Hummingbird in a hurricane

 

I've been pretty quiet on this Whirled and on social media for the most part; losing Ron last month has taken the wind out of my sails. In case there was any doubt, it's not that I no longer care about the world beyond me; I am still keeping up with what's going on, and I still engage in private conversations, both on social media and in "real" life, about America's haphazard trip to hell in a hand basket. (Or a handmaid's basket, as the case may be.)

But for the most part I'm still pretty much ensconced in the grief bubble. Or maybe it's not a bubble so much as a hurricane of emotion that I can't go around but am obligated to find my way through, while trying to sustain as little damage as possible. Pick your metaphor. The point is that I have been even more self-absorbed than usual as I struggle to adjust to my new reality.

That reality got even more real for me this past Wednesday when a dear friend whom Ron had known since high school, and whom he considered to be a brother, drove all the way out to my edge-of-nowhere location to bring me the box containing Ron's ashes, along with the cremation paperwork and five copies of the death certificate. We hugged, I cried, and I told him, "Shit just got REALLY real."

He was very sympathetic but indicated that it had been really real to him long before this, and that he had let Ron go several months previously, when it became clear that the Ron we'd known was gone forever. "But I'll always miss him," he said.

As will I.

On that same day, I received a letter in the mail from Texas Health & Human Services, helpfully informing me that Ron is deceased so he no longer gets nursing home Medicaid. Tell me something I don't know, HHS.

After our friend left and I was sitting alone at my kitchen table bawling over Ron's ashes and that inane letter from HHS, I looked out the window and saw my first hummingbird of the season. It was actually the first one I had seen in nearly a year because there were no hummingbirds here at all last fall, not even one -- and that is highly unusual since fall has normally been busy hummingbird season in my neck of the woods.

I certainly wasn't expecting any hummingbirds this spring. But then that little bugger showed up, saw there was no feeder, and darted away.

When I told Ron's daughter about this, she said, "Maybe that was Dad saying hi!" I replied that this was exactly what I was thinking. I told her that it was like a message from him saying, “Quit crying over my damn ashes, get off your ass, mix up some sugar water, fill a feeder, and hang it up out there!”

So I did. And it made me feel a little better.

But after that, no hummingbirds showed up for several days. Then on Sunday, a solitary bird showed up at the feeder, took a few sips, and then took a few more, and then darted away. I hope there will be more.

Hummingbirds have always been very special to me -- I would be perfectly content to do nothing but watch them for hours on end -- and Ron loved watching them too. He was endlessly amused and impressed by their boldness, and by how they'd sometimes try to dive-bomb him when he stepped a little too close to the feeders and distracted them from their holy mission of viciously attacking each other. I've always been impressed by their seeming indifference to even the stormiest conditions; I've seen them buzzing around the feeders in weather that was so scary it had me huddling in the closest interior room.

I miss Ron horribly, but the occasional hummingbird, not to mention the ongoing parade of visitors to the feeding station in my front yard -- birds and squirrels during the day, and raccoons and deer and opossums and bunnies at night -- are helping to take the edge off the pain.

And even more than that, the love and support of friends who are continually reaching out to me are helping make it all a little more bearable.

So thank you, all of you.

Before you leave...
While money cannot make some personal nightmares go away, it can make them far easier to bear. With Ron's passing, I will be facing significant income loss and am scrambling to find more work, but in an industry increasingly being taken over by AI, it has been a challenge. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
• New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to my PayPal page.
• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is for "friends and family," which will waive PayPal's substantial transaction fee.

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.