Dena is leaving Belize one week from Wednesday. I’m excited for her new beginning. After Barry died she has worked to free herself from this place. She is headed to the United States where she will create a new life for herself. While I’m happy for her I am sad for myself. It’s another loss. Dena was always ready to go and do something with me. I could always count on her to be at the Millenium in the afternoon if nothing else. She will be missed.

I’ve neglected writing. It isn’t because I’ve been so occupied by life that I haven’t had the need to talk to you. This morning, in the moments before my eyes open to that pale, grey light between night and day, I was thinking that the time I have lived since you died has been grey like that first morning light.

Rainy season was dry. Now dry season is wet and rains are flooding the middle of Belize, closing passages to the caves due to high water.

You would have been proud of me. I actually invited people over for Thanksgiving Dinner. It was nice, a small intimate group. Everyone seemed to get along well and the conversation was friendly.

I’m having one of those, I-can’t-believe-you’re-dead-and-not-here, moments. Augh!

I’m repainting the livingroom and kitchen, Jersey Cream. It’s light and requires the walls to be primed to cover the dark colors we had painted when the house was built. Had to stop and put all the paint and ladders away for company. Now to pull it all back out again. It is nice not having to walk around drop cloths and ladders and cans of paint though. Once I thought that if anyone ever broke into the house in the dark they would kill themselves trying to navigate through the rooms. It will soon be done except for small areas like out bathroom. I’ll knock those out separately.

Got a nice e-mail from Yuri. He’s leaving the Columbia to go to work for the same company up in Nova Scotia (Brrrrrr!).

Caitlin is trying to look for a different shop in which to tattoo.

I’m going to erect a garden hoop house and try to establish a successful vegetable garden. Wish me luck on that one!! Failure is always possible.

Oh, and all the bush behind us is being bulldozed, BULLDOZED! to the ground. It’s sad and I hate it. (You know me and the trees! Deforestation is occurring!) I know they are designated lots but I think they will be cleared and then sit and sit and sit. Maybe not, maybe I’ll have houses all around me someday. I decided not to worry about it and just live my life. I can hang privacy screen on the fence or do plantings to achieve privacy if needed.

Darvin is having a 24 ft. Belizean sailboat rehabbed. A shipwright from Sarteneja is doing the work right across from the house on the shore by where we used to put Belbrieze into the water. Yesterday the shipwright came to have me video the port side that he had sanded down to the wood. It was rotten throughout, pinworms had eaten away the planking! It will all have to be replaced. You would like to watch the work. I’m thinking you would grab your tools and lend a hand. I’m thinking I like fiberglass!

That’s all for now. How are things on the dark side, er, the light side or whatever? Are your atoms all dispersed among the stars again? Does your soul exist? Timeless questions, eh? Still no definitive answers although everyone thinks they know something and that their something is right. Only the dead don’t care….

Made a three week trip to the States. Spent time with Caitlin in Chicago and with Chrissy in Wilmington, Oh. Yes, she moved. They have a nice home on fifty plus acres, room for the kids to explore as they grow. Logan is a little boy at four and the twins have grown into little people. It’s hard to think back on what they were like when they were born, when you were still here and I went to help Chris.

The weather was lovely while I was in Illinois and Ohio. It snowed two days after I left. Good timing. Even better is the fact that the heat broke here and it has been cooler since my return.

For the first few days after I arrived home I was fatigued to the point that I thought I might be ill but no, I was just tired from traveling. It is exhausting to always be in someone else’s home and on their schedule. It doesn’t matter who it is.

I was also a little depressed when I first came back. I wondered why I am left here and if it’s just laziness that keeps me here. Truth is that is part of it. The physical move is daunting to contemplate. Oh, the paperwork! Hahahaha! Paperwork, my nemesis! Well, anyway. I still haven’t finished repainting. That’s what I was going to do before I decided to put the house on the market. I will vacation with Kay in April, in five months and then I will make a final decision. Putting the house on the market might actually might mean nothing. Houses for sale sit for years and years without movement. I don’t know if the prices are so inflated or what. We have quite a bit invested here with the house, the porch, the fence, the shed and the carport. Can’t let it go for nothing. I would just want to be able to cover the purchase price of a new, small space and the move. Not looking to make a profit. It looks to me like I am still talking about going home, home to the U.S.

My travel day home was on your 61st birthday. Happy birthday, Baby. You should still be here. Dammit, David! God dammit! I love and miss you. Dari

Coming here and talking with you makes me sad today. I think how much you would love the back porch, Consejo and everything about Belize. I miss you so much. I put a hammock up (on the back porch) and thought how much you would have liked it in the evening when it is cooler and the wind is blowing through the trees. You could lie there and sip Belikan or even Landshark or Belikan Light.  They have expanded their offering!

I miss you when Connor has his crazy runs through the house and up onto the couch. It used to make you laugh. He snaps and growls and runs until he has to stop and get a drink. He only wants to lie beside you and touch you somehow. You spoiled him like that. He’s a good dog. Connor of the Caribbean.

I got up into the boat which has now been parked and not moved for two years. I’m going to get up there and clean it up and get it back into the water. I swear.

Oh, how I miss you! I didn’t think I would cry over you today but here it is. Here it is. Love you.

I reread my last post and thought maybe I would delete it but it’s what I felt at the time so it stays.

I added a back porch. It’s done. It’s good. It feels very private. I bought a gas griddle to cook on outside. Marage will deliver it sometime next week. There’s a bench seat and chair that I ordered as well. I like the plastic Adirondack chairs but they need padding and some people need something more substantial. It will come together.

The house is definitely cooler than it was before the roof insulation was added along with the porch. The sun doesn’t beat down on the back of the house in the afternoon. I noticed that at times the interior of the house is cooler than out on the porch. Down the road I will add the two bedroom air conditioners.

The back screen door has taken a beating from the dogs. The wire mesh was rusted and broken, the door scratched and the screening was coming off. I took it off the hinges and am refinishing it. It’s beginning to look much improved. Later this afternoon I’ll stain the other side and tomorrow I can attach the screening and wire mesh support.

There was so much that I had saved up to tell you and now I think some of it has slipped away.

Before I leave to visit the States in October I plan to have the interior of the house done being repainted. I had Naomi do the outside. It’s still blue, maybe a tad more grey in the color. The porches are both painted white. For the first time in forever, since you died, the place looks respectable. And still there’s so much to be done. The fence needs painted, the shed and chicken coop as well. When I return at the end of October I’m going to build a screened enclosure, maybe a hoop house, for a garden. I still struggle keeping the weeds at bay in the yard.

I’m trying to keep busy. I never had the t.v. hooked back up yet after the satellite dishes were removed from the roof. Sometimes I want it back but I’ve been better off without it, less likely to sit for mind numbing hours in front of it. If I get things painted and generally done I don’t know what I shall do to keep busy.

Wish you were here.

Wish you were here.

Wish you were here.

I’m fighting with Caitlin and rejected by Yuri so today I’m feeling bad. What is “bad” ? Not loved, not approved, I guess. It’s difficult when Caitlin and I are fighting because she’s fully one half of my support system. It doesn’t happen often but I could not keep quiet.

Aunt Tammy died and all of a sudden Caitlin is having a meltdown about her family and how they relate to her. It became all about her and I called her on it. She’s like me. Can’t take criticism very gracefully.  We’re not texting. She’s is in Wilmington for the funeral but I know we’re fighting and it hurts.

Yuri hurts me by not caring, not interacting at all. Sometimes I think… really kid? But he isn’t a kid anymore. He’s an adult making his own choices. David and I had had an affair. He divorced Millie, Yuri’s mother. The divorce proceeding were acrimonious and prolonged. Yuri was not spared Millie’s bitterness and hurt. Yuri came to our house for court ordered visitation every other weekend and on certain school nights. We were a family. But when he turned 18 he said out loud in front of David and I, “I won’t have to spend the night here anymore.” And he never did. Apparently our home was not his home. At the time I wanted to strangle him. How hurtful to say that in front of his Daddy who loved him, oh so very much.

My own feelings about Yuri were and continue to be ambivalent.  I was the stepmom, the wicked stepmother at that. Millie once berated Yuri publicly for letting me tie his roller hockey skates. How do you protect a kid from that? I stayed away. David, also alienated, had to go alone to Yuri’s games and sat at a distance from the St. Timothy crowd. I rationalized that he had a mom and a dad and didn’t need me. But you get to be called a parent by doing it, by jumping into the fray. I didn’t do that.

David’s style of parenting didn’t help. I’m hands on. In the shit. David was much more passive. I couldn’t ask Yuri to do chores or make many demands of him because he wasn’t there fulltime and David didn’t think it was fair to him. It was hard to draw him in and get to know him.  I never got the impression that he wanted to be there. As an adolescent he would come home after school and disappear into his room. I didn’t know him.

We never visited him in New York. Unbelievable.

How is he now? I like him. He’s hardworking. Still has an awkward, geekiness that is just enough to be charming. Like his dad he drinks too much. He’s good with money. He’s a good person. Is he f—– up inside because of what all went on before? Undoubtedly somewhat. I really wouldn’t know. He doesn’t communicate with me beyond an occasional Fb reference. What upset me yesterday was that I messaged him about a kitten I had found. I used it to touch base. He loves cats. We had a little (very little) back and forth about the cat, after months of not communicating, then he said, “Cheerio.” Cheerio. Dismissed. Done. Fuck you.

It makes me sad. But it’s my just desserts I guess. Still going on after all these years.

What would David say to all of this. Nothing? Sigh. Not one of his strong points. He would poo-poo my observations and feelings of rejection. LOL! Oh, David!

WAIT!

I’m not done.

Back to the other one. Caitlin. She seems to think Yuri is confused and upset because I didn’t have a memorial for you. I’ve been waiting for them to come. I thought they would come. Yuri wanted to spread your ashes on the water so it would touch him wherever he was. I love that. But they don’t come. So now I will have a wreath laying ceremony. I will have Darvin take us out on the boat from Caye Caulker. You won’t be far from drinking rum punch at Fido’s, out on the reef where the water is blue green and lovely, out near the Conch Shell Inn where we had such a good time. They will be invited and have plenty of time to make arrangements but if they don’t come it will be on them.

I’m going to say this now. I have thought it but not said it to them. I guess in light of what I have told you about Yuri that I mean this statement more particularly (but not exclusively) about Caitlin. You would think that in the past two years one of them would have made the trip to check on me in person, to see how I really am. For them life went on. You weren’t a part of their day to day lives. But for me, life stopped for a long,long time.

I was folding up the striped bath towel you bought on one of your trips to the States. You went to Target to replace the one we lost to the downed motorcyclist. That way we would have two matching bath towels. When you came home and unpacked we saw that the towel didn’t match AT ALL, wrong color, wrong stripes. In your mind it had been the striped towel that we had. And the fact that it was so obviously mismatched  struck us as funny and we had one of our little laughing meltdowns. We had those a lot. Hysterically giggling at something the two of us shared.

Maybe you exist in some dimension where you haven’t died and we live together still. Maybe we still laugh together. Or maybe you live in still another dimension and we were never together. Alternate universes.

I miss you.

The truck is the one thing that has operated like a trooper, without fail, despite my driving it down deeply rutted cane field paths looking for dead people. (We’ve had some murders in Corozal, Betto’s brother and girlfriend, a Canadian/American couple. Disturbing.) I haven’t missed an oil change, kept the tires and battery up, and followed all of the mechanics recommendations. I have it cleaned every now and again. I oiled the underside once.

Chrissy and Kevin are pulling the plug on the house in Harrisburg. They are in contract for a house ($540K!!!) in Wilmington. It’s huge with 55 acres. They will sell the Logan property and the Harrisburg house to put towards the new home. It will be the first time since I have known Chris that Harrisburg will not be her home. I still remember visiting her there, before Kevin, when Jake and Newt were little thirteen years ago. Things always change. I was looking at a photo of her and the kids yesterday. She is smiling, they are all smiling, and I know how happy she is to be their mom. It’s what she always wanted more than anything and I am happy for the way things turned out.

I’m still here and sometimes I’m not sure why. But to go somewhere else my situation has to be fundamentally different. Where would it be? The only thing I can think is that in the U.S. I would work even if only at the holidays, maybe Halloween through Christmas. I would work at JoAnn Fabrics. Crafting heaven.

However, I’m expanding our house. I’m putting on the back porch that we had planned. It’s pretty big, 15″ x 27″, from the pump room to the edge of the house. It’s concrete like the house though rather than wood and zinc. I do think it will make the house more marketable. When it’s done and the house is repainted I may put it on the market and see what happens.

I plan on living out there in the summer heat. Plus, it’s another layer of defense against the mosquitoes. The shower will be turned into a faucet and sink, a drain has been plumbed. There is still clean out access. I’m going to buy a gas griddle on Amazon and cook out there. I’ll buy a nice indoor/outdoor patio set from the furniture import place in San Ignacio. It already makes the house cooler by shielding the back wall from the sun. We should have planned this when the house was first built.

I forgot how painfully slow the construction can be. It takes my patience. The dogs and cats have to inside all the live long day while construction is in progress. The gate is open. I don’t know if the slowness is a result of my being less forceful or if this work is taking a back seat to other jobs or if this is just how it goes. The work they are doing is good though. I hired HC. He’s not much of a communicator (laughing here) but if I really needed to talk with him I feel that I could.

The water pump has been replaced. I had it repaired only to have it break down again. The water heater leaked and leaked (remember???) until it rusted through. I replaced it last week.

If I sound productive I am being misleading. Every day I struggle. My new mantra is, “Laziness is not a personality trait, it’s a habit.” I still have ceiling paint (that I began to have taken off in January) to remove on the entire porch, our bathroom and the little space outside the guest bathroom. I haven’t repainted anything. I haven’t repaired all the little cracks in the plaster. But I have paint waiting in the guest room ready to go on the ceiling and walls if I can ever get it together.

I golfed for the first time in ages about three weeks ago. George had a tournament and I practiced a week in advance for it. There is a group of women who go out three times a week now. They make me laugh. We are all the same level of golfers. I remain consistently inconsistent. It does sometimes make me sad to be out there. The tee you created on hole #2 remains. The sand traps look great and the greens are consistently improving. I golf with your clubs. I can hit farther with them than good old Louise Suggs. B & R don’t golf there anymore. There’s infighting between George/FOG and non-Consejo Shores residents about fee structure. They did play in the tournament though. I was glad to see them there and sat with them after the tournament.

Yuri is in Bermuda at the America’s Cup (I know!! Right??) You would delight in his Fb posts and the photos he posts of himself and the crew. The sun has kissed him and he is as brown as can be. We haven’t communicated. Sometimes I feel bad for that and then I decide just to let it go. I haven’t lost anything that was ever there.

Caitlin is well. We remain close. Honestly, I don’t know how I would have gotten through the last two years without her texts and photos. Sometimes I am mad at them (both kids) for not coming to check on me. I know. I know. I saw Caitlin three times last year.

Two years this month, David. Two years. I wish more than ever that it had been me.

I was going to tell you. Susan, your associate, the marathoner, her son committed suicide. It’s still raw and new. He was very young. It’s horrible to contemplate.

Barry continues to soldier on. He has stopped formal treatments but is trying a homeopathic approach to diet and supplements. He looks well but I noticed the other day that his cough had returned.

Up until two weeks ago I have continued to work out with weights at the gym. When my trainer took a break, so did I, and when he went back, I did not. I found out that I liked not having to drive into town most days. However, on Wednesday I plan to return. I really do like it although I will be sore (again) when I resume working out.

That’s about it really. I struggle with what to do with myself every day. Repeat after me, “Laziness is not a personality trait. It’s a habit.” I’m not content to go to the bars every day. I go often enough and I don’t want to “drink another round” or justify why I don’t smoke weed when someone thinks that I should. (Seriously, it’s like high school!) I’m not interested in bingo or volleyball (I would be if it weren’t for this skin.) or Texas Hold ‘Em. I am averse to serving on Parks and Roads and even on the CAP board. I don’t paint or write and I’ve learned to live without t.v. during the recent renovation. The local gossip (there’s plenty of that!) totally bores me. Who the f— cares who is sleeping with whom. Besides that there’s not a decent conversation to be had. So, I struggle and turn around in this house willing the day to pass. Really, without work and without family, children to care for, what is there that is meaningful? JoAnn Fabrics….