Bereavement math revisited

I'm drowning in milestones:

• April 4: Doug's 67th birthday - his first as my husband - which we didn't get to celebrate
• April 17: Six months since our wedding; two months since his surgery
• April 19: Two months since the last day I thought Doug would come home to me
• April 20: Two months since Doug died
• April 23 (tomorrow): I'll have been a widow exactly half as long as I was Doug's wife
• April 24 (Friday): It'll be exactly 30 years since my mother had the heart attack that led to her death

I woke up at 6:45 this morning, after too-few hours of too-restless sleep (thanks, Marmalade and Houdini, for chasing that stupid toy around the house all night!), and with no dreams. Again. I scooped the litter boxes, took the trash out to the curb, walked the dog, fed all the animals, and did my first day writing prompt for Writing Your Grief. Then I checked the status of my short-term disability claim (which was initially approved only through April 19, but my therapist submitted paperwork on Friday recommending an extension). Today is Wednesday, and I still have no update: it's been sent for nursing review, so I have no idea whether I'm even getting paid now. I SHOULD care about that, but what's money? What do I care if end up I losing my house, when I've already lost EVERYTHING?

And now, I have another day to fill, and no idea how to fill it. I could take a walk, and maybe I'll get it together enough to do that. I could write more, and I probably will later. I could try - again - to tackle the prologue to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, but if my current cognitive abilities are any indication, that's not going to go well. I could work through the next set of exercises in The Grief Recovery Handbook, and maybe I'll try that, but... it all just feels like busy work. I'm going through the motions of processing my grief, but all I'm really doing is feeling it, over and over again. "Processing" indicates that something is actually happening, but I'm not seeing anything resembling healing happening here.

Tonight, I have plans to watch a lecture about Benjamin Franklin: there's an organization called Profs and Pints, which hosts meetings where college professors lecture on various topics. In our new, online-only world, they're virtual meetings. The old Kathleen loved that sort of thing. The new Kathleen is just trying to find ways to pass the time.

For now, Prowler wants to sit on my lap, so I'm going to put on some Bob Ross videos, put my feet up, put Prowler on my lap, and take a nap. Because the alternative is to dwell on what tomorrow represents, and how every day takes me further and further from the life I had and loved with Doug. And if I let myself dwell on that, I might lose whatever's left of my mind.