May you be sound

I found a lovely comment on an old post today.  I have no idea how long it's been there; apparently I didn't have this set right to notify me when comments appear.  Because mostly I figure that I'm musing to the cosmos, or something.

Anyway, it said, among other things, that what you say in Turkish when someone dies is basically, "may you be sound."  I like that.  I am trying to be sound.  I am trying to be whole.  I am not so sure that it's working, some days... because some days, it still seems so hard to even breathe. 

Today was like that in patches.  I woke up very early and anxious and lay in bed for hours listening to podcasts and just worrying about all the things that I haven't done.  Then I fell into a fitful sleep and dreamed of some bizarre vision of the island and the ocean and fear and surreal people. 

I set out to really get some things done today.  It's late afternoon now, and I haven't exactly gotten a lot checked off my list.  But I did a few things, and some odds and ends.

And I listed some eBay things.  For the first time since Michael died.  And it was hard.

This is the business that I built, that I worked at all the time for years, back in the real heyday of eBay.  And then I basically gave it to Michael, so that he would have a focus, something to do.  Because he wanted to.  Because it made sense.  Except that in a way, it never did.  It gave him something to do, but it also gave him something to obsess over.  And that's what he did, obsessed over better way to do things, to organize, to photograph... everything except actually listing things and selling things. 

Part of that, in all fairness, is that the market has changed over the 12 years that I've done this.  But more than that... it's funny; I look at these photographs and listings, and I realize that he never really had the eye for this.  Strange in someone who was so good at things like this in general, and great at writing stories and funny listings and so on.  But the photographs are glaring and not beautiful.  The listings... there are things that catch your eye, but not things that draw you in.  He didn't love the charms, and it shows.  That sounds like a stupid thing to say, but it's a thing.  It helps if you love what you do.  But he didn't.  He just did it.... if there was a part that he loved, it perhaps was the organizing and the obsessing. 

But as he got sicker and sicker, both physically and mentally, the obsessions got crazier and deeper.  The buying of things and more things... oh, just so much.  I don't even want to think it out.

So now, I need to do something to reconstruct my business, I guess... I could let it go, I suppose, but I have thousands of charms, and what would I do with them?  But it hurt today to put together the listings.  So much memory.  So much memory of Michael, and that combination of sadness and anger that tears me apart every time. 

And so I sit here in my quiet house, and try to figure out what to do.  How to be sound.  How to keep putting my feet ahead of each other.  How to stop with my own obsessions... love and death and my inability to stagger out from under the weight of it all.  The weight of the past and the present combined. 

Some days I think that I can do this, that things are starting to seem lighter and more possible.  And then some days, I can't breathe, all over again.