Winter Never Ends

So when does grief end? Does it ever end? I'm beginning to think that it doesn't end, it just evolves, transmutes ever so gently and slowly with time. I suspect that each new day, each new discovery, each moment of life transforms grief. Grief is a living breathing entity. I should probably name it since it seems it will be with me for the rest of my life.

No one can apparently escape grief. Everyone looses someone or something if they live long enough. The some things are little or big. The someones are life long companions or peripheral parts of your life. The loss brings a moment or a lifetime of grief.

My mother died twenty years ago this month. My father died seventeen years ago this month. I'd love to know which one of them gave me which of these genes of mine. I can look in the mirror and at photographs and figure out where the eyes and the nose and the other physical things came from. But the genes that determine the inner workings are a mystery. I could well have gotten the Celiac genes from both of them. That would suck. They're both candidates. Of course I'm the only one in the family diagnosed as a Celiac, but that is neither surprising nor unusual. Most people don't want to know, even given the information. My sister is in denial, I can hear it when I talk to her about it. She doesn't want to know. I can feel her backpedaling on the phone when we talk. I can't make her listen or make her do the research, or make her take a blood test. I can't make anyone change. Just another train headed down the tracks. And it leaves me that much more alone. Is it any wonder I sometimes feel like the adopted step child? They couldn't possibly have inherited the same genes for kidney or Celiac Disease that I did. Nope. I must have gotten it from someone else, that's the only explanation. If I didn't inherit them from my mother or my father what does that leave, ehhhhh?

It was ten years after my mother's death before I could look at a photograph of her. To say our relationship was difficult would be an understatement. Grief, what there was of it, was mostly on hold while I got past the anger. By then, ten years later grief was tempered with forgiveness and understanding. It was grief that she wasn't there for each milestone or achievement. It was grief that she could not have been the mother her children needed her to be, and forgiveness because she never had a role model to work from, and now forgiveness because she may well have had to live with the same gluten designed depression and rage that I have. My grief at her loss has evolved from day one to now in fits and spurts, through bouts of anger and moments of recognition.

The grief at my father's passing has changed the least. What little forgiving there was to do was more about what he didn't do than what he did. And perhaps it's been tempered by the knowledge that he is the voice in my head. It is his logic, his response, his view point that guides the choices I make. It is his voice that the conversations in my head speak with. He has never left me in so many ways. At the same time his loss was the hardest to take. Our relationship was the one that had the least amount of time to grow.

So what to name my grief? Winter I think. In mythology Pluto abducted Proserpine, and Proserpine's mother Ceres brought about winter with her grief at the loss. It somehow seems fitting. More appropriate than George or Cindy. Ceres was the goddess of growing plants and of motherly love. Appropriate, yes.

Just Holding On for Now

I have yet to understand why people create blogs. But tonight I began to get a sense of why someone might. Well, this someone.

It always seemed like an odd concept and I even gave it a shot once, but, well, I had nothing to say and no reason to say it. Sure I have friends, on-line and off and email lists and boards where I read and post, but why be this lone voice on a page talking to yourself? Why would that appeal to anyone?

The answer for me came in a half second tonight when I screamed at no one in particular "Why. Why do people and things just keep getting taken away? When do I get something back?"

Once again the cats looked annoyed and ran for cover and the dog just cowered. That's what they always do when I scream at the walls. All this took place while I was boiling the lovely corn pasta I later choked down for dinner. If you don't have to eat corn pasta, my advice is don't. It reminds me vaguely of plastic. Remember this if you remember nothing else I say: Wheat is a miracle, never take it for granted. Maybe that's where I went wrong? Don't make my mistakes.

I've lost people I loved, and I've lost so many things in the last 15 years; things large and huge and small. I've lost the sense I had once that I would always land safely on my feet. I know now you don't always land feet first. Sometimes you crash and burn and it takes you years to get over the injuries. I have an odd list of the things I miss most. This is in no particular order: My father, my couch, my innocence, the ring my parents gave me twenty years ago that I sold so I could pay the rent and eat that month, and the first car I ever bought.

But what ran through all those years, what was always there to turn to when something or someone was taken away, what never let me down, what always sat quietly in the cold dark to comfort me, the one thing that I never realized how much I needed was food. There was always food. The ultimate drug. While I ate, all the pain, the loss, the grief, all of it took a back seat to reveling in the food for that moment. Lovely french bread, orange chicken, cakes, cookies, ice cream cones, pancakes, warm waffles . . . the list just goes on. And now everyday I realize I've lost yet another food on the list for friends, comrades, comforters, sympathizers.

I am gluten intolerant. Such simple words. They sound so simple. I'm intolerant of gluten. I can't eat gluten. I was born with a couple bad genes and now they've reared their ugly heads and told me in certain and precise measure that I can't have gluten anymore. Huh. So what's the big deal? Well, it is in everything. Gluten: it's not just for bread anymore. It's in wheat flour, it's in barely, it's in rye. And it shows up in some variation in a third of the foods in the grocery store. They put wheat in shampoos for Goddess sake! Anything brown is suspect. Anything thick is suspect. Anything low calorie is suspect.

My favorite place so far to find wheat was in the store brand of Lite Maple syrup I had in the pantry. Trust me, I had no illusions about that lite syrup tasting just like the real thing, but I liked the taste. It suited me. I bought it because it fit into my life in it's own sideways little cheat of a way. It made me feel good to know I was cutting out approximately twelve calories every time I used it, yet it still tasted like the syrup I grew up on and it was cheap. But now I have to buy the real stuff; 100% maple syrup, no additives no preservatives. Though it's debatable that I'll ever need maple syrup again since I can't eat pancakes waffles or oatmeal anymore. Yeah, I guess that one is a bit of a draw. That happens sometimes. What I can no longer eat is made irrelevant by something else I can no longer eat anyway.

Last night I went into the kitchen and stood there, staring at the frig. I could not figure out what to make for dinner. Every option, every meal I'd ever eaten was no longer an option. I paced up and down the kitchen floor for a few minutes, then turned off the light and went into the living room and sat down in the dark to watch TV all night. I never did get around to dinner. About ten thirty my stomach started to growl, but I ignored it and went to bed. Some nights I'm too frustrated to eat. Some nights I'm too heartbroken. Some nights I'm too angry. Some nights I seem to want to punish myself. For what I'm not entirely sure.

Then there are nights like tonight, where I convince myself it's not that bad, and I pump up my enthusiasm and venture out onto untrodden territory. So I decided to try the extremely expensive corn pasta I bought at the organic store last week. One hundred percent pure corn. No wheat stalks were shafted in the making of this pasta. I made a lovely garlic sauce with sour cream and butter and sauteed some shrimp. I now deeply regret dragging the shrimp into the whole fiasco. The shrimp deserved a better end than to wind up on top a plate of corn pasta. I feel like I cheated the shrimp out of a decent end to their scrumptious little lives. See, there I go again. I live for food. I love to cook. I love to bake. And now I'm reduced to eating overpriced plastic pasta.

And don't bother with the letters and emails. I fully realize that if this weren't so bone chillingly pathetic it might even be funny in an ironical, twisted, Machiavellian sort of way. You don't need to point out to me the insanity of my life. Its been brought home in a manner more pointed and vicious than any one person who reads this could ever muster.

So okay, let me get this straight. I'm a forty something single woman with no children, no parents, a dog, two cats and bird, and I live alone on a freaking mountain with no boyfriend, and now I can't eat bread. What exactly is the point to life?

So then why did I decide to create a blog? I realized tonight, sitting in front of the fire, crying my eyes out that no one was going to understand. There was no one to explain it to. I could say to people "I've lost my best friend". But can you imagine the embarrassment and shock when they ask my friends name and I say "Food". You're not supposed to love food you know. Not really.

So it came to me, if I can tell no one, if not a soul will understand, than perhaps I need to tell myself. Perhaps I need to type it all up safely and neatly somewhere just for me. Perhaps I need to be my own best friend. Yeah, yeah, life is a journey not a destination. Blah blah blah blah. Fine. But I can't shake this feeling that food was a better friend to me than I'll ever be to myself. I see the arrows on the highway. I know which way they're pointing. That doesn't mean I have to enjoy the journey. I reserve the right to go kicking and screaming till my lungs give out. Fine. I'll attempt to create a "healthy" relationship with food and with myself. LIKE I HAVE A FREAKING CHOICE!

Next installment: No I Don't Have To! - or why I'm such a freaking rebel