clench. My emotional resilience plummets. Not good for problem solving. Especially over the phone, to call center employees. Some who can do this, but not that. Those who can do that are not available and will call me back. Right.

Reached out to Bond and Devick, my financial planners, since they’re in Minnesota and it’s a Minnesota program. They helped me. Sort of. Going to see Rich tomorrow. If I can, I’m going to hand it to him and ask him to finish this for me. I want it off my back.

Going to see Rabbi Jamie tomorrow after mussar. Twice in the past month I’ve encountered a barrier within that I didn’t know existed. I believe my flat affect stems from its grip on me. The barrier is enough.

My first encounter with it was on my second visit to my medical oncologist, Dr. Buphati. I’d gone to that meeting expecting clarity about the status of my advanced prostate cancer. When I discovered they did not have my PSA results, drawn in their office three weeks before, I hit the barrier.

As if a train of cars, each one carrying a different emotional cost levied over the whole of my nine year plus cancer experience piled up, each one pushing against the other with the force of inertia gained over time and distance.

Over most of those nine plus years I’ve tried to deal straight up with the news about this change or that, move on to the next step, treading that fine line between being informed and responsible as a patient and trusting my doctors as Kate asked me to do. Sure, I’ve had times when fear overcame me, uncertainty pushed me to my knees, but each time I got back up. In this moment, at that visit I could not get back up.

Though I left after that visit with a feeling of doom and sadness overwhelming me, I drove home without incident and did right myself later in the day.

For some reason I cannot recall the second time right now. Not the trigger that is. But the feeling? Oh, yes. Here’s a different metaphor. Have you ever worked in or been in a factory where they had heavy doors attached to a counterweight with a chunk of lead in the cable holding the door open? If there’s a fire, the lead melts and the counterweights engage pulling the door closed to protect whatever lies beyond it.

That sort of feeling. As if what has gone before has been so much, that my feelings slammed my inner world shut. Trapping those feelings that threatened to engulf me.

It doesn’t surprise me that these moments have come to visit. The last ten years have held more tough times than I can recall. Yet I feel I’ve learned how to navigate the grief and the fear neither ignoring nor denying it, while not being captive to it either. In spite of that I have had death, divorce, and disease as my constant companions over the last ten years. I have not forgotten that. I don’t dwell on it, but the memories and the feelings remain stored within me.

When I stepped into this new period of uncertainty about my prostate cancer, right after my bar mitzvah ironically, I’ve gone up and down. Sometimes steady. Sometimes not. The most current manifestation of these feelings has been a flat affect, not down, not up. Blah. Unmotivated. Slow. Tired. Very much like acedia.

The door to my inner world slammed shut. Bottling up my exuberance and joy.

I don’t like living blah. My life means more to me.