talking to a photo | Bertram's Blog

Things I Don’t Want to Write About

February 10, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I’m sitting here mentally sifting through possible blog topics to expound on for today’s posts, but there’s so much I don’t want to write about, I’ve already written about, or don’t know enough to write about and don’t care to delve deeper into the matter.

I don’t want to write about is the advertisement that appears on top of the page when I have opened a document in Word. I bought the program, so I shouldn’t have to deal with further encroachments from Microsoft, but as discreet as the ad is, it still appears and there’s nothing much I can do about it. Well, I can click on the X to remove it, but it appears again the next time I open Word. So, there’s no real point in talking about something I have no control over.

I also don’t want to write about the “nothings” that are exchanged with a spouse. I had lunch with a friend yesterday (she brought a picnic to my house, which was a real treat) and we got to talking about all the nothings we say to a spouse in passing. Her example was walking by her husband when he was watching the news, catching what someone was saying, and commenting, “Oh, she’s such a liar,” as she passed on by. These nothings aren’t anything you can really call and talk to a friend about when you live alone because then the nothings become a something. You’d have to explain the situation, explain why you think the person is a liar, explain why you’re telling your friend, and a passing comment becomes a huge discussion that quickly gets out of control. It’s an interesting topic, these nothings, but I’ve already written about it, already written about talking to the photo of Jeff, just asides — the nothings — as I make the bed when I get up in the morning or unmake it when I get ready for bed at night.

I still don’t want to write about The Bob. Despite everyone thinking they know what is going on because of whatever “research” they have done, so often the research is at odds with what people experience. I know people who got the jab and then died of The Bob, but that sort of thing is shoved under the carpet because it doesn’t fit the narrative. I suppose The Bob has been around long enough that the truth might be out there somewhere, but this is an example of something I don’t care to delve deeper into. Nor does it matter. Whatever truth I would find (assuming there is such a thing) wouldn’t change anything, and since it wouldn’t make any difference, I just let it go.

Something else I really don’t want to write about, at least not in a whole post, are all the death dates in my head. Or that were in my head. A couple of blog readers are coming up on the anniversary of their spouse’s deaths, and I remember the dates, but soon those dates will be gone from my memory, which is good. Otherwise, practically every single day I’d be reminded of someone who lost a child or a spouse, and it’s too much for one person to handle. It’s enough for me to remember my own dates (Jeff, parents, brothers) without heaping other people’s sorrow on top of my own. Though, to be honest, I do remember everyone I’ve spoken or written to about their grief over the death of their loved one, just not the exact day of their loss.

Well, what do you know! It turns out that I ended up writing about all the things I didn’t want to write about after all. Just goes to show . . . hmm. I don’t know what it shows other than that I have something to post for today’s blog.

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Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Posted in blogging, grief, life, relationships. Tags: advertisements in Word, blog topics, death dates, getting the jab, postaday, talking to a photo. 5 Comments »

Nightly Recap

January 14, 2022 — Pat Bertram

During the past year or so, I’ve gotten into the habit of talking to Jeff at night when I am pulling back the bedcovers to get ready for bed. I don’t really tell him anything important; I just say a few words about my day or how I feel about things such as growing older or his being gone or anything else I feel like mentioning. I don’t think he’s listening — if he still exists somewhere, I sure as heck hopes he has something better to do than hang around and listen to me whine — but still, I talk to him, or rather I should say, I talk to his picture.

Occasionally I think it’s a bad habit and one I should break, because after all, it is a bit . . . not crazy, exactly, but off in some way . . . to talk to a picture. On the other hand, it’s not hurting anyone, least of all me, so why not continue? I’m not trying to hold on to him. After almost twelve years, it’s very obvious to me that he is gone. I’ve also built a good life for myself, so it’s not as if I am yearning for the past. I’m simply voicing the highlights (or lowlights) of my day. Although talking to a photo of a dead guy is basically the same as talking to myself, doing so gives me the feeling of imparting my feelings to someone other than to me.

This habit makes me wonder how important such a time of storytelling is, even if it is one-sided. In previous eras, clans and tribes, communities and families, would gather together around the fire in the evening and tell stories about their day. It was a way of saying, “I am here. I am living. I have meaning.” It was also a way of defining the clan, of gathering all their stories into one pot.

People living alone in houses or apartments seems to be a relatively new phenomenon. In previous eras — post-clan and pre-industrial age — families would gather in those members who were left alone, such as widows and maiden aunts and elderly patriarchs, but now, so many people, both young and old, are left to fend for themselves. Not that I want it any different for myself; it’s just an observation about changes through the ages, and how for most of human occupancy on this earth, we told our stories at night.

Whether it was a cultural evolution or written in our genes, it does seem as if this nightly recap is necessary. Oh, we can live without it — I did for over a decade before I developed this new (old) habit — but looking back over the many thousands of years of human interactions, this gathering of people and stories and thoughts seems important to our mental health or at least our sense of self and self-worth.

Of course, I could just be alibiing my habit, finding reasons that my behavior is reasonable, but still, I wonder.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in culture, dealing with old age, grief, history/myth, life. Tags: gathering around the fire at night, living alone, talking to a photo, telling stories at night. 2 Comments »

Nothing is Something

August 14, 2021 — Pat Bertram

In a book I just finished reading, a kid insisted that nothing was something. The comment was irrelevant to the story; it was just one of those things authors throw in there because they can. My mind did not skim over the idea as it normally would have, nor did it start philosophizing about somethings and nothings. Instead, my mind immediately shifted to thoughts of the “nothing” that is left behind after someone intrinsic to our life dies. That void inside us — that nothing — is definitely a something. We feel it in the very depths of our being long after the loved one leaves us.

The definition of “nothing” is “the absence of a something or particular thing that one might expect or desire to be present.” And boy, do we desire the presence of our loved one. We also expect them to be present. For years, every time I answered the phone, I expected it to be him telling me I could come home. I knew it was impossible, and of course, that expectation came to naught.

That expectation as well as the great yearning that so consumed me during the first years of grief are finally gone, replaced by . . . I’m not sure what, exactly. It’s not really nostalgia, more like a restructuring of his absence. Instead of yearning for him, I talk casually to him. Or rather, I talk to his picture. The photo — the same one I could not look at for years after he died because it brought me great pain — sits on the bedside table on the opposite side of where I sleep. I’ve gotten into the habit recently of telling him I miss him, talking about my day, and asking him about what’s going on with him. This is a very short conversation, mostly just a few sentences on my part as I get ready for bed, and none on his part. Though to be honest, if that photo ever answered me, I’d be scared out of whatever wits I have.

Despite this new, rather pleasant permutation of my grief, I can still feel the void he left behind as a physical thing. I shouldn’t be able to feel that — right? — because after all, a void by definition is an empty space. And yet, there it is, an emptiness, a nothingness that seems to color my life, just as his somethingness once colored it.

And, after more than eleven years of his being gone, it’s beginning to look as if that nothing/something inside me will be a permanent fixture for the rest of my life.