High Water

Yep, Iowa City is flooding again -- yesterday, they shut down Dubuque Street, which is one of three ways to enter Iowa City from the north, for the first time since 1993. Life at work is liable to get interesting for awhile -- I need to go shoot photos to document flood damage to City facilities today. Here's a couple I shot yesterday to use as backgrounds for information pages on our cable channels.


I can already see a big difference in the traffic on our highway, since it's one of the two remaining north-bound routes. In 93, it ended up being the only one.

I feel like a social butterfly this week -- Thursday, Trooley and I went out to Lauren and Michael's for supper and conversation with Drew and Cinda, and Friday, I hung out in Iowa City's highest penthouse with John and Janet. It was the fruits of somebody's (Legal Services?) silent auction, so there were a couple dozen people doing wine, munchies, and aerial views of town. I, of course, brought a camera. The view is nice, but I wouldn't trade it for the one out my back door. I ran into several other people I knew there, and I met a couple of new folks.


I finished The Year of Magical Thinking, which is the book Joan Didion wrote about her experiences around the very sudden death of her husband of forty years. They were eating and dinner and he collapsed - massive heart attack, and that was it. (On the other hand, he did have a history of heart problems, so her shock points to some magical thinking even earlier..)

That part, for me, was very different. We had a year to get used to the idea, and then a full month of certainty. The more I think about it, the more I see advantages and disadvantages - my own year of magical thinking began sometime last year, I'm thinking, and I got to work part of it out with my spouse. That's gotta help.

Didion's story is complicated by her daughter's six-month bout with some mysterious brain ailment, which began only five days before the death of her husband, so there are a lot of hospital caretaker experiences to which I can relate.



Her 'magical thinking' was that her husband was going to come back, somehow, as long as she didn't really let him die. She didn't want to get rid of his clothes, because without them it would be just that much harder for him to return. She seems to want to avoid reminiscing about him for the same reason, going to great lengths to avoid places that would remind her of him.

I don't have any of that. Certainly I miss Diana, but it's not particularly painful to remember something about her. Okay, I haven't got her stuff packed up yet, but that's about procrastination of a near-herculean task (I am chipping away at it and I've resolved to replace both of her dressers with two or three coat trees...)

If I were going to get magical about Didion's situation, though, I believe I'd be looking at the fact that her daughter was near death, her husband died, and then their daughter got better. He used to regularly express his love to her with the idea that he'd gladly trade his life for one more day of her happiness.

I don't see much of that in my situation, other than the whole 'that which does not kill us makes us stronger' thing. I keep coming back to my zen catholic creed -- shit happens (and if you're a tobacco user, shit happens more often).


Later, that same day...
Got mail from Hospice today, including a form letter from a counselor I didn't talk to saying 'it was good to speak with you the other day.' (good thing I'm not a cynic, eh?) It includes a stapled packet (marked 'Month 1') that includes the 'Rules for Grief.' Rule 1 is 'There are no rules for grief.' I recognize the packet -- I used to write much the same thing for ex-cult members. It's mostly normalization, with a lot of permission to grieve uniquely. There's even a paragraph that says 'don't fret dealing with your spouse's belongings..'

That's enough for now. After reading Cranium Man's entry, I prescribed a heavy dose of video game therapy for him, which I intend to administer later tonight. Perry and his kids arrive Tuesday night, the CR Disc Dog tournament is next Saturday -- we're defending the title we've held since 2002.