I've said all along that 2015 would be, for the most part, a horrible year. I mean how could it not be? For me, getting through this year, a year that had great promise, has been, well, beyond difficult. I knew that there would be days, weeks, who knows, even months that would suck. I Just couldn't see any way around it, or out of it

With a few shining, fine, good, groovy moments, it's been nothing but suck. It would be difficult no matter what, after a love that began in 1988 and hasn't really ended, to be okay. That Stu was doing so very well doesn't help, of course. This was a year to be planned for. This was a year that we looked forward to. I had been saying to Stu for months "you're on your way", something I had not said before, but the months after June and until October were just different. Positive, strong, he was on his way home. So the planning is even harder to deal with.

When Stu had the stroke in June of 2012, planning had no meaning and no importance. There were lots of changes - back and forth between hospital and nursing facility and all those doctor's appointments and studies and tests, but it simply was. Which was okay. I mean, look. I stopped working in 1993 was it? I wasn't on major schedules.

But with the move to the new apartment, with the garden on the roof, and the puppies and the van to go to museums, and new restaurants and places he'd like, there was an element of planning. I rehearsed what I'd say to him about a new place. I'd go home from the grocery store telling him "see that building up ahead? That's where we live now." The new sheets and towels and dishes and silverware and bowls. The new bookcases that we'd talked over and planned on, oh he was gonna be so pleased. It wasn't going to be exciting. We didn't need exciting.

I feel guilty. Don't, please don't tell me not to. I know, believe me, I know. But every fucking time I think "this is beautiful" or "What a nice day!" or "what great pho" or "hot and spicy oregano? really?" I feel the spasm of pain and guilt. Stu will never know the beauty, he won't come up to the garden with me and taste this weird oregano with our cherry tomatoes, laugh at the wiener dogs. He won't be able to tell me if he thinks this pho place is better than the one on Aurora (it's not. It's good, but that was better.)

I know too that of course he would not want me to feel this guilt. He would, as I would want for him, to enjoy it. As Warren Zevon said it, to "enjoy every sandwich." I know it's not fair to him but fuck that too. Fairness in this situation has no meaning. I never wanted Stu to hurt. I never wanted him to be unhappy. I know he felt that way about me.

Survivor guilt tends to be a phrase used after major trauma, often (I checked it out a little before writing this) about someone who survived when many others didn't. The military unit ambush, the train crash, the accident. It didn't occur to me that I have survivor guilt. I know very well about the invisible barriers between depression and anger, and yeah, I guess, guilt. I know what he would want and think and say. But it is more difficult on a lovely May afternoon than it was on a rainy February night. May 11-13 is one of our non-wedding anniversaries. May 26 will mark six months since Stu died. It does not get any easier. Yes, I still talk to him all the time, finding dozens, hundreds of ways to appreciate him and what we had. But it does not get any easier. And I find it hard to believe it really ever will.