My Angel is in Heaven and I am Heartbroken

My precious Betty, my angel, my loved one of 44 years, died March 29, in my arms at home.  She just slipped away in her sleep.

I am still making myself sing.  This evening I sang "Amapola", her favorite song.  I don't know if I will ever go back to singing heavy opera or anything requiring vocal power above a G or G sharp.  I will sing in church.

We had fights, and there were things about her I didn't like (she never understood my obsession with singing opera and was fiendishly jealous of my being around straight men, particularly in story lines with too much sex), but the past three years with her have been a gift.  She surrendered her business to me and her body to her bed, where she just "stayed in and stayed cute".   She smiled a lot, so I know she was happy.

That I will never see her smile again is so crushingly unbearable that I don't know if I can go on, really.

I want to make it to June or July to scatter her ashes in Maine. And conduct a memorial service. After that I am done.

I may not write anything here again.  I may start a blog or an online memory book about her.

Living in the Pause

So New York is "pausing" which means that all non-essential businesses are closed; except, apparently, liquor stores.  That will be a recipe for disaster.  And all employees who can work from home, must.

I have confirmed that I can go back and forth to visit my partner regardless, and could do that even if there were a "shelter in place" order.  And I will sleep with her and snuggle with her.

I think in some ways common wisdom is wrong.  I think the younger you are, the more precautions you should take, because you will still be here when it is all over, and can touch again, kiss again, snuggle again, and visit again.  They talk about seniors needing to take the most precautions but actually I think they should be allowed to take the least, because they might very well not live beyond the end of this.  It should be their choice whether to risk catching a virus or risk dying without ever feeling a loving touch again.

Now for a rant.  Our church is closed, and the choir has been on hiatus.  We can't sing in the church because there are too many of us, and it would break the "no non-essential gatherings" rule. They are streaming services on Facebook and I had assumed that that meant that the only people in the church would be the minister, one assistant, and the organist.  That was true the first time, but today, guess who showed up?? "Little Miss". (If you are a new reader and want to know about her, read some of my posts from 2013-2015.) Now why the bleep was she invited to come sing??? If they just wanted one person, why didn't they ask one of the soloists from the church? I couldn't have done it today because I had been sick with a UTI that gave me a fever and I was feeling weak. (I stayed away from my partner also, even though the fever was not related to anything contagious, but will see her again Tuesday.) Anyhow, I am now stewing.  I don't want to email the music director because I think it's bad form to bitch about anything during this time, but my question is - why?? I wouldn't have been at all upset if there had been one soloist from the church (not me).  If that had been the case I probably would have tossed off a short email to the music director to the effect of "if you are looking for volunteers to sing in the church while you're livestreaming I'm available" and left it at that.

In any event I have no idea what Little Miss sang; I exited the livestream as soon as I saw her and went off to do something else.

I was able to practice today for a little and tomorrow will go back to working on the Carter arrangement of "Ride on King Jesus".  I am not in the mood for opera, which is certainly understandable.

A Cry from the Heart

I haven't written anything in a long time, which is an indication that things were better, or at least that I was better.  The happier I feel, the less I write.

My partner is still in hospice care.  It has been about 7 months now.  People talk about caregiving being hard, but I am much happier being a part-time caregiver than I was being a full-time copyeditor working at home.  Spending (through my best, white knuckled efforts) 30 hours a week in a small studio apartment staring at a screen, mostly preoccupied with where to put commas and periods, is not a life.  I could never make a full 40 hours (not for lack of work, but for lack of tolerance for that level of mental torment) so I was fortunate to be able to use the modest amount of money in my mother's savings account after she died to supplement my earnings, being frugal but not painfully frugal.

Things brightened a little when I started to collect Social Security.  If I could work 20 hours a week I could manage. Once my partner became more and more impaired, I had a really meaningful part-time job: geriatric care manager.  It involved difficult financial maneuvers, and dealing with recalcitrant bureacracies, but now my life was once again richly peopled in a way that it had not been in years.  There were always people in her house: aides, healthcare providers, social service providers. I got to use my management skills.

A few months ago, when the market was doing well, I bought an annuity.  (I am so happy I did that!). So now I only have to work 10 hours a week.  Over the past few years, I hadn't been able to make myself work 20 anyhow.  It was more important to be with my partner.  Or just go OUT with a friend. But I paid a price.  I have now used up all but $4000 of my mother's savings.  All that's left for emergencies is the rapidly diminishing money in my 401k (I have 60% left because I used 40% to buy that annuity).

My singing has improved.  I seem now to have a solid vocal technique that I can rely on, even if I'm a little tired or haven't eaten enough protein. I sing much much much better at 69 and 3/4 than I did at 54, or even 64 or 67.

Fast forward to coronavirus. My biggest problem for a long time has been inadvertent social isolation.  I work at home (I have noticed that the less I work the happier I am), and when I am not at home in my apartment, I am at home at my partner's apartment.  I spend about 80% of my time shut in.

And now my tiny handful of opportunities to go out are disappearing.  Church is closed. They are live streaming services but that doesn't really interest me.  I go because there are people.  And of course to sing. We will have an online choir get together of some kind (I will have no idea if this means I will be visible, so I had better dress properly. ) My therapist asked if I would be open to having a phone session and I said no, I would not pay for a phone session.  Either I will have a session in person and pay for it, or I will see if I can get some free counseling (in person or over the phone) from the hospice.

Several people who used to visit my partner (her therapist and someone from the LGBT senior center) have been told not to, to talk to her over the phone.  My partner has dementia.  She has a much harder time understanding what's going on over the phone, compared with in person.  And she never learned anything about technology; has never used the Internet and does not have a smart phone. There is no technology in the house other than the aides' smart phones which they were told not to let her touch.

So far my Pilates studio is still open. We spray down the mats. I don't know if my voice teacher will be conducting lessons.  I know his wife has health issues, so he may not want to, but if he wants to I will come.

I ride the subway and the bus.  How else can I visit my partner? Cabs are too expensive and frankly more dangerous if someone with the virus was sitting in the back before me.  I guess if I had to I could walk, at least the weather is nicer.  It is about 3 miles or a little more.

I am much more afraid of sinking deeper into this isolation that I have fought and fought and fought to get out of for a decade than of catching coronavirus.  All I want is not to die before my partner.  If she dies of the respiratory symptoms of coronavirus rather than of something else, and I die shortly thereafter, to whom will it really matter?  I have my affairs in order.

ETA: My Pilates studio is now closed.  My voice teacher is not seeing students. I suppose the one silver lining to all this is that now everyone has to live the way I have lived for a decade. I no longer have to envy other people's diversified lives.  Now we're all in the same boat.  My only fear is that a "shelter in place" order will force me to choose whether to stay with my partner or stay home.  I work at home (there is no way I could set up my home office at her apartment, which not only doesn't have an Internet connection; it doesn't even have decent electrical wiring) and I have my cats.  And I will not let her die in her apartment without me. I will shelter in two places.  If I can't get a "compassionate exemption" I will do it anyhow.  What's the worst that could happen? I will have to pay a fine?

The Return of Old Hurts, and My Take on "Little Women"

Well, it seems I am in a writing mode again, although I have not felt like revisiting my memoir.

I thought I was "done" with a lot of the old hurts that I used to write about, but I just found out that once again my teacher is helming a concert with his opera cronies and I am not in it.  I am done having an argument with him about this. He will just throw out one excuse after another.  I think he began agreeing to participate in nursing home concerts with me because at one point I made noises about leaving him so I could study with a teacher who put on "studio recitals".  Then at least I would have something.

Sadly, if I know how to leave "well enough alone", he doesn't.  His wife sent me an email about their concert which went out to a large email list of "family and friends".  I couldn't help but notice that when she tells people about my concerts with her husband, it's only a few choice people.

Anyhow, when I went for my lesson yesterday I didn't mention the email but when we were done singing my teacher did.  So I told him that first, I am not free on Saturdays, and second, that since I resented not being asked to participate, I wouldn't come anyhow.  Then he said he knew that.  So why did he bring the bleeping subject up???

As I mentioned in my previous post, my anger and sadness about not being able to break into the world of the no-pay opera companies has mostly receded.  Partly because of age, as I said.  All I really want is to do solo singing in front of an audience, wear something glamorous, and eat up the limelight.  So I can do that.  Of course it's not all a walk in the park.  If I want those things, I have to work hard, which I do.  And really church people are a lot nicer than opera people.  Interestingly, my teacher and his wife seem to have made a friendly social life in that milieu but I never found those types of classical singers to be a nice bunch. 

As to the second subject of this post (I guess it's a "twofer") I got to thinking about Little Women again because of the new movie that has come out.  Interestingly, the first chapter of my memoir is partly about my relationship to Little Women and how my mother was bemused by the fact that I did not identify with Jo.  "Don't all brainy women see themselves as Jo?" she would ask.  Well, first, at 11 or 12 I hardly saw myself as a "brainy woman".  I liked to read fiction, but what I liked most was playing the piano and trying new lipstick shades.  As for Jo being an "independent woman", well, in 1962 that was not as anomalous as it was in 1862. Most of the young women in their 20s whom I knew worked after they graduated from college.  Many eventually married and some stayed home (my mother did that and in fact considered being able to stay home a "privilege") but reading and writing was a calling or a job, not a "lifestyle".  I just realized recently that it was probably from reading Little Women and modeling herself on Jo that my mother bought into the trope that "brainy women", women who read and write, don't care about their appearance.  I remember her once talking about a close friend and saying "Well Hattie obviously doesn't take herself seriously as an intelligent woman because she dyes her hair."  To all these points, growing up I certainly didn't see Jo as "rebellious".  She was just like all the "politically correct" women I knew over the years who were always scolding other women for primping, or buying products that they shouldn't.  I mean selling her hair for a greater good? How goody two shoes can you get?  I mean I think it was a noble sacrifice, but it certainly doesn't fit my definition of "rebellious".

My role model as a 13 year old was Kim Novak's Moll Flanders (and after seeing the movie, I read the book). She looked just like me for one thing (at 13 I was five foot six, weighed 155 pounds, wore a bra size 36D, and despite all that extra weight had a tiny waist). Katharine Hepburn I was definitely not.  Recently, I saw the PBS Little Women and decided that if I had to identify with one of the girls it would be Amy.  She took herself seriously as a painter and loved pretty clothes, primping, material comfort, and flirting.

Of course I don't think my mother wanted me to grow up to be a literary spinster like Louisa May Alcott.  At the end of Little Women, Jo marries a professor many years her senior.  My mother did likewise.  Was it because she saw herself as Jo, I wonder? Jo loved the professor because he engaged with her writing (even if only to criticize it) not her femininity.

Ironically, I grew up to be a Lesbian who paired off with a butch who loved me for my beauty (in her eyes) and sweetness. When she could afford it she bought me flowers and jewelry.