Tag Archives: Survivor's guilt

Hermit’s Journal

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Adoxography of Eucatastrophe

This is the title that’s written on the cover of my journal.
Loosely translated (I’m assuming a few may not be familiar with) this means “a lot of words written about pretty-much nothing that describe a story with a happy ending”.

I’ve decided this defines my journals, my blogs, my writing in general. In fact it could stand as a definition of my life, I suppose. For what else do we have really, when we reach that ending? What do we have that “moth and rust do not corrupt”, as my dear friend Sparrow would say? We have this library in our minds, filled with love and loved ones, and remembrances of the beauty and wonder life has shown us during our brief stay. I’ve decided in advance that the story will have a happy ending. (Nod to Neil)

Prismatic Backdrop

The making of a hermit

Quick bio: regular life, married, children, regular job. Kids grew up (6 grandkids BTW), my wife died a little over two years ago, and last year I retired from the working world in April, at the age of 63. I live in a 9-room Victorian farmhouse in the country with a dog and a cat. Until July of last year my adult son lived with us finalizing a divorce, and his two children were here often. This makes July 5th, 2022, the official date on which my hermitage began. Or would that be “hermitization”? “Hermitism”?

To Let

Defining “Hermit”.

Hikikomori is a term for a modern day hermit. From the Japanese hiki, meaning “being in solitude”. Hikikomori are folks that don’t prefer to leave their residence, limit social contact with the outside world, and keep a small circle of family and friends. Common definitions for hermit describe one who lives alone, away from society, often as a religious discipline. Its ancient Greek root eremos has two meanings; a lonely and desolate place or a state of being alone.

Wonders

Defining my life.

As I entered this phase of my life, and being an armchair philosopher, I took appropriate pause to contemplate, in considerable detail and with many important considerations, a conscious course that would bring me ever closer to my lofty goals of inner peace, oneness with nature and harmony with the great cosmos. Talk about adoxography! We’re gonna see that word a lot from here on in, so get used to it.

What’s all that gibberish mean? Well, I found myself suddenly in a unique place , to wit: I had no job to go to, no one to answer to, no one to take care of (except the dog & cat). Honestly it was a bit mind-blowing for a while, owing to a paid mortgage and a frugal lifestyle, that my Social Security retirement benefit would support me comfortably. After the initial psychological shock of up-ending 50 years of routine, and leaping off the income cliff into the government stipend safety net, I awakened one day to the realization that I was totally free to define my days. Totally free. I would repeat Totally Free in bold and italics but that would be- you guessed it- more adoxography. And maybe overkill. Alright so CAP LOCK and bold it and italicize it all you need to, but the feelings that welled within me were akin to a man just released from indenture. It was, and is, intoxicating.

Bear in mind that a lot of this is still new to me. I make it a point to reflect on July ’22 as the real beginning of this adventure. Now we have turned the calendar page, and according to conventions (like income tax, for instance) it is a new year. A New Year. I’d put together a line that rolled the “totally free” bit with the “a new year” bit for dramatic reasons but you guys are prolly getting tired of the-don’t make me say it-adoxography. As I coursed through autumn and on into my beloved winter, I discovered little need to leave my Eden. I never tire of being here, I have no real desire to “go see” any place, and I am entirely contented. Do I need to bold and ital that? Truly contented.

Top of The Hill

Defining myself.

Now I think it’s important to point out that I didn’t choose recluse, because I think that connotates a rejection of the world. Part of my willingness to hermitize is motivated by aspects of the world that do not bring me contentment, but there are things in the world I like. My kids, friends. Dollar General. So I make a trip to the DG or the hardware store if necessary. And I have friends & family once a week on Wednesday for Tuesday Night Music Club. Another night (in the off-season) is typically dinner with daughter and her husband, followed by Rumikub or UNO. So I’m not a loner either, which I’m sure comes as no surprise to anyone that knows me. I wanted to call myself “monk of the pines”, but the definition of monk is a religious disciple. I like the terms artist and eccentric, too, but haven’t quite married them to “hermit” yet.

So my day-to-day life follows the whim that strikes me. I love to cook and bake, having professional experience at both, and run a tidy kitchen. I was always “Mr.Mom”, equal to my wife, when it came to the domestic service of home and children, laundry, bath times, bed times and meals, as well as the maintenance guy, which leaves me in good stead to care well for myself, the pets and the Ark. I have assembled a library in the second story, a music studio in the parlor, an art studio in the kitchen, and a cozy den for watching Dr. Zhivago or Sergeant Preston of The Yukon (and his wonderdog Yukon King) when the February blizzards call for it. A step out the back door and I am greeted with rolling drumlins and woodlands that would please Christopher Robin. Here Sassy June and I walk in all weathers, from the muddy and fragrant fresh spring through the rustling leaves of autumn, and on snow shoes through my favorite season.

And of course, there’s that journal. The Adoxography of Eucatastrophe.

Misty Morning

And in summation

Talk about a waste of words. You’re not supposed to start a sentence with And according to an ancient convention we call English, and if you’re summarizing, why not summarize rather than telling us you’re going to summarize, which is a precursor to the actual summation? Okay, I’m guilty of starting sentences with And. Who makes up such stupid rules, anyways? And who cares? I’m not getting paid for this, y’know.

Well, the summation goes like: “there you have it.” I guess.

The thing is with writing the blog… I never wanted to make a blog that just talked about me and what I’m doing. It had to relate to others somehow. Or entertain them. The other thing is a post topic by itself, and that’s guilt. Have you ever heard of survivor’s guilt? It’s not uncommon, after losing a loved one, to feel guilty you’re still here, and they cannot share the joys of your days. I know it’s a bit abstract, but I feel that way about my blog writing sometimes. Truthfully, I can describe myself as living a storybook life in a fairy tale world inside a snow globe. But I don’t mean to just brag about how great my life is, even though I feel that way. I still bear hope that by relating these humble facts and sharing these experiences I might provide something that may contribute to another’s contentment, or pursuit of the path they choose. Or at the very least provide a few moment’s entertainment.

Hopefully, a eucatastrophe without a lotta adoxography, eh?

From the land of Happily Ever After
-Paz

Solo

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“You can train for all kinds of emergencies as a pilot. Like losing an engine, for example.
Now, it’s one thing if you stall one of your huge Rolls-Royces or Merlins if you have four of them hanging off your flying fortress or your Lancaster. You could be loaded with fuel, ordinance and dignitaries (i.e. useless added weight) and still make a big sweeping turn back to the field on three and stick the landing. It’s a little different story in a single-engine two-seater.
You can land without wheels if your gear gets jammed. You can ditch in the water. You can train how to know when it’s time to take a wild-ass guess at what to do next when all other options have failed. You can bail out.
You don’t exactly train for your co-pilot getting killed while you’re flying.”
Bob got real quiet right after he said that, and looked out the window of the café and up into the clouds for what seemed like a full minute before taking a sip of coffee and continuing.
“But you do train how to pilot a two-seater solo.“

–Captain “Hopping Bob” Shannon

I didn’t train for this.
We train for a lot of things in our lives. Basic training before deployment. We train to be a refrigeration mechanic or a teacher or a nurse. We are trained to ride a bicycle, trained to drive a car. We are trained how to train.
We plan for a lot of things in our lives. We plan vacation trips. We plan weddings. We plan for a baby. (Sometimes we plan to have a baby, and sometimes we plan how to take care of the baby we just found out about.)
We plan for kids’ college if fortunate enough to do so. We plan for retirement.
We even plan our own funerals and pay for them in advance.
I might do that, and also write my own obituary so they don’t miss anything.
I didn’t plan for this.

Honestly, my late wife and I were quite comfortable with and accustomed to, planning on, actually, the typical odds for men and women. That I would go before she did. The wills were made. All the important things were in line on the property deed and the retirement fund to make it easier for her and the kids when I went. We didn’t plan any funerals although we talked in a broad sense about our preference for cremation. We did talk about the fact that she would not want to stay on at the Ark alone. It’s a big house and you need to be a family or a recluse monk artist to live here.
Also it’s 115 years old, and hasn’t been updated in, oh, 115 years or so. So it has ancient single-pane windows and a hand-laid stone bulkhead and missing bits of mortar and a pellet stove and gas pilots and a whole rasher of things that make it a dream for a tinkerer but a nightmare for a widow.

We are easily lulled into the sense that tomorrow will be like today. If summer, we expect summer. In winter, winter. And tomorrow will follow on to the day after, and in its most generalized sense, life will just keep going.
That’s what we built our lives on for the last decade or more. The empty-nesters with the paid mortgage and a home and property to do as they please. We talked of how we loved so many things about this place. The big windows in particular. Bright, airy rooms. We vowed, each of us, to stay here “for as long as we can.”.
Somehow I imagined that being until the time I was too old to haul wood pellets and plow the driveway and shovel snow off the roof and mow and trim a 3-acre lawn. We’d move on to “Roland Arms”, as we called the neat, handicapped-accessible senior apartments down on Roland Way.
Or, perhaps, that time would be when my wife found herself alone, and would sell the home we had shared for forty years. Probably move in with a daughter, as her mother had done before her. Mary lived with us for about ten years before she died. We were certainly fortunate, having space in our home for her.

“Man plans. God laughs.”
The proverb hung on my mother’s wall.
“Such fools these mortals be.”

Having really made no plan to be sixty-two and flying solo, I’m making it up as I go along, I guess. Some things are easy and obvious. His & hers towels, for example.
Some things were just oddities that sprang from who woulda thought it. The kitchen, for instance, which had been primarily her domain for 35 years, equipped and stocked to her liking. I need to use the kitchen myself now, and don’t need to accommodate sharing. Some things were just too much for a single man. Pots and pans and utensils.
Other things are just not my cup of tea. An air fryer, a pressure cooker. Other things I was wanting for. Did she not have a set of measuring spoons somewhere?

And so a period ensued when I envisioned this new future in the Ark, just the three of us including the dog and cat. I started to move some furniture around. Open the space up a little. I needed space. Quiet space. And light. A few changes in window dressings.
At first I suffered from a certain survivor’s guilt, I suppose. It felt like an insult to her memory to remove the recliner in which she sat, to take down the blackout shades on the east-facing window in the bedroom.
The things of the household are pretty well settled for now. At least on the first story.

Time, however, is totally out of control.
Like so many riding the slowing currents into and through the delta on our river of life, sleep patterns began to change over the last couple of years. After the 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week, month-and-a-half odyssey that was the deathbed vigil I sat for my wife, I seem to have suffered a bit of post-traumatic stress and battle fatigue. Like shifting from night shift to day shift, it took quite a while to get back to a normal sleep cycle. It’s still not right, and combines with a certain hyperactivity and a propensity to “get in the zone” (or maybe more like “zone out”) while burying my nose in some industrious but detailed activity such as cleaning all the balusters of the banister. Next thing I know it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and I need to rise for work in a few hours. Thankfully, work has been only 3 days a week since my return from family leave, and my job is not difficult.
On the plus side, it has made for a lot of clean things besides the banister.

Of course there’s a lot more to these things than one would frame up in a blog post.
I’m not the first person that has gone through this. It’s what we do.
It is, however, the first time it has happened to me.
It’s coming back quickly, but it has been a long time since I’ve flown solo.
I hadn’t planned for this.

Take care and keep in touch,

Paz