Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care ...

 Well, I can't sleep.

Again.

I've often had problems sleeping.  It's gotten worse as I've gotten older, as seems to happen frequently.  And I need sleep.  I generally need more than the traditional eight hours, although I can function on less, and sometimes have, for very long periods, which I find odd.

The thing is, I don't sleep well without Gloria.

I first noticed this when I was out doing the seminars.  It wasn't jet lag: even if the seminar was in Calgary or Los Angeles I still had trouble sleeping.  And I mean real trouble sleeping.  I'd be out for a week doing the seminars, and most of the week I'd be getting two hours sleep a night.  On occasion (and not all that infrequently) I wouldn't be able to get any sleep all night.  The thing is, the seminars are pretty intense, not just for the candidates, but I have to stand up there for forty hours, and talk, sometimes to seminars that have half a dozen candidates who have fifteen to twenty years experience in different specialty fields of security, and not make a fool of myself.  It's a bit difficult.  So, initially, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to function without getting "enough" sleep.  However, after a while I realized that I was able to do the seminars just fine, even if I wasn't getting much sleep.  (I can recall seminars that I only got about eight hours sleep for the entire week.)  Eventually, I even used it to my advantage.  Business travel may seem romantic, but you really only see the insides of airports, airplanes, and hotel rooms.  All the tourist stuff is closed except for the times that I was actually in front of a seminar, so I had to do my sight-seeing at 4:30 AM when I couldn't sleep.  (Scared the pants off the RCMP security detail at 24 Sussex Drive at 4:30 AM one time, but that's another story.)

Over the years, I tried all the usual suspect sleep options.  Hot bath, warm milk, big meal before bed, melatonin, Nytol, American antihistamines (the ones we get in Canada are mostly all the "non-drowsy" kind, but American antihistamines all used to use some form of diphenhydramine, which is basically what Nytol is), avoiding screens before bed.  None of them worked.  (Or, rather, most of them worked.  Once.  And then never worked again.)

(Out doing the seminars I did hot baths for two reasons.  One was to try to get to sleep.  The other was that, for old legs like mine, standing in front of a group for eight hours a day your legs get really tired and painful, and a good soak helps a lot.  And then I did a seminar in Norway, at a resort, and there wasn't a tub in the entire resort except for some hydrotherapy thing, so I made do with the steam room and sauna.)

Of course, as Gloria got weaker before she went into hospital, I was stressed, so I wasn't getting much sleep.  And then she was in hospital, so I wasn't getting much sleep.  And then I was sleeping at the hospital, so I wasn't getting much sleep.  And then she died.

Since then I've had a couple of nights when I've had close to eight hours of broken sleep.  Certainly never more.  Mostly I've been getting about five hours sleep.  And it's not that I can't get to sleep, initially, but that eventually I wake up, very early, and then can't get back to sleep.  This morning I woke up at 1:30, tried to stay in bed for an hour, but eventually realized I wasn't going to get any more sleep, so I'm up writing this.  And none of the traditional sleep "aids" address waking up too early.

Hopefully I'll get back to getting some sleep, eventually.  I don't know how long I can go on this sleep deprivation routine.  (Gloria was irked when I set my email "personal name" field to "Rob Slade, the famous sleep deprivation experiment."  When Ryan was born, she suggested "Rob Slade, the doting Grandpa of Ryan," and I liked that, so I've been known as "Grandpa Rob" in security circles ever since.)  When I worked at the hospital, many year ago, you generally chose either days and nights, or days and afternoons.  I did days and nights for four years, and managed to survive.  But twenty years later (and almost three decades ago, now) I did some more night shift and it practically killed me.

Is this grief?  The lack of a schedule?  Too much change all at once?