reconciliations
As I've been transitioning from two chunks of work down to one each day – summer break early, given the swirling circumstances – the toughest part is reconciling two realities: One, that by working less, I'm letting the creative part of me drift away, just a bit more than normal, the majority of the day being dedicated to non-creative (though, in some cases, not unenjoyable) pursuits and responsibilities. The second is that by working less and letting that part of my identity slip, I accomplish more in the few hours in which I allow myself to indulge the creative side before the day's run: it wasn't until I went to my summer schedule (which will, most likely, be permanent) that I found my footing with the Fictions (the former Project500, keep it simple and all) and blasted through the first one. The second chunk of work an (oft-failed) effort to assert an identity that didn't need assertion to begin with? Or, perhaps, I need the other stuff to help fill the well more than I had previously thought. Whatever it is, I'll take it – but that doesn't make it an easy reconciliation. An essential one, yes, but not an easy one; recording this as a note of the benefit of present effort.
erasure loops
An understanding that the frustration I've felt as I stare down yet another trip into legal erasure of a person (tangentially this time) – perhaps worth noting that, both times, I've been reading Proust – isn't over the death: think I said yesterday that, while I obviously feel bad for my wife and her family, my mother-in-law's death really doesn't impact me emotionally: I liked her, and, for the most part, lucked out in the mother-in-law department, but she hadn't been well for a long time and her relatively quick passing (at home) was a gift for her. What's bothering me is that my grandfather's estate issues and such are still going on – nothing bad, just a lot to dismantle – and, now that I'm dealing with (though not with the same level of involvement) another one, I feel like I'm back at the beginning of the process with my grandfather – down to the nursing home my father-in-law will be going into. It's an utterly exhausting loop, but one that begs the question: in these morning hours spent toiling in The Paintshop, writing things that no one reads only for my own belief that, in order to communicate to a nebulous someone, they need to exist, am I being myself for the only time during the day, or am I visiting the mausoleum of a previous iteration of myself, as others visit a grave?
*****+ / *****
Already wish I could experience it for the first time all over again.
meetings and visitations
Two more of the standard meetings and visitations in the interregnum between death and funeral today though this is my first in a long time when one spouse survives still; I'm used to dealing with total erasure, step by step, bit by bit. Will sit and be silent and offer support when needed; for some reason or other I've come to view these meetings and visitations as an integral part of the grieving process (though, in this case, I don’t consider myself to be grieving for the deceased but for the grief my wife is feeling) – probably because I've handled them myself for so long and prefer to do than feel; in this case, I do the lawn and write the obit.