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