too busy to weep

Last Sunday night, in a 1000-mile phone call, I told my friend Kate I’d been too busy to weep. In the three months since my wife had told me she wanted a divorce I’d wept twice – once after sitting behind my son Spenser, watching him take his t-shirts, one by one, and hand them to me for storage. There must have been more than 200, we only got to a few that day before he said enough, and it broke my heart and I went down to the basement and wept. The other time was when my wife came down to the basement to have a discussion about the business of saying goodbye and it ended with her saying something about our situation. She went upstairs and I thought about our situation and I wept.

Otherwise, like I said to Kate, I was too busy to weep. Finding a safe, loving space for Spenser. Finding a place for me to live, staying in Portland no option. Lugging books and furniture and bags up and down and out and into a friend’s garage, trip after trip across town. Answering what felt like 10,000 Craigslist posts about rooms for rent, posting my own, changing this word and that so hopefully to better engage. Asking for help over and over, having to be okay accepting the help. Transitioning Spenser to his new home, trip after trip up there and back. Crashing with a friend a month. Connecting up with people I didn’t know over and over in hopes one or more would be able to help. Applying for jobs 10 years after retirement, zoom interview, paperwork and CPR certification. Busy, busy, busy.

I was too busy to weep. Then I got to Encinitas and the job fell through and there was way more money going out than coming in and I’m trying to arrange health care and automotive care and California citizenship and plates and a license. But mostly settled and the kid safe and sound back in Oregon. And Sunday I had a long talk with an old time friend who’d sent me a lot of money to help, being my friend, and we talked about a big sense of loneliness I’d felt the day before – knowing no one here. And we talked about my wife, and this huge hole in my life, my best friend gone, my soulmate, and loneliness being lonelier than ever before – ever in my life. And he said get ready, it’s coming and the only way through is time.

And Sunday afternoon I wept, and then again Monday and then again Tuesday. Not so busy. More room, and time, for grief.

Now my computer has crashed three times today – fatal error messages. I don’t know if this will make it to post. I’ve been trying to catch up to all kinds of little things today, paperwork and internet work and stuff and life changes. I think I’ll leave it here, still busy with life, differently, no choice but to give time time.