Last night I dropped the wireless mouse and it came apart. I had to find a flashlight to look for the parts. I found the plate and added a battery for the one I couldn’t find and it didn’t work.

Then I needed to write and somehow, using the keyboard on the PC, managed to bring up the Word program and then forgot how I did it. I wrote a couple of pages worth of thoughts and left the computer on overnight because I didn't know how to save and shut down without a mouse.

Today Ed and I went to Office Depot and I got a new mouse. But, while rooting around on the floor, I noticed an old egg crate with files and they were full of my past. I spent an hour looking through it and my heart broke.

There was a wedding invitation from my friend Steve, the dilettante and classical/flamenco guitarist friend from my early days in New York. who died two years ago. The invitation was for his marriage to his second wife. His first wife, the lovely Mary, was my very best all-time friend. She died in 1961 at the age of 30 from a late-diagnosed melanoma. Her memory runs deep and her picture is on my piano.

I found a whole file of correspondence from the 60s that I had with Bob Bloch (author of Psycho and countless other horror stories). He died in 1994. I don’t remember writing all these letters or receiving all those he wrote me. That was in the days of typewriters and I always made carbons. Considering Bob made his living with tales of the dark side, it is interesting to remember how hysterically funny he was.

I found letters to people that I don’t remember and if I didn’t use their name in the salutation (sometimes I just say something like “hi dear one”) I am lost. I depend on the contents of the letter to trigger the connection and that doesn’t always work.

I found some dreadfully sad diary notes I wrote to myself when I was having a hard emotional time. Was I that person?
I also found cat hair, food bits, a kernel of popped corn, various pens, a stainless steel cup, a brochure from my dear friend John B., who I dated in Chicago before I got to New York – he died two years ago.

Also, a congratulatory note from Ron Konecky, the lawyer and agent, when he saw the announcement of my new position at The Times in Publisher’s Weekly. How very nice of him. I worked on a Sunday (1972?) Xeroxing the Haldeman manuscript at the office and delivered it to him at his home in midtown Manhattan. He was entertaining Henry Morgan (not the one who was in Mash, the other one, the stand up comedian, satirist, and What’s My Line panelist). Henry was just about to be remarried and was very happy. I looked him up. He died in 1997. Ron asked his daughter to make me a sandwich, and she did. So I sat with them for an hour or so just chatting. I looked Ron up, he died in 2010.

These people were prominent in the entertainment business and it was a rare thing for them to be so nice to me, basically a nobody in their world.

The result of all this is that I went to bed and the sadness permeated my primitive brain and I woke up several times with hallucinations and the coup de gras, a panic attack at 6 a.m. that felt like a heart attack, triggered in my confused dream world by grief over the loss of my dog. I cried out to Ed, “Find the dog!!!” And he said, “We don’t have a dog.”

After we left Office Depot we went to the Sleep Number mattress store in Fort Myers and priced various styles of mattresses with controls and got an estimate and Ed is brooding over the cost. It’s up to him. We desperately need a new mattress and it would be super if we got a split type where I could raise the head and control the firmness and Ed could do likewise.

My friend Nadine, who helped me open the battery case on the mouse, said I shouldn’t do stuff that will make me sad late at night. She has a point.

Tonight I will cook red snapper with a lemon-garlic sauce, all part of the heart-healthy meals I am learning to cook. And Ed is making noises about walking. Amazing.

xx, Teal