I'm falling asleep so I'd better post now

We got together in March 1979. I was 19 - he was 34. I was a student in one of his classes (in the 70s this was not considered inappropriate, dear reader, if you are under 30)
I say got together rather than started going out, as for the first three months, we didn't - not wanting to be seen in public while I was still in his class. I think that's one of the reasons we became so close: we had a lot of time to talk and 'bond' in our own little world at the start of our relationship without any other influences. And neither of us could quite believe what was happening - it seemed sort of magical, when on the surface we should have had little in common - he was a highly educated, sophisticated man who had travelled widely, had Socialist leanings, loved the outdoors, while I was a sheltered Catholic virgin who had never even been out of my own state, had been brought up in a very conservative family and wouldn't have cared if I never went outside again.
Anyway, the other day I suddenly thought of a weird and sad coincidence. The date we first made contact outside college, I asked him to come to a pub to listen to the folk group I played in, and then a friend of his called minutes later to ask him to the same pub - was the 23rd March. He died on March 30 2006. How strange it would have been if we'd realised on that magical night that he had exactly 27 years and 1 week to live.
Morbid, huh?

Roxanne ...

I've been trying for ages to describe what this sound of anguish inside my head sounds like (see my earlier post entitled 'The banshee's lonely croon'). It happens mostly when I think of Glenn, and remember past times vividly, almost as if he were still here, and then come back to the horrible reality. It's not a scream, or a howl ...
Anyway, the other day I bought the CD of Moulin Rouge. I've taught this film for a number of years - you know, the Baz Luhrmann film with Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor? At the end of the Roxanne Tango, Christian, the Argentinian, and the Duke all .. whatever this sound is. Wail, howl, whatever. It goes on and on in a sort of downward cascade.
That's it. That's it ...

I told you so ...

Glenn's all-time favourite epitaph, which may be apocryphal, but appeared in one of those books on famous words carved on tombstones, was I told you I was sick. I thought of that tonight when I read this site, the link for which comes from www.widowsquest.com by Anna Farmery. It's an article about the high mortality rate among widows and widowers following the death of (particularly a long-term) spouse.
The link is: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6583681.stm
If only I could be sure it was true in my case ...

If you could hear me now ...

If you could hear me now
Singing somewhere to the lonely night
Dreaming of the arms that held me tight,
If you could only see me now.

But I've been too long in the wind,
Too long in the rain,
Taking any comfort that I can
Looking back
And longing for the freedom of my chains,
Lying in your loving arms again.
("Loving Arms" by Tom Jans)

Heathcliff and me - two demented people

I think it would be easier to go on if I had any sense of Glenn being still around - you know how you'll hear people say that, that they feel the departed are still with them in some way. I haven't felt that for even a second of the past year. I said to Dr K this week that I'd like nothing better than to have Glenn return in any form - he pointed out that people's experiences of that weren't always very pleasant, but I said I wouldn't care. And I wouldn't care. I couldn't be afraid of him, in any manifestation. I don't even want to surrender his ashes, because it's him.

What's love got to do with it?

How can you love someone who is beyond any need for human love? If love is a decision to put another's welfare, if not first, then at least as a priority, to always want the best for them, etc etc - then how do you do that for someone who no longer has needs, who already has the best? So in other words, when you say you love someone who's dead, are you actually saying you love their memory, or that you loved them while they were alive? I suppose the emotional component of love can survive the other's death...

Random Email #3 - to S.K.

Karen, the psychologist, said something which I thought very insightful. She observed from things I'd said that Glenn allowed me to be more myself than I could be with most people, including (especially) my own family, that he loved aspects of me that had been disapproved of or discouraged in my upbringing - I related to him in a very different way from anyone else - not only in the obvious ways. Things like my natural tendency to be emotional, intense, passionate, whatever you want to call it, Glenn thought were admirable, exciting - but in the minds of most people, I'm either not like that, or I shouldn't be. And now he's gone, that part of me has gone with him - it's not part of the good little girl persona I'm stuck with, that I developed as a child to get approval. I had never looked at it that way - I guess I just took it for granted. It seems to me that you are the same with everybody, which is both admirable and well-adjusted. This theory explains why I feel as if I died when he did, even though I'm still walking around