joy unbound

Because it is so fragile, I am reluctant to put this into any container, even something as sturdy as words.


It is joy.  A release that has come, and I fear explaining will destroy it.  


But I will try, a little.


The Year of Mourning is officially over.  Not grieving, no; but my view must now change, moving from death to life, from the past to the future.  To accomplish this, I am making lists, and soon I hope to act upon them.  About my relationships (a question mark, of course); about moving from my house (within a year, and this is already in motion); about my writing (stuck, but I have those lists...)


I wish I could say more. But for now, I will simply cradle what is, as I once cradled grief.


Candace

birthday boy

Yesterday I bought a 2011 calendar.  A big decision, every year.  Into what container will I be counting down my life?


This year's was a plain, just-the-facts day-by-day in a faux medieval binding.  In truth, I didn't buy it until May and paid 50% off the normal price, surprised that the rest of the world was already five months into another year.  Looking back, a lot of white space remains.  


For 2011, I wanted something that, in itself, would be sufficient; a Sabbath calendar, existing outside of time.  So I rejected the dailys filled with flowers or famous paintings; ditto for those designed for writers, for runners, for procrastinators (I'll think about this one).


In the end I chose one new to me:  Chris Hardman's Ecological Calendar: A New Way to Experience Time. While small print follows the Gregorian Calendar, front-and-center is a reminder that our days are more than "a march of numbers, a business machine telling us when to be where."


This calendar reminds us where we already are, infinitesimally small creatures on a tiny plant circling a star that is one of 200 billion in our Milky Way galaxy, and the Milky Way is one of at least 200 billion galaxies in a universe about 13.7 billion years old.


This is not to say we are insignificant, or that how we use our time is trivial. Even if the day is "blank," we are part of something ancient, magnificent, and beyond our ultimate comprehension.


So I think these thoughts as I weep on Rich's birthday. Not because his life was so small, because I now understand how one life, deeply lived with another, can contain it all.  And I don't think it's a coincidence that this day which we call Tuesday, 9 November, is in the calendar marked as "ForestMulch" in the season "Fall of the Leaf."  


And a sweet-fragranced rose is in front of me, picked this morning, the last of the season.


Candace

serendipity

A few days ago, a friend said she was having a great day.  Everything was serendipity; it appeared that no matter what needed doing, it would happen in a most excellent way.  And as each event confirmed this belief, her confidence grew.  When she accidently knocked over a portable heater, I murmured well, maybe not everything...

"No," she insisted. "See?  It didn't catch on fire!  It didn't break!"

I laughed, and agreed.

"But why can't this be all the time?" she said.

I was in a poetic/pontifical mood.  It can, I said.  Become a lover with serendipity.  Then, even when you're not living together, you will yearn for the other, have the qualities of the other, you will want to hang out together more and more.

"Hey, you're good," she said.

But, as is usual these days, I was also talking to myself, and when finished not quite sure what I was talking about.  Days past, with a flesh-and-blood lover?  Or now, except that my lover is:  Grief, First Name; Loneliness, Surname.  And Rich is this lover's middle name, wrapped in the midst of first and last.

I don't want to leave this lover.  I do want to learn how to live with what is tearing off piece after piece of me, breaking and catching fire.  

Candace

  

voting

The election day worker stops me as soon as I get inside the door.


"Your district?"


I'm blank.  Did I know this two years ago?


He points to a map spread over the table.


"Where do you live?" he asks.


I point, vaguely, and give my address.  


"That's north of here," I say, meaning the polling place.


"No, that's south," he says, directing me to the proper table.


I give the next election worker my name and address.  She opens the book.  I don't notice my name, but the one adjacent, the one with the unmistakable precise signature.


Richard S. Galik


It has been a hard morning anyway, and now I try not to drip on government documents.


In elections past, his fresh signature would have been there ahead of mine; he always voted early, before work.  Today it will remain blank.


"Sign here," she says.


I do.


She frowns.


"This isn't your signature," she says.


Huh?


She points at my official marking; it's legible, must be from years ago, with no resemblance to my new scrawl.


"Do you have ID?" she asks.


She scrutinizes the driver's license, still not fully convinced, I can tell.  I've changed since that photo was taken, too.


"Do you want to make this your new signature?" she says, at last.  "So you won't be asked next time."


"By then it will change again," I say.


She tears off the ballot and hands it over, satisfied she has done her duty and is now rid of this odd duck.


I fill in the circles.  I obediently then proceed to the scanning machine that will eat my opinion and confirm it was digested.


But a woman is ahead of me, in prolonged conversation with another election day worker.  They're discussing the woman's watch, how pretty it is, where did you get it, oh, I've had it forever...


"Get a move on!" a man's voice bellows, behind me.  "You're holding up the line!"


The election worker jumps.


"I hope you know her," she says to him.


"For 47 years I've lived with her.  I can say anything I want," he says.


I feed the form to the machine, and say nothing.


Two years ago we voted for change and hope.  Change?  Rich and I got it.  Hope?  I'm on my own. 


Candace

who do I want to be

A new barista is now making my lattes.  His says that his cappaccinos best show off his skills, but his goal is to make great lattes, too.


Yesterday he was pre-occupied with Halloween, a pagan event that, from what I understand of it, is consecrated to propping up the American economy with yet more disposable junk.


Anyway.


"I just don't who I want to be," he said.


"I have that feeling every morning when I get out of bed," I said.


He laughed.


"I meant for Halloween, but yeah, that too," he said.


I am living, as Sartre said, the "curse of freedom."  Freedom not as the opposite of slavery, but of attachment, commitment, love.


My goals in the first year were not about choosing a costume, but shedding what I had (and drinking as many lattes as possible).  This is happening.  This may have been the easy part.


The costumes beckon and seduce.  Who do I want to be?


Candace

worm again

The worm returned last night, shiny and wet, snoozing next to my bed.


"Here again?" I said.


As always, he said nothing.


I scooped him up and returned him to the lawn, still wet from the evening's rain.


I am tired of explaining to him that the moist outdoors is his home, not the inside dry carpet.


In the past month, this is the sixth appearance of Mr. Worm.  Never, ever, had a worm appeared in my/our home.  In makes no sense.  Why come in out of the wet?  But he keeps returning to one of two places, and I'm no longer surprised.


What could this mean?  Rich would not return to me as a worm.   Mr. Worm could easily be Mrs./Ms./Miss; they're hemaphrodites. And not scholars.  If their brain is removed, their behavior remains virtually unchanged.  Their primary response is to light, and not much else.


Maybe this is the message.  Go to the light, the light...


I need to think about this.


Candace

year one/one year

I was unpacking the grocery bags.  While removing the lemon juice, I looked at the clock.  5:24 p.m.  Rich died at 5:25, one year ago.  What does one year mean?  


My body knew.  I howled as the razors ripped through, now deeper than before.  The entire scene re-played, of his last breath, his sweet smell, of his body on the undertaker's gurney, the last time I would see his face.  And my mind, never one to be shy, whispered yet again you didn't do what you should have, you screwed up, what were you thinking...not much, not in the Chordoma years.  Because thinking meant considering the impossible.


How much alike, I now realize, is love and pain.  The first year I knew Rich, I believed I loved him.  But that was only the beginning, a laughably thin layer; if the full power of love exploded in us, all at once, I don't think we could survive.  Only as we learned to let love infuse all of our days, together and apart, did I grasp its power.


The same for pain.  To absorb it all at once is impossible.  Last year was a warm-up.  Not that this year and the next will be "harder," but I expect it will go deeper, slicing into places I can't yet go as I gradually release its power upon me and allow it to fade away -- into love, I hope.


Each night at dinner, Rich and I would light candles, hold hands, and say, another day, love, another day.


So -- another year, love, another year.


Candace

an open heart

Tonight, a dinner invitation I rejected.  Not when the anniversary of Rich's death is three days away; I cannot pretend to participate in conversation that doesn't matter with those who didn't know him.


Instead I will scream the only prayer remaining:  Open my heart.  To break open a pain that can be tolerated in small doses, lest the supplicant go mad.  To allow admittance to a future of glistening shards, unlabeled, waiting for me.


I will light a candle, seeing in it the container that once held it all, and always will.


Tomorrow, I will drink wine with friends to remind myself that this is the stuff of now and the future, and I had better get used to it.


I will look back on my list of a year ago and laugh.


I will never forget -- my final prayer.


Candace

answers

Grief makes for dull reading.  How could it be otherwise, when the author's brain and senses are numb, the ending unknown, the energy-giver gone?


We read about grief (I include myself here, thousands of words read on the topic) because, I expect, we want "an answer."  Not "the" answer, that's not possible, but yearning for a possibility of light inside the cave.


Surprise:  No answer.


And the only ones who offer one haven't been where I am.  Those who have only say:  It's hard.  Sometimes, they add: You're brave.


It is hard.  I am not brave.  Neither pain nor courage are options.  


Candace

waiting for the plumber

Almost a year.  All that I have planned for the day is a visit from a repairman for the pellet stove.  Why not?  It's hard to get on his calendar, and at least it's practical.  

I am post-ritual.  I've opened every door that I know, and behind all of them is a sheer cliff.  

Then look at photos, a friend suggests.  Bathe in the memories.  

Torture. I don't look.

Ditto for Rich's clothes.  For talking about him.  For not talking about him.

There is no escape, no comfort.  

There is only pain, bathing in it, breathing it in, waiting for the cleaning, waiting for the exhale.

Waiting. That's the job of grief.

Practical, too, in this life alone.  I spend a lot of my time waiting for the plumber, waiting for a repair of this or a cleaning of that.  

This may be the only ritual that matters now.  Waiting -- to be cleaned, to be repaired.

Candace

sunset

At a recent neighborhood picnic, several neighbors expressed ecstasy about the sunsets that could be seen from our homes.


Sunsets?


I notice, sometimes.  As I occasionally acknowledge trees, birds, but never sunrises, not if I can help it.  Which makes me wonder where my mind is most of the time, and where I want it to be, and when will sunsets matter again.


Rich and I used to take our sleeping bags outside and watch meteors.  And our after-dinner tea, most warm days, to watch sunsets.  And he, alone, to see the sunrise, and give me a report later in the day on what I missed.


Now I'm missing just about everything.  Because I don't yet know what I should be seeing in this world, alone.  And because I'm pissed at the sun and the moon that they don't know what's missing in this world, and damn them for pretending everything is normal.


Candace

carved in stone

Today I contacted the stone carver to mark Rich's grave.  It is a rectangular-ish flat stone, one I pulled out from the muddy hole, six weeks shy of a year ago.  Not much room on it beyond the basic information -- his name, his days among us.  If room permitted, I asked "Beloved" to be carved, too.


Sweet Rich is gone.  I can say this a thousand times, and still my heart is strangled. Pain eases, then drops to another level in a bottomless hole.  Setting the stone in place will be my last "official" act of grieving. Everything else is done.  But not finished.


Candace

rushing

A few months ago, I noticed I was rushing.  Rushing, that is, with no reason.  Through brushing teeth, showering, walking from one room to another -- galloping through my days for no purpose.  A remnant of days past, I realized.  Because for years wherever I was, it wasn't the only place I needed to be.  Always I pressured myself that Rich needed me to be there, do that; sometimes this was true, but mostly I was running against death.  If I didn't keep moving, Rich would be taken.


Slowing down still takes mindful effort.  Part of me remains manic, forgetting that he's gone.  Someday I will catch up.  Meanwhile, I try to live deeply into this beautiful life that will vanish, too quickly.


Candace

how to grieve

These letters have been lacking in matters practical.  For one thing, plenty of information on widowhood -- psychological, sociological, spiritual -- is available in books and on websites.  I've read a small library's worth, but to quote Thomas Merton: "How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books."  Grief obscures reason and feeling; clarity during these days is more often than not recognized by chance.

I offer a few ways of being that have been healing for me, with emphasis on what I have not found in books. 

1. Solitude:  Severed from life shared with another forces one to undertake a retreat that would challenge -- and perhaps baffle -- the most advanced Zen master (no life! no death! no desire!)  Everything in these days is about life lost and death won and desire unfulfilled.  Going out of my mind is not an option.  It is not playing at a religious game.  Solitude gives the razors freedom to cut as deep as necessary.  Solitude allows the bleeding to happen.
2. Relationships: Not an opposite of Solitude, but a compliment.  Friends have saved my life.  By feeding, listening, and occasional use of cattle prod.
3. Dreams: The stuff of the sleeping night, yes, and also the awake days.  In the first, horror and release; in the second, a possible future.  Dreams won't bring back the "real" Rich and cannot predict a "real" life, but in both is a sweet taste of what was and what might be.

Candace

digested

Someday I hope to write these words:  Grief eaten.  Digested.  This meal is over.

Never will that happen, unless I have a lobotomy.  Nor do I want it to.

But in the past week, I have come closer to gut health as a series of events and people moved into my life, equipped with forks and knives to carve up the indigestible and serve up only the good parts. 

One will be mentioned here because the event made no sense.

I was relaxing in the Tranquility Room at my local day spa (an indulgence this year) when a woman walked in.  She was not the usual spa type, who tend towards the healthy and fit.  She emerged from behind the massage rooms' curtain on swollen, wobbly legs, and her well-creased face was testimony to many years.

We caught eyes.  

"I just had a massage," she said.

That was all she said.  But her glow said more, as if she were revealing a secret, as if no one ever heard of a massage before.  I moistened.  I melted.  

She slowly walked to two other women lounging in the room, who I guessed were her daughters, and kissed them.  When the massage therapist brought her a mug of lemon water, she glowed even brighter in amazement, staring at the miracle of the cup, the water, the fruit.

With all of her self -- and more -- she gave me a massage, too, easing out the tightness that didn't expect to be touched.

And revealing possibilities of a life yet to come.

Candace

bugs live

I didn't call an exterminator.  The bugs yet live.  Their numbers, however, do seem significantly reduced.  I've learned that most problems heal more quickly and completely with minimal intervention.  Or maybe I don't really give a damn.


Today was a trip to the landfill.  Most of it was four months worth of ordinary rubbish. I don't have a weekly garbage collection; we never did, having never generated that much trash.  But a few items broke the heart.  Two pairs of Rich's old boots, and worn-out socks.  Plus two used-up mops, both of which he bought.  From now on, anything leaving the house or garage will be harder.  The easy stuff is gone.


That's what this grieving game feels like, too.  For five years, life was focused on death and dying.  Now it's back to life, and this is the hard part.  I'm not sure how this problem will heal, not anymore.  And each day I have to remind myself that I still give a damn.  


Candace

bugs

Flying insects have invaded.  About a year ago, in fact.  But, really, who noticed such little things a year ago?  Death or deep sleep quieted them over the winter, and now they're back, and brought their cousins, friends, acquaintances.  Mostly, they confine themselves to one hallway.  They don't bite, or get into food, and die all too easily, succumbing to a slight swipe of the hand.


But, somehow, I now feel they must leave (pretty good euphemism, no?)  I need the illusion of clean.


So I will call an exterminator tomorrow and ask what gentle environmentally friendly methods are available.


Which reminds me of years ago, when the building where I worked was invaded by ants.  The exterminator, when asked if there was a way she could be gentle, laughed.


"You mean you want me to kill them without hurting them?"


Well, no...kill them, but don't harm the humans.  Somehow, that sounded virtuous, then.


Candace

an abandoned life

An abandoned life doesn't vanish whole.  It sloughs off, piece by piece. 


Eating, for example.  Alone is the new normal, but that doesn't always stop me from buying sunflower seeds in quantity sufficient to feed the avian stars of "The Birds," or oats enough for a stable of athletic polo ponies.  But I pretend it works.  Jars of roasted seeds and oats transformed into my maple granola can radiate abundance as much as stupidity.


Repairs, too.  I still expect Rich will do it.  Out of eight overhead lights, all requiring a ladder and a gymnast's skills to reach, three have gone dark.  Maybe, when I reach the halfway mark, I will get motivated.  Or go to sleep earlier -- that's fine, too.  


But these are small matters.  What is vanishing is Rich himself, an amazing possibility that startles my mind.  How can 10 months apart swallow 37 years together?  Unless one of the places where he has gone is me.  That could explain the abundance that someday will devour the stupidity and the pain and the life abandoned.


Candace

eight percent

I just read that eight percent of women in my age group are widows.  This info and more was provided in today's edition of USA Today.  Such as the tidbit that this blog is one of about 120 on widowhood.  That a "Camp Widow" exists for younger widows where dressing in black is discouraged, good times encouraged, and T-shirts with the logo "Widows Rock" and mugs with "Death Sucks" and books such as "I'm Grieving as Fast as I Can" are available for purchase.


As I've said before, each day is lived inside a paradox.  I'm horrified by the thought of a book suggesting that "grief" and "fast" can be used in the same sentence.  Grief is never finished; it is a chronic disease that can be managed but not cured.  And yet -- how much I want to move on!


I don't "rock," though I would love to remember what it is, again, to feel alive.  And what sucks is not death -- inevitable, after all -- but one particular death.  I calmly accept generic death while raging at the loss of the one person whose existence mattered above all others.


Still, today is not as bad as the preceding ones.  Perhaps it was the massage on Monday that relaxed me so deeply I was in bed before sunset, and awoke to find I could write again.  I cooked.  I cleaned.  I didn't rock, but this is a start.


Candace

drowning

I'm running out of tools.  Everything I have tried isn't working right now.  Alone I'm alone.  With others I'm more alone.  We're having a heat wave, I'm told.  Really?  I have hardly broken into a sweat, frozen still, no air conditioner needed.


So, I will let myself drown in the sorrow.  Fear isn't sinking, not anymore.  It's coming up to the surface again, alone.


Candace

bereave-in

Last week I returned, for the first time in about four months, to the local hospice-sponsored bereavement group.  This is a drop-in gathering, meeting twice a month, no reservations required.


A friend dubbed this a "bereave-in," a "love-in" for those who have lost, and inevitably are lost.  How can it help, he wondered, to wander among those equally sad at their map-lessness?


It was my car's idea, I said.  I was headed home when, almost without any assistance from me, I found myself in Hospicare's parking lot, looking at out the gardens so familiar.  But I didn't look at Rich's room.  I didn't go inside the front entrance.  I entered through the lower level, directly into the bereavement room.


Two hours later, did I know where I was?


No, but I knew who I was, at least for that time in that room.  A griever.  A human being who could admit she was nothing more, who didn't have to pretend.  To say Rich's name.  To say he was my husband.  Who is still my map, still the one through whose eyes I see the world and in whose heart I am still, always, lost.


Candace

playing it safe

The article was about fat cats.  The four-legged sort who meow and purr and, if given the opportunity, munch mice and stalk rabbits and, now and then, engage in combat with their fellow felines.


While the veterinarian interviewed admitted that indoor cats were prone to packing too much weight, she said that, overall, it was a better life.  They wouldn't risk fights, or being run over by a car, or catching a disease.


In short, they would be breathing but dead.


Which is the temptation of grief.


Why risk exploring the outside world, with its potential for new relationships, new work, new home?  Because a new language must be learned, because diseases may be contracted, because the spirit which remains may be broken and crushed.


Rich is dead.  I am breathing.  Somehow, both are possible.


Candace

learning to sail

The invitation came from an almost-stranger, a friend of a friend.  Would you like to come sailing, she asked; I didn't hesitate.


Next day, once underway, the captain spoke to me.  I'm sorry, he said; I heard about your loss. 


It is hard, I said.  But at the moment, it didn't feel hard.  I was having too much fun.


You're good, he said.  You should take sailing lessons, then you can crew.


That sounded like a possible idea.  Anything that could blow open another layer of pain was worth considering.


But I also knew that every time a surge of joy came, another layer of grief would be uncovered, an inevitable law of balancing emotions.


And the grief did come, that evening.  While standing with Thundercat in the driveway, I saw Rich, vivid but unreal, walking up the driveway, wearing his brown Rockports, pressed tan chinos, blue shirt, striped tie, blue braces.


He's never coming home, I said to Thunder.  He's never coming home, is he?


Thunder scratched behind his right ear.  


I cried.


Candace

taking the world

You take the world into yourself and you write about it. -- C.K. Williams, poet


Not everyone is a poet, or a writer.  But everyone, I believe, needs to find a way to make sense of their lives, a task that is both a privilege (I'm not starving, I have shelter, I have clothing) and a responsibility.  Otherwise we risk becoming voyeurs who watch the stories of our lives and those of others, chopping ourselves into pieces that please or impress or whimper or reveal nothing.  Think "Facebook."  Think this blog.


Death does more than chop.  It pulverizes the world that was created, a world incarnate in another human.


What I have learned: The world cannot be incarnated.  Rich held my heart and my love and he did the dishes.  He is gone, and now I have to do the dishes, but my heart and love remain -- what else can explain the calm, joy, and peace that weaves through the grief?


What is beyond incarnation is interpretation.  And so I write, I walk, I arise in the morning wondering where I will see love today, and rarely go to bed disappointed.  It's out there, it's in here, and on the best days words fade away.


Candace 

little bites

One of the advantages of taking work to the coffee place is conversation overheard, and then incorporating its meaning into my life (doesn't this sound more respectable than admitting I'm a gossip?)


The characters:  A boy, somewhere between eight and ten years old, and a woman, late teens/early twenties, who I guess to be his babysitter.


He is eating a cinnamon raisin bagel, coated with butter.  She is asking him questions that, to me, sound more appropriate for Kant than for a pre-pubescent boy.


And then, the question that tops them all.


"Does good ever prevail over evil?" she asks.


Don't do this to him, I want to say.  But I don't.  I watch and wait for his answer.


He chews, furrows his brow, gazes at the street, takes another bite.


Finally, he answers.


"This bagel is too big to eat in one bite."


Brilliant.  Whatever the question, this is the answer.


Today is a good day for little bites.  My summer cold is fading, I was up at dawn, hiked in a nearby gorge, began revising my manuscript, made reservations for another trip out of town.  


Yum.


Candace

facade

We met at a conference a week ago.  Almost from the beginning, I knew.

The eyes.  They gave away the secret of loss, even as we began talking about other matters.  He was 13 months out since the death of his wife, and we both knew that only one subject was important to us.

Such conversations between those who mourn flow easily, the topics unchanging.  Battles over medical bills, and relationships ruptured, and the absurdity of calling any space "home."


We disagreed over love.  I believe it will come again in the form of another -- not the same, never the same -- because love is not something that can vanish, even if in these days we are numb to its touch.  No, he said; love dies with the person.  


For now, I can't argue.  All the evidence says he is right, while I hold onto a future existence that may be only fantasy.


We didn't have many conversations after that.  He was knocked out with a flu/cold and in bed for much of the rest of the week, and during our last day together he said that, considering I'm only eight months out, I'm doing pretty good.


Facade, I said.  


He nodded.  I didn't have to explain.


Now I have the cold, maybe because it was contagious, or maybe because the body welcomes an opportunity to indulge in just sleeping, just eating, just waiting for a life that once more is the real thing.


Candace

in the mail

Returning home after a week away, I take the bag of mail with me to Ithaca Bakery.  It is quiet for a Sunday morning, the tables about a third empty.


Toss, toss, toss...Land's End for Men (though I do take a quick peek, just to see what Rich might order); Sierra Club petition (no political energy now); donation request to Memorial Sloan Kettering (sorry, a million or so already has been paid).  


Keep the tax consultant bill (well worth it -- IRS says all is forgiven); and the electric bill (now in my name) and the lawn mowing bill (also well worth it, nice guys -- though I wonder why I don't tear up all that green stuff and plant something I can eat).


Another sip of the my latte, a few licks at the foam, then onto the next item:  The annual Hospicare newsletter. 


I would be lying if I said it's a surprise.  After all, I gave permission.  I knew it was coming.


There he is:  On the cover, and on page three, Rich and Marlaine, the message therapist during his four months.  Half-upright in his Gerry Chair, they are in the garden, Rich with his ever-present kit filled with snacks, his shaver, the call button -- and his smile.


I turn the page and chew the bagel.  258 deaths in 2009...131 from cancer...daily census, 54.3 (.3?  Not a whole person?)  The place is empty enough, maybe I can cry, but no, I won't, even if few will see and other lives matter to them.  Love, after all, is specific.


Statistics distract only for a minute or two.  I look at his face, look again and again, and when I return home I will once more inhale the aftershave in the bathroom I now rarely use, and press his ties against my face, and realize the lawn will remain because I can't put down roots in a place that can never be home.

an experiment

What eats grief?


This is my experiment.


A friend gives me copies of articles about grief, thinking it might help.  A kind act, I know; but I say these tell me nothing new.  Social scientists can explain grief, measure it, predict the outcome, but when it comes to understanding it in the bones, humans have always turned to poets and musicians and strong spirits (liquid and metaphysical).


I read.  Everything, including the social scientists.  Some poets.  Some novelists.  My journals.  Rich's, everything that is not physics.  


I sink into my body, craving the physical.  With walks and hikes, weight machines, massages, long showers.


I eat, when I remember.


I drink, rarely.  There's no reason to buzz, most of the time.


I breath and I say words that I call prayer, and sometimes say nothing and know it is prayer.


I look at my list made in November and realize everything is done.  Successfully, too.  But that was the measurable material.


Is this eating grief?


It is.  Successful, perhaps.  The next list will be harder.


Candace

illuminations

Last night was the annual "Illuminations" evening at Hospicare, the residence where Rich died. Where, almost a year ago, he made his final home.  Where his soul -- I need to believe -- took its leave.


As always, loveliness prevails.  The gardens are in greater green and purple and yellow than ever, the wine selection is local white and red, the setting sun softens the edges of the day.  


Rich's social worker hugs me.  How are you doing, he asks.  Doesn't he know that this is unanswerable?


"As expected," I say.


This says nothing, but usually satisfies the questioner.


I am given a slip. 


"Richard Galik."


I hold this tightly, even though it's just a piece of paper.


This I will affix to a lumineria, my choice of the couple of hundred or so outlining the pond.  For this task, a volunteer accompanies me, electric lighter in hand.


"I was so shocked to hear Rich died," she says, as we pass the koi pond where Rich sat so many hours and the labyrinth garden where he sat so many hours..."he was so young."


I say nothing.


"And you're his wife?" 


I don't know how to answer this, either.  Thirty-one years and six months, yes.  Seven months, no.  Years ago, I was in Norway for two weeks.  This doesn't make me a Norwegian, despite the memories and the photographs and occasional craving for fresh salmon.


Music follows, but I don't.  I stare at his room, his room, his room.


Afterward, Connie and Meghan and Tina come to greet me, they heard I was outside.  I can't go inside, not tonight.  Connie and Meghan are nurses who cared for Rich, and Tina a saint disguised as an aide.


As she hugs me, I cry.  I can't hold it in anymore.


"He will always be in my heart," she says.  "I was so lucky to know him, what a man...you were such a couple...it must be so hard..."


Grief, damn it to hell, is a chronic disease, cycling round and round.


I cancel another hike with a man who is not Rich.


No matter who I'm with, I'm alone.


Candace

just surviving

"Write SS after your name," says the DMV clerk.


"Social Security number?" I ask.


"Just SS."


She isn't one of the friendliest clerks at the local Department of Motor Vehicles.  I have reached the end of my list, made in the early days of November when I was a newly minted widow.  This I have been postponing, not because the task is difficult -- although it did take two trips to the DMV, plus the insurance office, plus several errors on inscrutable forms -- but because this is one more piece of Rich that will vanish.


I wait while she scrutinizes my work, crossing out one line, filling in another.


Today I am both the buyer and seller of the car, moving its registration from Rich to me.


"Sign here," she says, pointing the the buyer's line.


I begin, then start to add "SS," as I did for the line above.


"No," she says.


I get it.  "SS" = Surviving Spouse.  As seller, that is who I was.  As buyer, I am on my own.


Fresh registration in hand, I peel off the old, affix the new.  


No act, I'm learning, comes emotion-free.  Everything costs.   


Candace

new growth

Late afternoon, I found myself in an old growth forest, untouched since Revolutionary War soldiers settled in the area.  Less than two miles from the home Rich and I shared for 23 years, I never knew it existed.


But my new hiking partner knows just about every trail, most of them unmarked, and despite leaving with 13 fresh mosquito bites -- the buzz away spray was left in the car -- I was enchanted.  By the 150-foot trees, rare oak and hemlock and hickory; by the silence, except for a bluejay or two; by a new awareness of previously unknown territory, even though I drove past this patch a thousand times or two.


As we stretch out on blankets pulled from his backpack and look up, he says hey, wouldn't they be fun to climb?


I'm from Brooklyn, I say.  We don't climb trees in Brooklyn.  And I never looked up much because there's not much sky to see.


But, hey, I can still grow.


Candace