Man, it’s been a hard week. I started a second job last week to help make ends meet, so I’ve been working nonstop. In addition to my full time law firm job, I’m now doing part time in-house legal work for a large general contractor in the area. It’s okay, this work schedule is temporary, but I’m already starting to feel run down from the long workdays.
I have been able to put my nose to the grindstone partially because my best friend, Martin, isn’t here to distract me. Martin left a few weeks ago for a solo bike tour from Vancouver B.C. to the Baja Peninsula. He’ll be gone for at least two months. Having Martin gone, however, has reminded me of how much I rely on him to stay sane. He often describes himself as my “emotional tampon,” and you can imagine he’s had to do double time work in that regard since my diagnosis. I really miss him and with all that’s going on in my world right now, his absence is really evident to me.
I haven’t been sleeping well for the last couple weeks and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m working so much that’s it’s hard to “turn my brain off” at the end of the day or if I’m still upset about Eric’s death. It may be a bit of both, as I have found myself unable to sleep for hours on end, finally dozing off, but then waking up in a panic, realizing that Eric is really gone. Thankfully, I still have some sleep aid medication from when I was on chemo, but I have refrained from taking any sort of sleep aid unless I am able to allow my body to get up naturally the next day without an alarm. Unfortunately, with the long workdays I now have, I don’t have many days where I can do that.
Tonight I allowed myself some time away from my home office to attend a memorial for Eric. A bunch of our friends gathered at our girlfriend Kristin’s house to have a potluck dinner, share photos and stories about Eric, and process our grief together. It was great to see good friends I haven’t seen in a while, and we all laughed and cried together as we celebrated Eric. I was reminded of Eric’s amazing writing talent, roll-on-the-floor-laughing sense humor, pure witty (and often snarky) comebacks in conversation, and ability to make fun of himself.
As a testament to Eric’s fine sense of humor, our girlfriend Vanessa brought in a bunch of postcards that Eric gave to her as a gift. The set of postcards were titled “Breaking Bad News with Baby Animals.” On them were all kinds of baby animals situated in cute poses, but with fracking hilarious “bad news” printed on them. Vanessa invited everyone to take a card if they wished, an here’s the one I grabbed:
I have this postcard up on my refrigerator and laugh at it every time I look at it. It feels good to think about Eric and laugh instead of cry. Tonight was a nice way to say goodbye to Eric and to get some closure.
I’m ready to put this week behind me and focus on what’s ahead. I’m hopeful that I’ll sleep better tonight.
So many choices for tonight’s soundtrack. Here’s an obvious choice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQwwqajZXD8. But for whatever reason, I’ve been in such a melancholy mood that I’ve been listening to late 80s ballads. Don’t ask me why. It’s just what I do sometimes. That said, I will also leave you with this: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=18205793.
