Fish on Land

Highs and Lows

The last few weeks have been more unusual than ever. Yeah, hard to believe, right? We decided to seriously investigate becoming home owners. This year we will get annihilated on taxes. Both Charis and I are working professionally and full-time. So we met with a recommended agent and looked at some property that matched our criteria. We definitely wanted an income property, preferably a duplex. In my casual research over the last few years, I believed a duplex to be the best bet for us economically and as a way to get into property management. So…. we’re soon going to be the proud owners of a duplex! We found something that truly matches our specs and that we can afford. There have been inspections and reports and revised offer letters and many many phone calls over the last 2 weeks. We literally made the offer the day that we were flying to LA for another hearing. We close on the property in about a week. The month of May will be full of moving and planning and renting out the vacant unit. In all respects, I have a very strong and positive gut feeling about this. It’s the right step for us and I'm very excited. 

On the other end of the spectrum is a looming trial and numerous delays in the prosecution of my brother’s murderer. The judge finally lost patience with the public defender and is granting no further delays. The preliminary is set to start next Thursday. The prosecuting attorney has remained calm and always intelligent, explaining everything to us and making herself available when I catch her by phone at her desk. She works extremely hard and, in my eyes, will make a strong case for the maximum penalty. There is plenty of evidence, brutal and painful evidence. My heart is still broken and I still cry regularly. My family is still immersed in pain. The details surrounding the case have come slowly and when I see the murderer in court, I want to kill him. I can’t breath, my hands clench and I forget to blink as I stare at  him with burning eyes. Lately, I’ve felt that Russell’s energy is with me less. It’s freaking me out, I want to feel him near me always. My grief is more unpredictable now. Suddenly, I feel sick to my stomach and have to lie down and then a numb depression sets over me. I toss on the couch and feel restless. It lasts for a day and then passes. It returns again just as suddenly. It’s not the bitter sharp agony of before, it’s a dull throbbing bruised feeling. Trying to pinpoint the thoughts that bring it on makes me feel sicker, my mind wants to understand so that it protects itself from those thoughts, but there’s no hiding.

Handwriting

The other day, I received a note from someone I’m working with, and their handwriting reminded me so much of someone dear to me, that it triggered many vivid memories. The person’s handwriting was a strange uncomfortable scrawl, as if this individual had never taken a penmanship class, but more insightful to me, it seemed as if they had had to re-learn how to write after having an injury or paralysis. The handwriting was a dead ringer for my grandmother’s – post-stroke. Grandma, before her stroke, had the cursive and neat penmanship of an attentive student. It was a serenade to long love letters and seems to be mimicked in romantic Hallmark card script. After her stroke, she could barely write in one continuous ink thread and often trailed alarmingly out of the line margins. Her writing was very difficult to read to the untrained eye. She was embarrassed by her writing, just as she was embarrassed by her stroke. Her ability to speak was also dramatically affected. She lost the ability to communicate and she never recovered from it. Her will to learn how to do these things all over again was stubbornly locked in apathetic refusal. She simply would not. Her ability to be happy never came back – it too was lost with her speech and penmanship.

I was on the phone with Grandma that Saturday morning around 10:15 a.m. when she had her stroke. She was talking with me about making pancakes for breakfast and my mom bringing me over in a little while. As she described what she had in the fridge for breakfast, I imagined her with the fridge door open and bent over looking in with the phone in one hand. She started to lose her train of thought. She paused on the words and then started kind of stammering, “Mmm…mmm…., ahhhh, sh….sh….hhhhh.” On the line, I said, “Grandma?” Nothing. “Grandma, are you there?” Nothing. A clank as the phone dropped. I walked over to Mom with the phone in my hand. “Mom, Grandma sounds funny, like she’s drunk or something.” I was around 10 years old. Mom seemed alarmed, “I just talked to her, she wasn’t drunk.” She grabbed the phone, “Mom, mom?” Nothing. Mom called Tia and an ambulance and we all rushed over there. Grandma was wandering around her house in a daze. She seemed lost. The paramedics indicated symptoms of a stroke and took her to the hospital. Grandma was around for many years after her stroke, in fact her body was in excellent shape, the health of a woman much younger, the doctors would say. It hurts to remember her once lovely handwriting and speech so marred by her “minor” stroke. A stroke that secretly took much more from her than speech and handwriting.

Write It Already

In the last month, I started writing for a music website. With the intention of maintaining my web journal and keeping up on my reviews for the website, I have done neither. I’m falling behind miserably. There is a lot going on in my life now, and I’m not complaining, but if I slip on something a little, suddenly I’m behind a week. Is that how life is supposed to be? The weeks literally melting into months. My decision to write for the website was a big one. It means responsibility and a commitment to producing written work. It’s on a par with making myself go back to school: deadlines, rewrites, a discerning audience. And why would I do that? Well that, my friends, is what you’d call undeniable love. I love music and I love writing. I’ve never trusted myself enough to combine them, despite believing in my heart that I could do it well. I was held back by fear of embarrassment and (da, da, da, dum) failure. I can’t pinpoint exactly why I decided to take the plunge now. Perhaps the grief and trauma of the last few months gave me some perspective on what to really sweat in this life. Perhaps I’m just getting to the age that I don’t care what anyone thinks. Just as with bad events, good events in life have a lot to do with timing. My friend David, author of the fantastic Stickboy PrettySure comic strip, had the sense to tell me about the website and encourage me to check it out. Thanks Nono, you’re my N.Y. guardian angel.

Check out the website I'm writing for at Caught in the Carousel and do yourself a favor and visit Stickboy too.