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Occupying My Mind

March 23, 2025 — Pat Bertram

This March seems interminably long, though I don’t really know why. I’ve had spurts of activity, such as the celebrations for my house anniversary (six years!) as well as an occasional visit with friends. I haven’t spent much time outside, and there really hasn’t been any reason to. After the first shy crocuses showed their faces, there hasn’t been much change in my yard. Some of my grass is greening up, some looks dead, though I hope it’s just slow coming out of dormancy. In any case, I threw out some grass seed, but it looks as if the birds are eating it despite the feast the neighbors provide for them. And then there’s the wind. The least said about that the better! Coincidentally, today’s blog prompt from WordPress is “What is your favorite kind of weather?” One thing I can tell you, it’s not wind!

You’d think as slowly as this month is passing, I’d be more aware of the days as they come, but the first day of spring passed me by. It’s possible the upcoming fifteenth anniversary of Jeff’s death might pass me by, too, though I doubt it. Even if it does, the actually date no longer makes a difference. He’s still a factor in my life, as is his absence, but not as much as either used to be. Surprisingly, I still sometimes feel a tightening behind my eyes, but it never gets to the point of tears or even sadness. Just an acknowledgment that once he was a big part of my life and now he’s not. I still talk to him occasionally, mostly about things I can’t really talk to anyone else about. Silly things, like my thoughts about The Wheel of Time books.

Yep, still rereading those dang books. I’m on my second reread this year. It’s gone beyond reading to studying, since for every page I read, I spend twice as much time online finding out about the books, such as the real-life influences of the story. Lots of myths, legends, religions, philosophies come into play. Lots of very obvious King Arthur references. It amazes me how long it takes some people to make those correlations, if they ever do. In fact, the author’s wife/editor supposedly didn’t even realize the connection between the book’s mystical sword in the Stone (the Stone in the story is a fort) with Excalibur until she was writing the blurb for one of the books.

I’m also trying to figure out the real ending. Robert Jordan died before he could finish, and the guy they got to write the last books wrote something — I don’t really know what it is that he wrote. Despite the use of the characters and setting of Jordan’s world, those last books bear little relationship to Jordan’s cosmology. The savior character was supposed to be more of an Arthurian savior rather than a Christian one, but we got a Christian one that completely subverted the premise laid out in the first eleven books. What shocked me is that on none of those last three execrable books is there a rating below three stars on Amazon. There are some one- and two-star ratings on Goodreads, but those ratings are for the entire series. (Which makes me wonder, if those raters hated the books that much, why did they bother to read them? Four million words is a huge commitment, and not something you undertake if you hate the books.)

Another thing I don’t understand — Jordan had a team working on the books: his wife/editor, a continuity editor/research assistant, and a keeper of the timeline. Why didn’t all these people prepare a synopsis for the replacement author reminding him of each character’s arc and a brief compendium of what forces are ready to face the last battle, and where they all were on the timeline? One of the very many problems with those last books is they completely ignore any character growth and start over from scratch. Another problem is they ignore the fact that Jordan had already maneuvered the major forces into place for the last battle. I suppose I wouldn’t be as challenged to find the real ending if at least those books had some sort of internal consistency, but they don’t. Thousands of words are spent on one character deciding — yet again — to be a leader. Along the way, he forged a hammer (borrowing one of the pseudo-author’s gimmicks from his own books.) But then the character never leads in the last battle. He took his followers to the battlefield and then went off and did his own thing. Nor did he use that ridiculous hammer in the last battle. Huh? And readers never even noticed? That in itself should get a rating demotion. Quite frankly, I have never been able to read anything by that author, and he lives down to my expectations.

Somewhere in all those words Jordan wrote, there must be clues to the real ending. I suppose finding that ending is as good a use of my time — and brain power — as any. I’m thinking of using one of my defunct blogs for setting out the clues as I find them rather than bore you with the saga, but who knows. I could always tag the posts with The Wheel of Time moniker so you can ignore them if you wish. And anyway, the winds might die down, spring might come, my grass might grow, my flowers might bloom, and so other things will occupy my mind.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in blogging, books, life. Tags: Arthurian savior, ending to The Wheel of Time, grief anniversary, rereading the wheel of time, the wheel of time, wind. Leave a Comment »

Sisyphean Tasks

February 26, 2017 — Pat Bertram

Sisyphus, a king from Greek mythology, was condemned to an eternity of rolling a great boulder to the top of a hill. Every time Sisyphus fulfilled his sentence, the darn boulder rolled back down, and he had to push it up again, hence the term “Sisyphean task.”

I know exactly how Sisyphus feels. Every day I work my fingers trying to form a fist, and though I manage to get them folded a bit, the next morning they are stiff again, and I have to start all over. It’s not just the fingers I have to work on, but also the elbow, though now the elbow does move a little more smoothly than it has been, and the shoulder, which is out of whack from the sling and the weight of the splint and fixator.

The odd thing about not being able to make a fist is that the doctor said it would probably be two years before I could comfortably create a real fist, and every time I manage to fold my fingers into a semblance of a fist, I wonder how could this possibly take more than a year and think I should be fine in a week, maybe or two. And every day I start from the same place, work myself up to bending the fingers at the joints, and it never gets any better than that. So despite my determination, it could take two years. And I haven’t even started working on the wrist yet.

The external fixator is still screwed into my bones, and will be attached to my arm for another month. The fixator prohibits all wrist movement and most finger movements, and since it’s been on for three months with an additional month to come, there will be a lot of stiffness to work out over the next couple of years. Stiffness isn’t the only problem, though. With this many bones that were broken and pulverized, with this many tendons and ligaments that were damaged, it’s amazing that I will have any use of the arm and fingers. Knowing that, and being grateful for what I do still have, does not really make it any easier.

Making things even more difficult, I’m counting down to the seventh anniversary of Jeff’s death. I didn’t think I would still be feeling such strong grief after so long, but such is the nature of the beast. Grief does what it wants, and apparently, this year, once again, it wants to be felt. Last year I was on the road, mystified by the sadness I felt that this time of year. But then I was thinking of other things besides why I was free and unencumbered and able to take that trip.

The anniversary, the arm, the fixator, the isolation, the loneliness, the loss of my occupational therapist, are all combining to make this a rather sorrowful time. I do manage to pacify myself with games, with reading, with walking on the few nice days that we’ve had, and with hug therapy. (Lacking a living being to hug, I’ve been hugging a large Teddy bear I found on my trip, which is a trifle more satisfying than hugging a pillow. And it works to a certain extent — something about the pressure, I think.) And occasionally I play with watercolors. But all those activities put together don’t make much of a life. Still, my main focus has to be on healing, on keeping the skin around the fixator pins from getting infected (another almost impossible task), and on keeping the rest of me from atrophying while the healing is taking place.

I wish I could be one of those writers who could put everything out of her head and just write, and perhaps I could if I were writing anything but a book about a grieving woman. I’m afraid if I continued writing right now, I’d get so deeply into the story, I’d never pull myself out of grief. (I’m not sure that’s even true, but it sounds good.)

Besides, I have the Sisyphean task of opening and closing my fingers.

This post sounds almost emotionless, and in no way shows the spurts of tears that come out of nowhere, the moments of a great yearning for . . . I don’t even know what. Jeff? Perhaps, but I wouldn’t want to disturb his rest with my prickly problems. (I said piddly problems, but my speech recognition software wrote prickly, and I like that word choice better.) Someone to care? There are a lot of people in my life who care, but not in the personal way than a mate does, or in the personal/professional way the occupational therapist did. Maybe it’s just a feeling I miss and need, but I don’t know what that feeling is or how to get it back.

And so life goes on, one Sisyphean task after another.

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(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”) Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.