The Year of Thinking Dangerously

     I am now deep into the season of anniversaries from last year. One year ago today, after having learned that the cancer had incurred into to my beloved's brain, she elected to come home and into hospice care.  I then in what I can only now imagine was a delusional state, determined that if I made a superhuman effort to see that she was properly medicated, properly fed and hydrated and made to feel loved beyond all measure, that I could keep her alive indefinitely.
     I am experiencing some seriously bad flashbacks to that time, and am also having some deeply felt moments of uselessness (see the poem below), failure (she died on my watch damn it!), and guilt (why her and not me? She was surely more valuable to humanity than I??).
     So for those who are grieving, the approach to the first anniversary is a very difficult time, and all I can advise is that it is best not to spend too much time in your head.  I have a hard time avoiding that (i.e. following my own advice), because I live and work at home and am alone 90% of the time.  I am blessed with a magnificent support system of friends and family, which is of immeasurable help, but this will be a difficult stretch to navigate.
    So stay busy, stay grounded as much as possible, and try to avoid such darkness as is illustrated by this poem:

USELESS 

I wake each autumn day

This question on my lips

Just what is it that I should do

Just what is it that is

Next for me

Now that all has been lost?

I used to have a purpose

To husband Susan, my labor of love

To love to honor to support her life

Was my privilege to fulfill

But she is gone, my task complete

And who am I, what am I to do?

I have survived chaos, turmoil

And the heartbreak of loss

Disease, coma and clinical death

But nothing compares with

This emptiness, this sense of loss

And of uselessness, like half myself

Is vanished to thin air

Susan! Oh Susan!

Would that you could

Take me with you

Take me away to your darkness

To whatever abyss you belong

Please do not leave me here alone

To wither slowly and waste away

There is nothing left for me

There is no light ahead

Save the drudgery of

Every passing day

And of all the words

We left unsaid.

I awake each new morning

And ask myself

What it is I want

What it is I need

To force away the gray

And now I know what I can say!

Oh let me be in the ground!

Please

Let me be in the ground

And go to sleep.

MPC:09-29-2015