Hey batta batta- sah-WING

Remember the line from Casey at the Bat, "There is no joy in Mudville"?

I have had a Mudville address for 3 months now. Mudville is where everyone looks at you but they don't see you, nor you them. It is being tired of being tired. It is feeling numb and dull and joyless unless you can catch a good comedy on a free movie channel weekend or something. Even the dogs here are apathetic.

In Mudville, you get bills from the doctors who killed your husband. They are all for services that you thought were covered so you don't have any money set aside to pay them. The bills are not itemized and so they are as clear as mud.  You get charged interest and threatened by collection agencies when the bill is more than 28 days old. When you call Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mudville, they say that there have been some problems with the coverage and the card and the processing and everything is pending still after 2 months.  They tell you for the third time in a month that they will get back to you in 72 Mudville business hours.  They are slowly slogging through their mess that the hospital/doctors say you should pay- all $1300 of it.   Already I've paid several thousand since Gary died.   I need hip waders just to get through the day the way this weighs me down mentally.

I now look forward to the littlest things.  My grief therapist came this morning and I unloaded on him, but didn't get much resolved except to understand that I feel guilty about a LOT of stuff.  I feel guilty about things that people say I should not feel guilty about. After 'Al' left, I just felt very strangely let down.  I am through taking trips for the near future, and my plan to visit friends in CA is scuttled due to lack of funds(overspending in December) for gas money and then there is that ever lingering question:  how much more money do I owe doctors?

One topic we talked about in therapy is how feelings and emotions change frequently now. I was feeling guilty (again) because I told a friend who is in charge of an American Cancer Society hike in February that I would be a part of her team.  She asked me soon after Gary's death.  Now I am not so sure I want to take part in it.  I find the idea of being surrounded with cancer SURVIVORS very unappealing. RAH RAH  Yeah. How nice for you that you got to live longer than 6.5 months after your diagnosis.
I also get pissed when I get cards in the mail asking ME for money to fight pancreatic cancer or to help support other cancer sufferers.  Hey- where was Gary's cancer support group?  Oh that's right: there is no such thing as a pancreatic cancer survivor, so no support groups are needed.  My neighbor says that the money raised for ACS would help for cancer families to stay at a group type home while in treatment.  She said that ACS drives cancer patients to chemo.  Yet when I looked, it was all for breast cancer, not pancreatic.  If I did go on the hike, I cannot wear a special shirt for Gary, my $40 would pay for the team shirts from the bank who is sponsoring it.
I almost feel like going alone, just me and Gary's memory. Forget all the HOPE crap.  I'm fresh out.

Lately I have felt like some strange being with doors all over me- opening and shutting without my control. Sadness and grief come and go at will.  Sometimes they fling open the door and camp out for hours and days.  Other times they tip toe out and I don't notice they've left until they come back.  At this point, I don't want to seal any of the doors shut.  I don't want to keep grief away for now only to have him kick open the door and come back meaner than ever next year. 

I did have a great weekend last weekend.  I went up to the cold Twin Cities to visit my son and daughter in law. Just thinking about them makes me feel like crying because they are so nice to me. Forrest is like his dad in the way he is always the first to say, 'I love you' before I can even think to say it. How did that mouthy teenager become such a sweet man?
I like their cozy little apartment and that it is walking distance to shopping and dining.  We drove to Golden Valley so I could go to a Menards.  Gary and I loved Menards. Gary always wanted to go there when we visited Sioux Falls or Minneapolis to 'save big money' and to just look around in the store because Menards has no stores in the southwestern U.S. So much stuff and so little suitcase space!  It was hard to pass up the deals on some of the things I have not seen elsewhere. Oh well, those things were not in the budget.
I got home on Monday to frigid Phoenix, which has had the 5 coldest nights in 37 years.  This, after the hottest year ever on record in 2012. Thankfully, my nice neighbors put my flower pots in the garage to protect them.

I will hang on to little things to look forward to for now.  In February, I DO plan to make it over to California and then in March a small army of sports fans will be at my house to visit and see some baseball games. In the meantime, I go to my group grief meetings, and I am signed up for a 6 week course called Picking Up the Pieces.

Thanks to those who still read this blog and encourage me to gather my thoughts and spill them out here. I will close with another photo I stole off a facebook page I found today about grief.