A NOTE: these writings are in order with the newest on top.
Missing my Life
April 10, 2025
by Shelley Pineo-Jensen, Ph.D.
by Shelley Pineo-Jensen, Ph.D.
It is about three months since my true love died. I am grateful to have landed on my feet after the death of Mike Jensen. I live in comfort, eat excellent food, do interesting things, root for the Padres (who are currently leading the National League!), in the company of my most excellent friend who has invited me into her home. My friend is funny and generous; she likes to have fun and yet also gives me space to grieve. She knows what it is like. She is also a widow who, not too long ago, lost her dear lovely husband. We share the loss of true love, married for decades, and the unexpected nature of the death. We can support each other well. We know.
Unlike my basement apartment in Baltimore, I have a large sunny window in my bedroom. I don’t need grow lights to keep my plant(s) alive. The balcony out front has a long view, and while I cannot literally see the ocean from here, I can feel the presence of the ocean in the sea breezes that refresh me, bringing soothing negative ions and sometimes a lovely mysterious mist. Some days I can see where the clouds are different out to the west and perceive just where the ocean is under that spot in the sky.
Yesterday I was feeling blue, so after a trip to the Veteran’s thrift store, I went to nearby Buccaneer Beach. I pushed my walker out onto the sand far enough to see the shoreline. My walker has a seat and there I sat, watching the waves curling up to the sand, birds soaring nearby, and children in colorful swimsuits playing in shallow water. It was restorative.
Some days are easy, but some days are not. Twice now I have had dreams of Mike that were so real that waking up plunged me into despair. So, there’s that. But the main source of pain is dealing with the habits of a lifetime of just “how to live.” For fifty years, Mike Jensen was there, always willing to help me. No matter what, he insisted that he would always want to help me. And he did.
So, I never had to reach up to a high shelf to get something, never had to lift a heavy box, always had a pair of steady hands to help with a project. He was the one to crawl under the desk to figure out why the printer wasn’t working; he was the one who set up my “new” computer, which was almost always a hand-me-down from his self-employed work as a drafter. He worked at home exclusively for the last fifteen years, so he was literally always there, except for those trips he took to Brooklyn to see our beloved grandchild, River.
Beyond that, I find that for every task, large or small, I reach for my tools, tools I don’t have any more. As I slowly unpack the boxes I had shipped from Baltimore, some precious items are broken; the green scalloped bowl given to us at our wedding on 1/1/77 by his best man and the woman who became his wife; the glass fronted picture frame with flowers preserved from that wedding day (think Miss Haversham); a molded box, sun, moon, star, that contained my tarot cards . . . all just debris now. But mostly, it’s just the plain fact that I got rid of 95% of the material possessions I had. I worked as hard as I could to sort and pack, but time ran out before I really processed the kitchen. I thought I prioritized the emotional work (books, mostly), and failed to see that I had an emotional attachment to my kitchen.
So, working in this different kitchen is hard, because in 50 years I acquired every nice thing for the kitchen that my heart desired: a really nice knife set given to us by one of my brothers and his wife; a red, black, and white colander set; old, expensive plastic storage containers; the list goes on and on. There was no way to bring all that loot; it is ridiculous to contemplate it. My friend has a well-stocked kitchen, and it would have been bringing coals to Newcastle to ship all my kitchen stuff out here. And of course, no place to put them . . . but still, I miss them. I miss the way I used to do things, my familiarity with my life in a nest with Mike, surrounded by the twigs and moss of comfortable, if old and perhaps a bit shabby, possessions.
The thing about Mike is that he was so totally mine, as I was so totally his. We really, deeply, wanted to be together, and so we stayed together through thick and thin. When telling the tale of our true love’s course, which never did run smooth (well often/mostly it did actually, but you get the point), I like to say that after a few years married, we tried to break up -- but THAT didn’t work out.
I have so much I want to tell Mike – to see his reaction, to see my life through his eyes. I know he would be proud of me for moving and for continuing my engagement in social justice activism, i.e. going to see Bernie and AOC on Saturday! I know Mike would encourage me to have fun, to take a nap if I need it, to shower, to buy something I want, to write more, to just live. He would have edited this piece . . .
To come in and find his empty frame, vacant eyes, still warm but no breath . . . that is a hard thing to bear.
It helps to express this, lessens the sorrow somehow. Thank you for caring, dear reader.
Unlike my basement apartment in Baltimore, I have a large sunny window in my bedroom. I don’t need grow lights to keep my plant(s) alive. The balcony out front has a long view, and while I cannot literally see the ocean from here, I can feel the presence of the ocean in the sea breezes that refresh me, bringing soothing negative ions and sometimes a lovely mysterious mist. Some days I can see where the clouds are different out to the west and perceive just where the ocean is under that spot in the sky.
Yesterday I was feeling blue, so after a trip to the Veteran’s thrift store, I went to nearby Buccaneer Beach. I pushed my walker out onto the sand far enough to see the shoreline. My walker has a seat and there I sat, watching the waves curling up to the sand, birds soaring nearby, and children in colorful swimsuits playing in shallow water. It was restorative.
Some days are easy, but some days are not. Twice now I have had dreams of Mike that were so real that waking up plunged me into despair. So, there’s that. But the main source of pain is dealing with the habits of a lifetime of just “how to live.” For fifty years, Mike Jensen was there, always willing to help me. No matter what, he insisted that he would always want to help me. And he did.
So, I never had to reach up to a high shelf to get something, never had to lift a heavy box, always had a pair of steady hands to help with a project. He was the one to crawl under the desk to figure out why the printer wasn’t working; he was the one who set up my “new” computer, which was almost always a hand-me-down from his self-employed work as a drafter. He worked at home exclusively for the last fifteen years, so he was literally always there, except for those trips he took to Brooklyn to see our beloved grandchild, River.
Beyond that, I find that for every task, large or small, I reach for my tools, tools I don’t have any more. As I slowly unpack the boxes I had shipped from Baltimore, some precious items are broken; the green scalloped bowl given to us at our wedding on 1/1/77 by his best man and the woman who became his wife; the glass fronted picture frame with flowers preserved from that wedding day (think Miss Haversham); a molded box, sun, moon, star, that contained my tarot cards . . . all just debris now. But mostly, it’s just the plain fact that I got rid of 95% of the material possessions I had. I worked as hard as I could to sort and pack, but time ran out before I really processed the kitchen. I thought I prioritized the emotional work (books, mostly), and failed to see that I had an emotional attachment to my kitchen.
So, working in this different kitchen is hard, because in 50 years I acquired every nice thing for the kitchen that my heart desired: a really nice knife set given to us by one of my brothers and his wife; a red, black, and white colander set; old, expensive plastic storage containers; the list goes on and on. There was no way to bring all that loot; it is ridiculous to contemplate it. My friend has a well-stocked kitchen, and it would have been bringing coals to Newcastle to ship all my kitchen stuff out here. And of course, no place to put them . . . but still, I miss them. I miss the way I used to do things, my familiarity with my life in a nest with Mike, surrounded by the twigs and moss of comfortable, if old and perhaps a bit shabby, possessions.
The thing about Mike is that he was so totally mine, as I was so totally his. We really, deeply, wanted to be together, and so we stayed together through thick and thin. When telling the tale of our true love’s course, which never did run smooth (well often/mostly it did actually, but you get the point), I like to say that after a few years married, we tried to break up -- but THAT didn’t work out.
I have so much I want to tell Mike – to see his reaction, to see my life through his eyes. I know he would be proud of me for moving and for continuing my engagement in social justice activism, i.e. going to see Bernie and AOC on Saturday! I know Mike would encourage me to have fun, to take a nap if I need it, to shower, to buy something I want, to write more, to just live. He would have edited this piece . . .
To come in and find his empty frame, vacant eyes, still warm but no breath . . . that is a hard thing to bear.
It helps to express this, lessens the sorrow somehow. Thank you for caring, dear reader.
Lighting a candle for Mike Jensen
1/19/25
Symbols:
Mike Jensen
10/30/51 - 1/15/25
- His work gloves that he used to all kinds of chores in and out of the house and then, in the final months, to pull himself up on the trapeze bar
- The orchid that I bought them for our anniversary on January 1, 2025
- A partially consume package of Neccos, given to him his best friend, my brother Ronn. Everyone who knew Mike well knew that he loved Neccos.
- The TV that he bought me. We loved watching TV together, and this was a major way that we passed time when he became bedridden. We would hold hands and watch The Great British Baking Show. That was our favorite program.
- I would invite you who join me in grieving for Mike Jensen to come sit with me, but you all live far away.
- My daughters are supporting me in every way possible and the elder one just left a half hour ago. She has been helping me process this sudden departure of the love of my life as we go through medical supplies to arrange for donation and so forth. There is much work to be done when someone dies, and my younger daughter is taking care of a huge amount of work and sparing me.
Mike Jensen
10/30/51 - 1/15/25
I Have Never Been More Seen
by Shelley Pineo-Jensen, Ph.D.
1/18/25
1/18/25
After six months bedridden but making good progress on regaining physical strength and coordination, about a week before he died, Mike had a major angry blow up.
He later reflected on his words and behavior and provided a very thoughtful explanation of the paranoia that drove the outburst. His fear of ending up in permanent care and not seeing me drove him into a panic that invoked childhood trauma. He then said it was terribly wrong to say that if he didn't get what he wanted he would call our children and request that he be put into permanent care.
He thanked me for bring the subject up, days later, when I explained that a superficial apology would not mend the harm that was done by threatening to go to permanent care as a manipulative threat to get what he wanted, which was immediate access to a vape pen after putting me in charge of it, having asked me to manage his overuse of this tool. This was just days after he had promised to never again bring up the possibility of being condemned to warehousing, which had been surfacing because he felt I was working too hard and I shouldn't and wouldn't be able to keep caring for him.
So perverse was his paranoia that he threatened me with the very thing he feared the most. He felt that a denial of being stuck in the bed, multiple episodes occurring daily, was at least in part driving the disturbing and frightening hallucinations he experienced.
He said, "I apologize for smacking you with a huge amount of pain."
He asked me to get a pencil and paper and take notes on his ideas; he had worked out a continuum with at one end peace, calm, happiness, fulfillment, and helping Shell, a vision of more happiness available, a focus on good news, creating more peace, and at the other end, fear, pain, and PSTD around abandonment.
He told me what to say when he was delusional, believing that he was out of his bed or floating above it, or that there was someone next to him, etc.
"Calm down."
"Slow down."
"You are in your bed."
"Get peaceful so you can do the work," by which he meant the constant exercise that was building core strength and had allowed him to stand (with the help of two strong aides) for the first time after six months in bed. His shock of standing up caused him to say, "Wow," but this didn't capture the enormity of his feeling in that “wow” moment, which was of how far he needed to go to be able to actually stand up on his own, to walk again. In the emotion unearthed (fear), he saw across the valley to his goal and felt he was now capable of punching through physical boundaries that had previously limited his efforts. He was going to need to do a lot more, but he felt he was going to able to do it, and then was increasing his efforts daily. But this also increased his paranoia.
Mike said that he was totally wrong and hugely mistaken when he said that he didn't want any more of the raw feed and brutal honesty that I deliver. He said, "the opposite is true, I need your raw feed and brutal honesty, to understand your thinking, so I can help you."
I have never been more seen in my life.
This exchange reinforces my knowledge of my life with Mike -- that there has never been anyone I knew who came close to him, in being interested in me, in my thoughts, my goals, my writing, everything about me. I don't know if my interest in and admiration of Mike matched his with me, but he seemed satisfied. We talked constantly. We could kill three hours after breakfast just sitting around talking with our coffee and then be shocked that the so much time had passed.
Mike Jensen and I shared a mutual interest and admiration that drove a constant curiosity to know what the other thought about anything and everything. No topic was too large or too small to be unworthy of our attention. We discussed and debated constantly and supported our argumentation with facts and a logic chain. We had scores of bets. When he died, he owed me $9,000,005, although at one point he was up about $5,000,000.
I am amazed at my luck in setting up housekeeping with Mike Jensen in the winter of 1974 and the amazing life I have had with his support. I cannot believe he is gone because he promised many times to outlive me . . . But let's face it, I knew he was lying about that. <wink emoji>
RIP my sweetheart
He later reflected on his words and behavior and provided a very thoughtful explanation of the paranoia that drove the outburst. His fear of ending up in permanent care and not seeing me drove him into a panic that invoked childhood trauma. He then said it was terribly wrong to say that if he didn't get what he wanted he would call our children and request that he be put into permanent care.
He thanked me for bring the subject up, days later, when I explained that a superficial apology would not mend the harm that was done by threatening to go to permanent care as a manipulative threat to get what he wanted, which was immediate access to a vape pen after putting me in charge of it, having asked me to manage his overuse of this tool. This was just days after he had promised to never again bring up the possibility of being condemned to warehousing, which had been surfacing because he felt I was working too hard and I shouldn't and wouldn't be able to keep caring for him.
So perverse was his paranoia that he threatened me with the very thing he feared the most. He felt that a denial of being stuck in the bed, multiple episodes occurring daily, was at least in part driving the disturbing and frightening hallucinations he experienced.
He said, "I apologize for smacking you with a huge amount of pain."
He asked me to get a pencil and paper and take notes on his ideas; he had worked out a continuum with at one end peace, calm, happiness, fulfillment, and helping Shell, a vision of more happiness available, a focus on good news, creating more peace, and at the other end, fear, pain, and PSTD around abandonment.
He told me what to say when he was delusional, believing that he was out of his bed or floating above it, or that there was someone next to him, etc.
"Calm down."
"Slow down."
"You are in your bed."
"Get peaceful so you can do the work," by which he meant the constant exercise that was building core strength and had allowed him to stand (with the help of two strong aides) for the first time after six months in bed. His shock of standing up caused him to say, "Wow," but this didn't capture the enormity of his feeling in that “wow” moment, which was of how far he needed to go to be able to actually stand up on his own, to walk again. In the emotion unearthed (fear), he saw across the valley to his goal and felt he was now capable of punching through physical boundaries that had previously limited his efforts. He was going to need to do a lot more, but he felt he was going to able to do it, and then was increasing his efforts daily. But this also increased his paranoia.
Mike said that he was totally wrong and hugely mistaken when he said that he didn't want any more of the raw feed and brutal honesty that I deliver. He said, "the opposite is true, I need your raw feed and brutal honesty, to understand your thinking, so I can help you."
I have never been more seen in my life.
This exchange reinforces my knowledge of my life with Mike -- that there has never been anyone I knew who came close to him, in being interested in me, in my thoughts, my goals, my writing, everything about me. I don't know if my interest in and admiration of Mike matched his with me, but he seemed satisfied. We talked constantly. We could kill three hours after breakfast just sitting around talking with our coffee and then be shocked that the so much time had passed.
Mike Jensen and I shared a mutual interest and admiration that drove a constant curiosity to know what the other thought about anything and everything. No topic was too large or too small to be unworthy of our attention. We discussed and debated constantly and supported our argumentation with facts and a logic chain. We had scores of bets. When he died, he owed me $9,000,005, although at one point he was up about $5,000,000.
I am amazed at my luck in setting up housekeeping with Mike Jensen in the winter of 1974 and the amazing life I have had with his support. I cannot believe he is gone because he promised many times to outlive me . . . But let's face it, I knew he was lying about that. <wink emoji>
RIP my sweetheart
Rest in Peace, Michael Grant Jensen 10/30/51-1/15/25
Rest in Peace, Michael Grant Jensen 10/30/51-1/15/25
Dr. P-J
1/16/25
Dr. P-J
1/16/25
My true love, Mike Jensen, died in his sleep on January 15, 2025, around 1:30 pm. It was a natural death and no cause was determined, but it appear to me that his heart just stopped beating.
Since I called 911 on July 22, 2024, I have worked like a demon to help Mike restore his mobility. It took all my time, every day, to manage care givers, state therapists’ appointments, and medication, charting pain and blood pressure, and working with doctors; purchasing of medicine, incontinence supplies, etc.; and a myriad of other tasks related to Mike’s inability to walk.
When he was in the hospital, I advocated for spinal stenosis surgery that was being denied based on the false claim that his situation was “chronic.” I convinced the spine doctor that Mike’s situation was “acute”; the surgery produced amazing results.
When he was in rehab, I brought him homemade food to tempt his appetite and advocated for him with ferocity that produced results, such as getting him a bed extension and a bed by a window. His blood pressure swung between too high and too low. Due to the low blood pressure, he was taken of all the high BP medications.
When he came home from rehab, I had to again advocate to get him a longer bed as well as a bed with a motor to raise and lower the height. Everything was a struggle with the medical equipment.
I cooked him delicious meals and we watched countless hours of TV shows together, holding hands with the guard rail pulled down from the side of the hospital bed. We loved The Great British Baking Show. We had daily planning meetings where we charted his exercises and plotted a course to reach his goals.
I soothed him back into reality hundreds of times, as he had a terrifying delusion that he was standing up while the wall in front of him appeared to be the floor and he was floating up above it. This is common, apparently, for people he lay in a bed all the time. It has a technical name, but I call it “bed psychosis.” He had another anxiety producing form of hallucination that was a glitch going from sleeping to awake but not stopping the dream. He would then be confused and insist that I help him get back home or get to his bed. It too has a technical name, but I call it “brain cloud,” and inside-joke in our family that draws on one of our favorite movies, Joe vs. the Volcano.
On Friday night he did not sleep and called for me many times in the night to come help him as he wrestled with hallucinations. He had been doing so much better – this was almost as bad as when the hallucinations first started, in the hospital. Saturday night just as bad – when I came in to check on him he would have knocked over the things on his bed table. Sunday night was worse and the room looked like a tidal wave had come through – all the covers off the bed, the lamp near his bed knocked over, everything in disarray.
On Monday we had a telemedicine appointment with his primary care physician who agreed that the gabapentin and baclofen could be the culprits behind the fear producing hallucinations. She ordered a gradual reduction of those meds and an increase in his BP medication. It seemed there was an improvement, a reduction in the hallucinations, more time in the present.
Monday night, Mike had a more restful night but was not able to sleep all the way through. The lack of sleep produces its own brain disfunction, so his exercise regime had been mostly sidelined, but Tuesday he was able to return to exercise; we just focused on stretching and modeling the patterns without trying to build strength. That night he slept quite a bit better, there was no tossing about.
Wednesday morning, we started with strength training, as always with the help of the home care aide. His blood pressure was a bit high while sitting up but laying down again it was within the normal range. After that he used the T-bar to lift up his butt an inch, showing good progress from the last time but then he complained that his stomach hurt and he felt nauseous. This passed and the wonderful home health aide departed.
I asked him if he would like to take a short nap and he said he would like that. I checked on him several times and was grateful that he was finally getting some sleep, so I let him sleep longer. About 12:30 he was still sleeping and I decided to take a short nap myself – when my 1:00 alarm went off to prepare his mid-day pill regime, I hit the snooze button several times. Finally, I got up around 1:30, prepared his pills and took them down to his room in the far back end of the house. I set the tray down and went over to wake him up and I thought that he wasn’t breathing. His skin was warm to the touch but parts of him were already getting cold. I breathed into this mouth. I knew he was gone. I started pumping his heart and called 911. I received explicit instructions about the heart pumping, but I knew in my heart that Mike was gone, and so he was.
The EMT’s did their work but we all knew that it was just protocol.
“Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
Since I called 911 on July 22, 2024, I have worked like a demon to help Mike restore his mobility. It took all my time, every day, to manage care givers, state therapists’ appointments, and medication, charting pain and blood pressure, and working with doctors; purchasing of medicine, incontinence supplies, etc.; and a myriad of other tasks related to Mike’s inability to walk.
When he was in the hospital, I advocated for spinal stenosis surgery that was being denied based on the false claim that his situation was “chronic.” I convinced the spine doctor that Mike’s situation was “acute”; the surgery produced amazing results.
When he was in rehab, I brought him homemade food to tempt his appetite and advocated for him with ferocity that produced results, such as getting him a bed extension and a bed by a window. His blood pressure swung between too high and too low. Due to the low blood pressure, he was taken of all the high BP medications.
When he came home from rehab, I had to again advocate to get him a longer bed as well as a bed with a motor to raise and lower the height. Everything was a struggle with the medical equipment.
I cooked him delicious meals and we watched countless hours of TV shows together, holding hands with the guard rail pulled down from the side of the hospital bed. We loved The Great British Baking Show. We had daily planning meetings where we charted his exercises and plotted a course to reach his goals.
I soothed him back into reality hundreds of times, as he had a terrifying delusion that he was standing up while the wall in front of him appeared to be the floor and he was floating up above it. This is common, apparently, for people he lay in a bed all the time. It has a technical name, but I call it “bed psychosis.” He had another anxiety producing form of hallucination that was a glitch going from sleeping to awake but not stopping the dream. He would then be confused and insist that I help him get back home or get to his bed. It too has a technical name, but I call it “brain cloud,” and inside-joke in our family that draws on one of our favorite movies, Joe vs. the Volcano.
On Friday night he did not sleep and called for me many times in the night to come help him as he wrestled with hallucinations. He had been doing so much better – this was almost as bad as when the hallucinations first started, in the hospital. Saturday night just as bad – when I came in to check on him he would have knocked over the things on his bed table. Sunday night was worse and the room looked like a tidal wave had come through – all the covers off the bed, the lamp near his bed knocked over, everything in disarray.
On Monday we had a telemedicine appointment with his primary care physician who agreed that the gabapentin and baclofen could be the culprits behind the fear producing hallucinations. She ordered a gradual reduction of those meds and an increase in his BP medication. It seemed there was an improvement, a reduction in the hallucinations, more time in the present.
Monday night, Mike had a more restful night but was not able to sleep all the way through. The lack of sleep produces its own brain disfunction, so his exercise regime had been mostly sidelined, but Tuesday he was able to return to exercise; we just focused on stretching and modeling the patterns without trying to build strength. That night he slept quite a bit better, there was no tossing about.
Wednesday morning, we started with strength training, as always with the help of the home care aide. His blood pressure was a bit high while sitting up but laying down again it was within the normal range. After that he used the T-bar to lift up his butt an inch, showing good progress from the last time but then he complained that his stomach hurt and he felt nauseous. This passed and the wonderful home health aide departed.
I asked him if he would like to take a short nap and he said he would like that. I checked on him several times and was grateful that he was finally getting some sleep, so I let him sleep longer. About 12:30 he was still sleeping and I decided to take a short nap myself – when my 1:00 alarm went off to prepare his mid-day pill regime, I hit the snooze button several times. Finally, I got up around 1:30, prepared his pills and took them down to his room in the far back end of the house. I set the tray down and went over to wake him up and I thought that he wasn’t breathing. His skin was warm to the touch but parts of him were already getting cold. I breathed into this mouth. I knew he was gone. I started pumping his heart and called 911. I received explicit instructions about the heart pumping, but I knew in my heart that Mike was gone, and so he was.
The EMT’s did their work but we all knew that it was just protocol.
“Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
Last Photo I took of Mike
1/5/25
