Yeah, I know its not just about me. In fact, it's not even primarily about me - as much as human nature screams otherwise. At least I think that's human nature making it's opinion heard.
Kathy has actually changed a lot in the past few years, beginning I think with the last year or two of Sound View. I have known her since 1976, and she has always been the most emotionally strong, hopeful, optimistic and enduring soul I have known. The last few years however have taken their toll. Of course, she is still a tower of smiles in comparison to me, but she has certainly been experiencing, in the common recent verbage, "the dark side."
In 2003, it was confronting a level of evil in the midst of supposedly good Christian people that she had never imagined before. Like many others, she always thought that my experiences at the time were largely matters of low grade "paranoia." But she saw the whole nasty truth there at the end, and it shook her. And I was certainly no rock of faith, comfort and strength to her at that point, I'm sorry to say.
And the last year has been unusual, for her, in its rather relentless sense of helplessness, and sheer hard work.
That part of me that has been molded by the Cult of the Happy and Nice is telling me at this point not to be such a "downer." And I know that those readers who are not all that close to us have probably already stopped reading. For the others, I know you would want to hear the way it really is. I offer no apologies for a sorrowful report. The fact is, life is generally sad in many ways. When you have grown out of some of your youthful ideals and naivete, it takes a great deal of courage just to keep getting up in the morning in order to be faithful to someone you have decided to go on loving.
That's okay, I guess. And if it's not okay, what's the point in saying so? Besides, there are pleasurable little oases - for those of us whose souls remain soft and vulnerable. Or, as in my case, for those who are still loved by such people. No one epoch of one's life should be allowed to define the whole, either for good or ill.
Practical Kathy stuff: working hard as a nurse because we need the money; working to do all she can as a devoted daughter (as well as sister, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, aunt, and soon-to-be grandmother) in a tough situation. She misses being back in Gig Harbor - for any number of reasons; she hates driving in Southern California. She loves to laugh, more than ever, and I'm doing my best to provide opportunities.
She's made one or two new friends down here, but the old ones are still the sustaining ones. Thank God(?) for those Williams'. And oh yeah - I massage her feet a lot. I think that may be the best thing I do right now.
