Additional Posts

While going through some notebooks, I found these pieces on grief I had written in the spring and summer of 2022. I thought I would add them, in the order they were written, and as one post.

Lost in the Past 11 January 2022

“Get out and do something.”

If I’ve heard that line once I’ve heard it a thousand times.

“I do get out,” I tell them,  but they look at me like I’m lying.

Yes, I miss my Greg. Yes, I love him and always will. Yes, I would live our life together again, with all its ups and downs.

No, I am not interested in dating. No, I am not looking for a man. No, I don’t have to have a man in my life to feel complete.

Will I ever change? Ever move away from Greg, emotionally or physically? Most likely not.

I have no wish to, no reason to. Even though there are days I’d like to have a man to talk to, to go out to eat with, it is a rare day that I feel that way.

I have my memories of Greg. His smile. His laugh. His hugs. His singing. His love and warmth.

Some things simply cannot ever be replaced. Greg is that for me.

So, I’ll stay lost in the past. A past much better suited to me than a future that would be uncertain. I know Greg loved me for he wouldn’t have stayed with me otherwise. I do not know that about another man.

My past is me. My life. My love. My future is me. My life. Memories of love.

I am alone and alone I’ll stay.

In My Life 5 March 2022

Where to go today? On the road. In my heart. In my writing. It feels I have exhausted all the options on any of these.

Driving is getting tiresome. I can see the beauty God is putting in the world while driving but there is much beauty on our farm that I can see without stepping foot out of the house.

My heart. Greg is in my heart. I thought it was opening to someone else but realized neither my heart nor I am ready. So, I’ll pull back into my own world and stay there.

My writing. I can do things like this but haven’t been able to get a story rolling and to the end for more than a month. I can come up with openings and a paragraph or two, know how I want the story to end, but can’t get the two connected.

The rest of my life. Stay at home a lot. Go to Reno’s for a good meal. Pet the cats. Work on the house and the yard. Read.

Learn how to be myself all on my own.

Greg’s Birthday 2 April 2022

I’m fighting the tears. So far I’ve kept them at bay.

I had my day planned. Drive Greg’s truck to Glasgow and eat lunch at Gondolier. The truck made odd noises when I put it in Reverse so that was out. I got in the new truck, checked the mail, drove to town and got gas. I put the CD of Greg in the stereo so I could listen to his sweet voice while driving. That was also out as the CD clicked constantly – something it hadn’t done before.

Now I’m in Reno’s bar once again, listening to Travis and wondering what to do once I have lunch. I need to do a little shopping but am not in the mood.

Couples are coming in while I sit here by myself. I miss Greg and our life together. I am adrift without Greg, and now the shop.

People say I need to meet someone. Why? Greg is my heart, my love, my strength.

I was at the pawn shop yesterday and one of Greg’s buddies said, “Hey, there’s Greg’s wife!” After that wonderful compliment, what more do I need.

I Fall to Pieces 16 April 2022

Two years. Eight months. Two days. Ten hours.

A lifetime. A few seconds.

No way to measure the eternity I feel I’ve been without Greg. The eternity I will be without him.

A friend and I had lunch a week or so ago, and I cried while talking about Greg. She said memories can bring tears. I told her that simply thinking “Greg” brought tears – I didn’t have to think of anything else.

It takes so little, so suddenly, so quickly, for me to fall to pieces, no matter what may be going on at the time.

And the pieces never seem to fit when I attempt to move away from the sadness. My life is a jigsaw puzzle of unmatched pieces that change their shapes from time to time, scattering my plans for  a day, keeping me unsettled, unable to envision a time when I’ll be less sad.

Some days I can think of Greg and smile, remembering our foundation of love. 

Other days, I think of Greg and I fall to pieces.

Where? 26 April 2022

Where am I living? Today? Tomorrow? Yesterday? Right now it is yesterday. My heart wants what it can no longer have. Wants what it should not want. Yearns for something I do not know.

Dragging myself out of the past is hard. And it is going to be dragging, for my heart is not willing to look to the future. I’m not sure my mind is willing either.

I know I must for the future is coming, no matter what my heart – or my mind – may want to do.

I cannot change yesterday. I cannot change the past of only three seconds ago. I need to move ahead.

I think the what I might be moving ahead to is why my heart is staying firmly in its past, for I have no idea where my life is headed other than longer days and longer nights of only existing.

Tears. Laughter. More tears. A sadness inside me that doesn’t want to leave. A longing for a change in my life – but what kind of change?

Move away from our farm? Just the thought of packing tires me. And Greg is here, and he is my heart.

A new job? That might help me move into the future. At the very least it would give me something different to do.

Get past the fear of loving again? That is unanswerable.

I am here. I know where I am, what I do and what I like. Perhaps this is where I will stay.

Killing Time 14 July 2022

Two years, eleven months and nearly seventeen  hours without Greg. I‘m no closer to moving into the future than I was two years, eleven months and nearly seventeen hours ago.

I’ve changed some things in my life since then. Bought a new truck one year, eleven months and two hours ago. Sold the shop building and cleared out thirty-five years of memories three months, fifteen days and twenty hours ago.

I have done things that needed to be done – repaired and repainted Greg’s truck, repaired the Explorer, reroofed the house – but those things aren’t changes – only basic upkeep of property.

I’m not grieving over Greg as much although I am sad most days and it doesn’t take much for tears to appear. I do things on my own – dine out, drive, shop, attend concerts; I guess you could say that is a change – I had never attended a concert until Greg and I attended a Travis Tritt concert 8 October 1994 – in the past two years I have attended three concerts on my own, and have tickets for another one scheduled for October.

But to say I’ve made any changes that will add up to a future doing anything differently than I have done since Greg died. No.

I don’t date. Don’t really have an inclination to do so, although, at times, a male presence while dining out would be welcome.

There are a few places I’d like to travel to but probably won’t. Distance. Time. Cats. Money. Considerations to be taken before plans for more than a night away from home could be made.

Selling the shop was probably not a good idea. Stepping out and locking the door behind me a final time was tantamount to losing Greg again.

And something left me that night. I’m not sure what, for while I can get out and do things, deep down I really have no interest in doing so. My past is gone and it took any vision I had of my future with it.

I’ve not been able to write much about Greg and haven’t posted anything for a few months. I’ve dabbled at short stories and songs but can’t seem to get rolling and complete any.

I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping this month and have blamed it on the heat, which has contributed to it, but I know I’m just trying to escape. From what and to where I am uncertain.

So, I drift through my life, just killing time.

Another Day 11 August 2022

Another day alone. Another day I feel nonexistent. Another day wanting what I can never have again. Another day contemplating a future that will no different than today.

Another day.

Another day I have accomplished nothing. And don’t plan to.

There are things I need to do. Put gas in the truck. Dust the furniture. Sort and trash. Trim tree branches that are hitting the truck. Mow the yard.

Nothing I am interested in doing. Nothing that catches my attention.

Nothing but reading, for I can escape into a story and be somewhere else for a while. But even that is becoming problematic as too many characters in too many stories remind of Greg in some way. 

And the tears appear.

Closing A Chapter

I am writing this on a Friday while wind roars in the treetops and rain pelts the roof. It is the third day of March 2023. A day Greg and I would have been together. I don’t know what we would have done, but a good meal would have been included. Maybe a drive down random roads. Maybe see a movie after having an early supper.

Doesn’t matter. We would have been together.

I’m sure anyone reading this blog will notice the gap between December 2021 and August 2022. A gap caused by another drastic change in my life.

In December 2021, I sold the shop building. This wasn’t a sudden decision. In the four or five years before Greg’s death, we occasionally discussed selling the shop. We’d talk about it a little while, and I’d tell Greg to do whatever he wanted. I don’t think either of us wanted to sell the shop. During the thirty-plus years we were in the printing business, the shop was home as much – sometimes more – than our house was.

The shop was where we conducted business, made our living. It was where we worked long hours, where we laughed, where we fussed, where we talked with friends, where we shared meals, where we dreamed, where Greg sang while I typed, where we were Greg and Joyce – in our own place

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A place we drifted in and out of on weekends, sometimes work, sometimes a meeting place, sometimes a pit stop on the way to another destination.

The three months I spent clearing the shop of our printing business was hard. Thirty-five years of my life with Greg had to be disposed of in some way. I wept over many things, from notes Greg had written, to the destruction of printing equipment that had served us well.

I stored things. I gave away things. I trashed things. And wept about it all.

I cried at the shop. I cried in restaurants. I cried while driving. I cried at the house. I sat at Greg’s grave and cried; one day I was hurting all over so I came home and slept by Greg’s grave for a few hours . . . it helped.

On the evening of 29 March 2022, I locked the back door of the shop for the final time. As I stood there with the key in my hand, I felt more lost than I ever imagined I could. I had been without Greg for two and a half years. Now another major part of my life was gone. Neither Greg nor the shop can ever be replaced.
I have mourned the loss of Greg and the loss of the shop the past year, and have made several attempts to write this blog post in that time. It has been extremely hard to get words to fit on the page to relate how I feel. I don’t think what I have written today fully expresses the deep sense of loss I have been enduring.

A feeling of being lost in my own life. Without an anchor of any kind. No Greg. No shop. None of the day-to-day things that were my life for nearly forty-five years. Forty-two of those years with Greg. Thirty-eight of those years in Printing Creations.

Years of having my days filled with printing work and other things. Listening to Greg play a guitar and sing. Decorating the lobby for Christmas. Chatting with friends who stopped by. Eating a meal. Making flower arrangements for Memorial Day. So many bits and pieces of my life that are gone and irreplaceable.

This is most likely the last post I will make on this blog. Grief has morphed into sadness that permeates everything I do. The days are slowly becoming easier emotionally. I still cry over Greg; I doubt those tears will ever be gone. I miss Greg and the shop; I doubt that will ever change. I am at a point that I feel anything else I write would become repetitious. If inspiration brings new thoughts on grief to the surface, I will post more.

Until then, thank you to whomever has taken the time to read my posts. The poem below was written at least twenty years ago, but it is as relevant now as it was then.

Holes
In my heart
Once filled with
People
Pets
Possessions
Now gone
Irretrievable
Only death
Will make me
Whole