In a previous post I remembered my Dad. Now assembling a proper eulogy was relatively easy for Dad; he was 91, and had been in a full-time care facility for the last 4 years following his second stroke. He'd led a full life, from service in the US infantry in Europe in the winter of 1944-45, to a Fulbright scholarship with Mom in Paris in the early 1950's, to raising a family and eventually becoming a great-grandfather late in life. Arguably we lost him when he had the stroke, even if he was still all there intellectually for those last few years.
Somewhat harder to deal with was the untimely loss of My Dearly Departed Significant Other, somewhat over a year ago now.
We had been together for almost 34 years when she passed away. We were young when we married; we worked odd jobs to put each other through university while raising two great kids and dealing with her various health challenges. We spent the last 21 months of her life working together through her cancer diagnosis. The total time we spent together represents 80% of my adult life at this point, and, to put it mildly, I'm at a bit of a loss.
To hit 60, as I have, suddenly alone after 34 years in a stable partnership, is proving challenging. You get into a groove where you do some things automatically, every day, because they meet your partner's needs or desires. It's all second nature, you've done it for 30 years, it's like brushing your teeth. But she's not here, so I don't need to do these little things anymore, that I do automatically anyway without thinking about it. And if the relationship has lasted all those years, it's because it's mutual. I can remember coming home from business trips: the plane would land and the cabin door would open, and I could almost smell the pasta on the stove from the airport, because she always knew I'd appreciate a home-cooked meal after a week of hotels, taxis, restaurants and airports. Today, coming home from work every day is like checking into a hotel. No matter how nice the hotel room, it's still empty; she's still not there.
Recently I dreamed of her. She was lying on a bed. It was an unfamiliar bed: not our big, messy bed with the red duvet cover, not the hospital-type motorized bed we had in our bedroom for the last year of her life, not the bed in the palliative care unit where she spent the last week of her life. It was a nondescript, flat white bed, with white sheets, in a well-lit, nondescript white room. She was wearing white pyjamas. There might have been a small pillow. The bed was close to a wall, in a corner. I had the impression that it was a big room, big but empty. The light was from behind me, but I didn't look back to see the source. She was lying on her side, facing me. Afterwards, when I woke up, I realized this was unusual because her long-standing back problems meant she hadn't been able to lie on her side for many years; she had slept on her back for most of our time together. Thinking back on it now, a week or two later, it seems to me that she looked younger, too, although this didn't register at the time, either in the dream or immediately on waking from it.
Her eyes were closed and she looked peaceful. Nonetheless I thought she looked cold, with her legs pulled up, her feet bare, and her arms close around her chest. There were no blankets on the bed. She was often cold. She liked a heavy blanket, and usually wore socks to bed. I took a sheet and a blanket from a stack of bedding on a low table that happened to be nearby, and I covered her, carefully tucking her in the way I knew she liked to be tucked in. I sensed her relaxing under the weight of the blanket. I made sure her feet were covered. Then I went to the kitchen, where I noticed that her favourite sweater, a blue quilted one with a zippered front that she wore whenever she was cold and that our daughter has now, was hanging over the back of her chair.
So the kids and I dropped by to visit her at the mausoleum on the anniversary of her passing, where the poem we left with her urn provided some small level of comfort, as it has so far:
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
Mary Elizabeth Frye (American poet, 1905-2004)
As expected, she still wasn't there. All she needed was a blanket; she didn't need the sweater, so she left it behind. I hope to meet her again, some day, in a dream somewhere. In the meantime, I hope she is keeping warm.
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