"I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you... You, dead, are so much better that anyone else alive.” – Richard Feynman in a letter to his wife Arline, Oct. 17, 1946
The love of my life and partner in literally everything, died on July 28, 2022. On his birthday. Jim's last prank. He was admitted to the hospital due to low oxygen levels on Dec. 14, 2021 and stayed there until March 2022, where he was then transferred to a nursing home. Finally in June 2022 he was released to come home for what we hoped was more rehab (in spite of his Stage IV lung cancer). Just a week later his oncologist called it: Jim had 2 weeks to 3 months left. I wasn't with Jim at that earth-shattering followup where he got the news, because he'd given me COVID from the nursing home and I couldn't enter the building. At-home hospice was a fiasco and I will never forget it. The coup d'grace was our oldest cat, Frida (the first pet we adopted together), died two weeks after Jim. She'd had a stroke in May but recovered and was home when Jim was here, and also when he died. Jim was always Frida's person, the only one she'd make biscuits on. I think she was devastated and lost the will to live.
Jim was the solution to my midlife crisis when I turned 40. We set out to build a new life together nearly 28 years ago. While that sounds like a good long time, believe me when I say it feels like a time warp. I'm utterly in shock how fast those years went by, and still feel robbed.
Seven months later, I continue to see a therapist in person and attend grief group therapy via Zoom. Took on a couple more fosters. I've been cooking and canning a little more than usual because I'm trying to do the things that used to make me happy. Just went to the first in-person annual Soup Swap since the pandemic, which was fun yet bittersweet to go it alone. If anyone's interested, I'll post the recipe for the soup I made shortly, along with a spaghetti sauce recipe I recently canned. Both are vegan and use Impossible or Beyond plant-based meats.
