Cpt. Max. Photo courtesy of Susan Block.

Recently, my deep “Grieving Process” took my breath away – literally – as every respiratory branch on my tracheobronchial tree closed up shop, all airways *on strike* against the new working conditions of Life After Max.

It’s been months since my beloved husband of 33 years and best-friend of 40, Pr. Maximillian R. Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri (11/8/1943 – 5/13/2025) passed away, but I miss Max moreevery day. Maybe that’s why – combined with the stress of fighting to save Bonoboville from unspeakable attacks and having also managed to give myself a compressed spinal fracture doing a handstand (at my age) – my vital signs dropped like an osmium rock.

Is There Life After Max?

So, off I lurched to Urgent Care, and as soon as sweet Dr. Kim saw this gasping, weeping widow, he had his nurse wheel me down to the ER, admitting me into a room where I could swear that, several months earlier, I had visited my darling post-stroke Max.

Thus began my Kaiser Hospital *Holiday* Weekend – a two-day blitz of blood, pee and mucus tests, x-rays, CT-scans and getting stabbed black-and-blue with IVs before being diagnosed with a bronchiectasis flare of bacterial pneumonia. Not viral, thank Goddess, but still gross and potentially lethal.

I’ve had my beefs with Kaiser and the U.S. Medical-Industrial Complex – mostly regarding Max’s care – but they helped me to heal before, and they seem to be helping me to heal again, despite my grim shape and bad attitude.

Sucking down oxygen and Albuterol, I scrolled through the Theater of Cruelty searing my rheumy eyes – starving Palestinians slaughtered in U.S.-funded Zionist killing fields; hard-working American immigrants (even fire fighters) disappeared by ICE Gestapo; ammosexual incels committing mass-shootings; Trumpocalyptic Department of WAR committing mass murder, bullying Venezuela; neo-Puritanical algorithms choking our voices like this mucus was choking my airways, the healing pleasures of sexuality perverted into nonconsensual sadistic domination, whole towns drowning or burning up in Capitalogenic climate change, poor people hurt and dying every day, lonely people never knowing true love like I was blessed to have shared with Max…

Yes indeed, when drunk on melancholy, there’s nothing like focusing on people much worse off than you to sober you up. It’s the Stoic way. So, there I lay, swaddled in hospital sheets, suspended in medical time, feeling horrible about *the news,* but grateful to have been so in love for 40 years of this life – and lucky just to be alive… though without my darling Max, it was hard to say what for.

I tried counting my reasons-to-live, like sheep: to honor Max’s memory, to tell his amazing but (mostly) true stories, the legacy of our lives together, and our hope for a better way, a way to help others, along with ourselves, a way we called The Bonobo Way of female empowerment, male nurturing, consenting-adult ecosexuality, sharing, caregiving and peace through pleasure.

But how could I do any of that with this corpus of crumbling clay and all airways on strike? I felt so bad, I almost canceled my whole week’s appointments. I almost canceled my whole life! Then late Sunday, my grief-clogged respiratory system........

© CounterPunch