I concur with the lay diagnoses of Velma's and Scraps's symptoms: exhaustion and depression respectively.
When my partner had cancer, my mantra was often "I can bear this." Also: "One foot in front of the other." There was so much that needed doing, so much processing that had to happen. I dedicated myself to living the moments I got so as to minimize regret.
Another thing I liked to say: "In 100 years, everybody I know is going to be dead. I already know how this comes out."
This moment here, horrifying or tender, exhilarating or eviscerating, is the only one any of us has. What we do with it is the substance of our lives.
Light light light light light.
@SylvieG
Everybody else has offered sterling advice. I can only add: be kind to yourself, and don't let anybody discourage you from feeling what you feel.
I lost my previous cat in 1992, and took care of my partner at home for a year until she died of cancer, in 1997. I was not ready to take responsibility for a single other creature until 2006, when it was finally Time.
I have three cats now. They don't erase the other cats I've had and lost: they are themselves and nobody else. And I treasure them all.
Nonononononono. Widow's mite sent. Candles lit. Light flowing all over the city, for Soren and my friend who has a tiny cancer tumor in her breast.
Strength and courage to Velma and those who're helping her and Soren.
I've been handing out candy from the same porch since 1987. For a few years, I was seeing children whose parents 10 years earlier had taken candy from me. The last couple of years, supply has significantly outpaced demand. Bought one bag (of 150 pieces) at Costco, and there are at least 50 pieces left. Fortunately, Best Housemate Evar works at a grad school, where leftover candy can be consigned.
The SAD part of the thread:
For my entire adult life, it was a given that I'd be pretty much worthless from Halloween to Ground Hog Day. As middle age caught up with (and then lapped) me, I started trying to build daily cardio exercise into my life. I went to the gym. It was annoying, somehow, to be expending so much energy and have nothing to show for it (besides the shiny new muscles: ooh!).
As the economy collapsed last fall, I asked myself what I was going to wish I'd done, and the answer was: "Grow food." So I started retrieving my yard from the wilderness it had been allowed to become.
Worked on it for an hour a day. Continued through the winter. We're in a drought here in Northern California, and it was possible to work even through the little bit of rain that did fall. In March, I looked up and realized that for the first time in my adult life, I hadn't been depressed. Not once.
Powerful stuff, light and exercise. I am grateful that both are available to me. If I lived in one of the places where it snows, I'd have to buy a light.
Another invisible here. The first few years, frankly, it was a relief. My young-person cuteness generated a subsonic buzz in company, which was annoying. Now I can go for days without exciting interest, except from women my age and older, who can see me very well.
On occasions when attention is desirable, I have a purple straw hat that works very well: makes me taller, distinguishes me from the background. Also, a Tone of Command inherited from my mother, a white-haired lady one ignores at one's peril.
It took me three days, but I have succeeded in reading to The Very End of the comments. What a marathon; what an extraordinarily smart, talented, insightful, interesting group of people is met here.
I just wanted to make sure that nobody else had remarked on the thing that jumped out at me in the original debacle: Never trust anybody with three first names. Ever. How much suffering, money, life could have been saved if only people had followed this simple rule.
ADD self-testing:
Wait, what? You mean that's a thing? All this time I've accepted it as a character flaw. There's medication that fixes it? No way.
I always did well academically. I used to read voraciously. After a year of caring for the love of my life while she was dying, in my late 40s I lost the ability to read more than a paragraph. If something is very, very interesting, I can read a book of it. (Terry Pratchett, ftw.) Other than that, my mind skitters and skates. I'll open up a half dozen tabs of stories in, say the NY Times, and then read a paragraph, look at the next tab ... three weeks later, I might discover the window buried under a dozen others. Or not.
I am untidy. I start things, and complete them in a series of skirmishes. Thwartage and disappointment make me listless and apathetic.
And oh, the insomnia. My brain seems to delight in tormenting me with excruciating memories as I try to drift off to sleep. Or outrages. Whatever will tweak my adrenals and bring me to full consciousness. Gah.
And it's a thing? And not everybody has it?
This is such an edifying establishment.
Open threadiness:
Any news (comeuppances) in the A&R (Australian bookseller putting the screws to small presses) debacle?
Syd @43: After all, it was only a coffee mug.
My mantra in such situations is "Here in the material world, everything has a beginning, and an end. Sometimes they are close together. Sometimes they are farther apart. But they are always connected."
You loved it while you had it. You are spared regret. You have decades of memories.
And, dammit, it's still a shame.
David @5: I suppose you probably picked the bug up on the plane home
Mr. Vector is always on the plane.
Feel better. You know the drill: naps, plenty of fluids, whatever else it takes. Citrus juice can't hurt.
More Iowa goodness:
Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal will not co-sponsor legislation aimed at rescinding gay marriage rights, thereby blocking the legislation. The video made me tear up.
linkmeister @79
Wait, you vacationed in *both* Switzerland *and* Fresno in 1984? That's ... full spectrum traveling, that is. Surprised you didn't get the bends.
Clifton @103
I didn't get to Europe until I was in my 50s (after the dot-com bust layoff of blessed memory). Believe me, it's still good. I called it "The Knees Are Still Good" Tour.
Marilee's been sprung: she's back home, and has posted to her livejournal.
Woohoo! I got promoted! Okay, yes, actually Chris Baldwin and Little Dee got promoted. Still: chuffed.
Could President Obama make the security stupid go away, please? I'd love to take pointy sticks with me wherever I like.
"It's not my fault, officer. He backed into my knitting needles." "Thirty-seven times, ma'am?"
heresiarch @ 689: Real life, considered as a game, is absolutely botched.
Yes! When I was in hard grief, it seemed to me that I was in a beta reality, and my bug report was very long.
"Excuse me, this grief stuff? If you want to encourage people to be loving, why tf do you punish them for it? This can't go in the release version. Fix it."
Jim @ 651:
That pretty much defines awesome. Thank you. My heart is full.
Open threadiness: for the knitters.
Especially the fourth strip down. Anybody know the tune?
Diatryma @ 647: I just make more and more interesting metaphors for living in general.
I dunno, Diatryma. That sounds like a life well lived to me.
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