spa day

Alone, we discover who we are.  


Last week, a massage -- ah, to be touched, the warmth of the table penetrating into my inner organs and beyond.


You are someone who knows how to receive a massage, the therapist says.  I have some clients, he says, who can never be pleased, they don't know what their bodies want.


Knowing isn't getting.


I thought I would get the massage and go, before returning to the on-going slog of the IRS tax audit and Memorial Sloan Kettering bills (the subject of a future blog).


Instead the therapist brings me a glass of cucumber water and invites me to the stay the day at the spa, lounging in a room overlooking the water.


Why not?  


Five hours later, sated with several naps, lunch ordered from the adjacent cafe, and a mug of honeyed tea, I sink into my body.


For the moment, she had what she wanted.  A purification and a peace not felt since Rich's death, and a long time before that.


I make another appointment, a month away, for my birthday.  Not a celebration, but a restoration of a body in disrepair and a soul lost, getting what she needs, if not what she wants.


Candace

torture

Some of the torture comes from the outside, but I confess: Most is self-inflicted.  


From the outside come acquaintances, three in the past two days, who ask about Rich.  He died, I say; the words come out smoothly, I've said them enough. They hug me, ask how I'm doing, recall what a great guy he was.  I'm getting used to saying "was."


No one, though, is responsible for the daily torture that I can't resist.  Sometimes it is re-reading Rich's e-mails to me, or his chordoma web log, or my "Chordoma Dance" blog. I'm impressed, over and over, by his calm and his courage and by my shutting out his pain and its consequences.  I knew, but couldn't feel, because if I did I would have fallen off the edge.  


Now I'm falling, and watch myself, wondering where I will end up, marking the bruises as I go. I wasn't a fool.  I knew how "Chordoma Dance" would end.


I don't know when I will stop eating grief.  Someday, perhaps, it will taste like poison and I will turn once more to real food.


The pain is in not knowing, and when I cry -- every day, I don't miss one -- it is for Rich, but now more often for me, in free fall as I grasp at the past and cannot find the present.


Candace

maybe

The questions remains:  How to mourn?  This week, I looked at the outside possibilities.

Maybe joining a health club will help.  So I did that, this week.  So far, it's good.  My body likes to move, even if the mind is bewildered by the equipment not seen in over a decade.  Unable to figure out how to adjust the seat of an arm-strengthening machine, much less move anything, I instead happily ride a bike equipped with video screen that takes me up and down hills and race against other faux riders (blow them off the road!) Next week, I will meet with a physical trainer to help me take advantage of other options.

Maybe a massage will help.  So I schedule one for next week, and it will include a day at a spa with a tranquility room where I can lounge for hours in a bathrobe.  When the receptionist asks if I have any particular physical problems, I say that my husband has died and I'm looking for my body, and she says we can help.

Maybe tying up the legal ends will help, too.  So I go to the Health Department for two more copies of the death certificate, and then head to the County Clerk to change the name on our house deed.  The first clerk gives me forms, says it will be $200, let's see the certificate...then another clerk runs off a copy of the deed, says no, you're fine, both of your names are on the deed and that doesn't have to change.

I'm not sure what has to change.  

Maybe putting on my wedding ring, this time on the right hand.  Yes!  This time it's right.  It's Rich with me, but not; it's me married, but not; it's me in love -- this isn't a maybe.  Love still won't be moved.

Candace  

soul gone

If you understand anything, I congratulate you.  It's all darkness before my eyes. -- Anton Chekhov


For years, I wondered what, precisely, the "soul" was.  When I felt Rich exhale for the last time, I knew.  It is the stuff of which love and life are made, and when it interweaves with another it carries away light and hope, even though a breathing body remains.


Inhabiting a body without a soul is another sort of death.  What does a body do without love, without hope, without its partner?  


It pretends, sometimes.  To eat, to sleep, to laugh.  To imagine a future.


Because she cannot look at the past.  Not because of the darkness, but because of the light burning, a light never again to warm or reveal or caress.


Candace