I went to see Jeanne earlier tonight, I couldn't stay long this time, too painful.

They took the breathing tube out but my love lies there in the bed looking as if she's lost her way. She doesn't speak but she will nod after a bit when asked if she'd like to watch Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, rather than the baseball game someone had tuned her tv to.

The mental fog of ammonia poisoning seems to be back and I can't look at her without wanting to cry. Though her middle is bloated with ascites, her face has lost weight; not just her cheeks are hollow but her temples seem hollowed out and her eyes are deeply sunk as if she had shrunk inside herself.

When they chased me out for change of shift at 730, I headed for home but I couldn't come here and be alone so I went to a friend's house and we talked and drank sodas and did nothing much while I decompressed my heart.

I got home about an hour ago, read the new chapter of Ellen's "Tucky Season" and just sat and stared at the walls for a bit. I'm going to read some cartoons then I may make some toast or something and go to bed. I'd like to do some work on the site but I'm typing this on the old Dell computer because the wireless keyboard attached to the Mac apparently needs new batteries. It's too hard to work on the site from this machine with all my current tools on the Mac and the only fresh batteries in the site are the wrong size.

I've been wondering if I should go find some all night place to buy batteries so I will have some in the morning but I can't seem to get up the energy to go.

Whatever happens, I know that the time will come, all too soon, that I won't have my lovely, funny, loving friend any more, my 'Babe' (that's what we call each other), and I will be alone and lonely. Already she has gone away but I hope she will be back for a visit before we have to say goodbye forever.

It may be weeks, it may be months or even years away, but there is no longer any doubt--unless I have a heart attack or an accident, I'm going to end up with a container of ashes that used to be my partner, my love, my other half. I'm going to need a place to spread them into the wind and water.

I can hear Arthur Godfrey singing and his old ukelele twanging. I can see Doris Day sitting in the other end of the boat. The dry green hills are dotted with buffalo and the water is so clear you can see the bottom. There are flying fish and flying squid to chase them. It's a fantastic land of memory and fun, a place where you have to relax because there is almost nothing else to do.

Jeanne and I used to take the Newport Flyer across the channel, just for an afternoon of walking on the beach and eating snocones and baloney sandwiches. The Flyer is a big catamaran hydrofoil ferry that leaves from Newport Beach and gets to Avalon in about 45 minutes, a fast boat. Jeanne loved it there, we kept promising each other we would go over and spend a week or at least a weekend. We never did.

It's undoubtedly illegal to do what I'm planning to do when the time comes. You didn't read it here.

"Twenty-six miles across the sea,
Santa Catalina is waiting for me,
Santa Catalina--the island of romance...."

- Joyce