Update

Dear family and family of friends,

I’m in Oregon, having made the annual pilgrimage that I’ve done with Betsy for I think 10 of the last 11 years. I was off-grid for a while, part of a community of 20,000 people who gather every year at this time, the size of which shuts down digital communication with the outside world as the cell phone towers get stretched beyond their capacity. The community is one of Betsy’s and my families and going there is a great sort of coming home. While some of you on my mailing list are in fact part of that community, there were quite a few people I sought out there to share the unbearable news about Betsy. So the Oregon Country Fair this year was a bittersweet experience. When the numbers of people diminished (and remember, 20,000 is simply the number of people who work at the fair), cell phone bandwidth was again accommodating, allowing texts, emails, and voice messages to finally pour in. And dominating the communication was a new wave of inquiries into how I am doing. I say a “new wave” because I had not received any such communications for months and suddenly, there were many. Thus, my decision to write an update now. It will soon be four months since Betsy died. Among the things I’ve realized is that, aside from the time I naturally spent working these past 36 years, I spent virtually all my time with Betsy. We walked together, cooked together, looked at emails together, shopped together, went here together, went there together, laughed, cried, shared our thoughts, our dreams in the morning, moved through our days side by side. So now, everything I do and everywhere I go brings me a sort of phantom experience wherein I am there but subjectively there with a dominant sense of vacancy. And the experience of that vacancy turns every familiar activity or environment into something distant, something just a little bit - but noticeably - disconnected. There’s a part of me thinking, feeling, knowing: there is no joy in this without Betsy. The co-dependent part of me even becomes more present, questioning what’s the purpose in doing this without Betsy?. And, ultimately, why bother? Fortunately, I don’t lose myself there; I acknowledge and accept it as being just another part of me, and appreciate the confidence with which I stand taller than that part of me. Grist for the mill of my self-discovery. I’m at home in my seat, front row center, in the theater of my experience. But the emptiness is pervasive. Clearly, I’m in grief. And (I think I’ve shared this here before) there are 4 levels of grief I think I’m experiencing. The loss of the most significant person in my life is the most basic grief, one that is shared by so many in my situation. At that level, life is surreal. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that she is gone. She was my best friend. We shared a connection that is deeper than I had thought possible. The cherry on top of the sundae of every experience I have is the impulse that I can’t wait to tell Betsy about this or that which I just experienced, an impulse that is followed by that sundae falling to the ground and landing upside down upon the realization that there is now no Betsy to go to, no Betsy to share this - or anything - with. That leads to the second level of grief. At the Oregon Country Fair, there were plenty of elderly couples walking past me, iconically holding hands, sharing these precious years together. Betsy and I looked forward so delightfully to growing old together, holding hands in the later years just as we have for the past 36+. There is the grief of knowing that this will never be me, will never be us. The last 2 levels of grief are the ugly ones. The heart-wrenching lack of closure haunts me. The disease messed with her mind such that she was caught up in the delusion of being healed, making end-of-life conversations impossible, and by the time she finally understood that she was not going to come out of the trajectory she was on, she was no longer able to carry on a conversation of depth. I’ve facilitated closure for a good handful of people at the very end of their lives and there is no one I would have more wanted to do that for, and with, no one I would more want to be there for, than Betsy, the love of my life. Both of my parents died in my arms, years apart, and of course that was incredibly meaningful for me, but to have not been able to do that with Betsy, amidst being with her to the end, is a deep deep pain. And, lastly, I’ll just name what I’m also pretty sure I’ve described already - the PTSD of going through her last 12 horrific weeks with her. Enough said about that. So, embodying those four levels of grief, I cry very easily - at the bank making required changes to our accounts, at the AT&T store doing the same, walking down the street, talking to someone, watching a movie, a TV show, a commercial. I notice that anything that expresses beauty cracks open the pain around my heart and, while it looks like it is pain that is coming out in the tears and sobs, it is love. I cherish those moments. I know time will do what time will do, we’ve all heard that. But I don’t want to go numb and each opening of my heart takes me into a world where I’m alone with Betsy and I thrive on that. While all this may sound depressing, I somehow have a positive outlook on life - in a general sense. I feel love pouring forth from me and the purposefulness, focus, and caring in working with my clients is rewarding, grounding, expanding, and healing. The rapid-fire problem-solving and advice-giving I did at the Oregon Country Fair was especially so. The connection with friends, on this trip and through the past few months, strengthens my sense of meaningful community, something deeply valuable to me. Other than looking forward to doing the Fair next year, I’m still not able to plan a future beyond the next season. There are wishes (and a tentative plan) to go to Paonia with Jess, Cass, and Phil and go through our family storage locker and see friends; to visit a dear friend in Utah, to do another Broventure with my brothers, and the inner conflict of wanting to travel to see many other friends versus finally settling down to finish some writing projects. The girls and Phil are being both resilient and so deeply affected by the loss of the mother that so many of their friends wish they had had. Story just had her first birthday on June 19th and, while in London with her parents just a couple weeks ago, went from dabbling in the practice of walking to being on track to be an expert in its art and science. Cassidy and I did the trip to Oregon together, and shared the experience of “pre-Fair” and the Fair, itself, and is now part of the deconstruction crew there. Both of us found being at the Fair to be somewhat healing even amidst the lack of Betsy being with us. (Maybe you can imagine, she loved the Fair.) And while the above information is a subjective update, on the practical level I can give an update about the Celebration of Betsy’s Life. It will be on Sunday, October 1st. Betsy’s 70th birthday would have been October 3rd. The Celebration will be held at Jess and Phil’s house (1964 Landa Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90039) and will be streamed on Zoom. I’ll send out a link to he event as we get close to that date. There will be a media presentation of Betsy’s life, live or Zoomed music will be performed in her honor, and the sharing of stories of Betsy. Given that last activity, please do think about stories to share, whether in person or via Zoom. In closing, I want to thank you for reading through my personal sharing and for having been sensitive enough to have chosen to give me space these last months prior to possibly being one of the people who is thinking it’s now been time enough to check in with me. I hope to see you in one way or another on October 1st. Joining you in love and compassion, Jimmy P.S. I mentioned the Oregon Country Fair. For those of you who think of award winning pigs or pies, let me clarify this way: Imagine the organizers of the 1969 Woodstock Festival sat down that Monday after and went over the mistakes that were made and the learnings that were realized. And imagine that from that Monday morning meeting, they decided to do it again the next year to implement the improvements suggested by those insights. Then imagine they did that every year for the next 50+ years. One stage would become multiple stages, the hog farm feeding the hippies would become a myriad of vendors offering foods from around the world. There would be vendors selling crafts that were handmade, and of high quality. And the infrastructure would be incredible tight, even though they’re all a bunch of hippies. So now let’s shift from Woodstock to Oregon. The first Oregon Country Fair was held in 1969, with a different name and venue, and in those early years of it being held, the Grateful Dead got involved, doing concerts and setting the stage for the culture that still exists there today. The organizers soon bought the land that is now its home and put together the Fair again each year, building upon what they learned. 54 years later, it’s still going strong and, as I shared above, 20,000 people make it a most rewarding experience for themselves and for the public who attend it for 3 days in July each year. I am part of the "spiritual service" arm of the fair, a section called Altared Space. (That’s Altared, not Altered.) I answer questions, give advice, offer direction, and solve problems, for people who take time out from the Fair to sit with me. At no charge.