Think. Overthink. Repeat.

Things used to be simple. There was a time when my thoughts were only about one thing: surviving grief. Now, also jammed in the mix are how to honor my wife, and how to live without her. Surviving was about the present, total minimalist. But the other two are about the past and future. You could say my thoughts are hard to organize these days.

If you ask me what I'm thinking at any given moment, I'll probably answer you "what?" I spend huge swaths of time dwelling on how to go about dating, TV and music to de-stress, and writing to memorialize my wife: often semi-simultaneously. Also, often replaying the same thoughts over and over for no discernible reason. And this is with me meditating once or twice a day (if I think of it). New thoughts are being generated faster than old ones can be cleared out! Critical mass! System overload! Phrases!

Oh yeah, and with everything on my mind, I have a job and a schedule and a-sponsablilties to remember, too. I don't have to be thinking about them, but I sure can't forget! I should buy a day planner: for my subconscious.

Things used to be simple. There was a time when my thoughts were only about one thing: surviving grief. Now, also jammed in the mix are how to honor my wife, and how to- Wait...I think we passed by this thought already.

Normal is boring (but I feel fine)

I think the charm of grief is wearing off. I've been a little stumped trying to think of stuff to post these past couple of days, at least things that can be funny and on-topic. It's just not what it used to be. We all know how much natural humor there is in grief, how fertile a ground it is for comedy. But as I settle into my new job and roll closer to that one-year milestone, grief's just becoming...boring.

I still have a lot of griefy moments, but it's kind of getting old. Turns out, even traumatic tragedy has a finite period of novelty, much like a shiny toy or Invader Zim (if you don't get the reference, that's the point). I cry and it's like "Yup. Doin' this again. Sucks. Again."

I am by no means asking to go back in time to the seven month mark when it was easier to make fun of grief. I knew I was setting a challenge for myself trying to write a funny(ish) grief blog, but I didn't anticipate the challenge coming from, well, normality? I don't know if that's the right word, I'm not quite sure I remember what normal is, if I ever knew. This may have to do for normal. But if anything, I'm going back in time like 18 months and preventing all this hell.

The silence has been filled

I don't do silence well. See, I have these stupid anxieties, and when it's silent, I start hearing the walls creaking and little ambient noises that could be dust settling, but also might be a tarantula or burglar or the ghosts of my high school self. It was nice to have a wife, someone with whom conversation never felt out of place. But now, I'm like some kind of sound junkie, desperate for a fix.

I like a lot of 'regular' music, but when she died, I got big into classical music to relax. Then Celtic music, and recently, the white noise of rain, and even more recentlier, music from Japanese anime. I was thinking today about starting to explore blues or blues-rock. Because I need to fill the silence, and every on of my silences needs a custom-tailored sound, apparently.

When I sat down to write this, I had to select some acoustical accompaniment, of course. I tried and turned off two things before deciding on a third. This is what grief has done to me. I'm so addled about the brain that I can't even pick my own sound! I decided on rain noise. I figure that in the next few months and years, I'll branch out even further. Perhaps I'll explore the sounds of badgers weaving wicker baskets, or trance remixes of Belizean folk songs, or pop music. Oh god. I hope I don't get so desperate for new sounds that I turn to pop.

The stone at the grave (not a gravestone)

So it's been 11 months since my wife died and still there's no headstone. Am I pissed? You bet! But I've also heard how long it can take. I don't know, we've been cutting stone and engraving it since the Egyptians. I figured the techniques would've improved since then. I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason why it takes so long. But 'perfectly good' isn't enough.

I do, however, finally have a hint that the stone may exist. When I visited the cemetery this evening, there was cement, still in a wooden mold drying. It's not a gravestone, but it's the stone at the grave for the gravestone, I assume. Fucking weird thing to see.

I wasn't sure how I felt, really. I took some pictures of the blank cement next to a vase of plastic flowers (her mom probably bought them at the dollar store) which was tossed aside by the workers, like some piquant symbol of are-you-fuckin'-serious?

Then I got an idea. A fantabulous idea. The cement was almost dry, but not quite. So I decided to scratch my own epitaph! So I keyed the title of Our Song in like a romantic vandal. It's what I told her grandma to have written on the stone, but I'm doubtful she remembered the correct wording since I've heard she's going senile. Well worth ruining the spare key to my lockbox to write in cement that will be covered up forever soon.

"This is perfectly normal"