I hate endings. The end of a weekend, the end of a good class, movie, book, or holiday. Today was the ending of another holiday weekend, but this was different. I got to see my sister and her two children, my nephews, neice and uncle. The family gathers, as all familes do on such holidays, to eat and say thanks for the lovely life we have made here in this time. It is another holiday without Billy, but each one gets better. I spent time with my sister, something I have not done in over a year and we made plans for another visit; however, the weekend is over and I have to come to terms with endings again. Each ending of some time, or activity, brings with it a certain sadness that means "we are finished with this time now, and we hope another will come soon."
This weekend, I was absentiminded, or maybe I'm getting better, but I forgot about Billy for a day or so. I went to Atlantic City with my sister and ate really great food, gambled and laughed out loud, exuberantly. I did not come home to realize I was alone until Sunday evening when the entire family left to move on with their lives for the week.
Every ending is a new beginning. Yes, I've heard this one before; it's like a bad joke that you hear comics speak. But this ending was healing for me. I saw my family and it made me feel...better. For once in long while, it was nice to just feel better.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
Today
Because words escape me on days like today, I will let the nobel prize winners do the talking for me:
"Consider love in its perfect form, in its unconditional sacrifice, its affinity with all that is loftiest and magnanimous in the soul of man. Consider the force it opposes to everything evil and impure. Consider the power of love, how the hovel is transformed into a palace, how chill winter becomes radiant summer, how poverty itself becomes a very bed of roses."
From Independent People by Halldor Laxness, Nobel Prize winning author, 1955
"Consider love in its perfect form, in its unconditional sacrifice, its affinity with all that is loftiest and magnanimous in the soul of man. Consider the force it opposes to everything evil and impure. Consider the power of love, how the hovel is transformed into a palace, how chill winter becomes radiant summer, how poverty itself becomes a very bed of roses."
From Independent People by Halldor Laxness, Nobel Prize winning author, 1955
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Eulogy
Billy worried about me driving to school in the rain even though I had to go 5 minutes and he had to drive 50 minutes. Then, he would call me on his way home from work just to tell me he was thinking about me as he was welding that day
When it snowed, and I forgot to put my car in the garage he dug me out in the morning even though I had a delayed opening and he had to be at work on time.
He sent me flowers or did some other special thing for me on the first day of school every September for ten years. And every September, when I worried about meeting new kids, he said, “They will love you, they always love you and you’re too lovable for them not to love you.” For ten years, he drove me to every back to school night because he didn’t want me to have to try to park, or deal with the traffic.
When he got sick and had to stay home, every morning before work he told me I was the most beautiful woman in the world, so I got to go to school every day feeling wonderful even though I was worried to death about him. And while my students discussed Nabakov, all I could think about was whether or not Billy was comfortable and not in pain. He told the oncology nurses at the cancer center that I was the best teacher at the school even though he never saw me teach. He taught me that because I give my life to others through teaching that I am doing a noble and honorable thing and for that I should be proud.
He cared about and loved my parents as if they were his own and happily did everything they asked him to do from helping to fix cars to windows and doors, to understanding how to use the new TV. He had more patience with them than I did. When he could still eat and his appetite was still okay, my mom made him his favorite chicken dish; he said she was keeping him alive on the Costco chicken diet. And when solid food did not appeal to him, it was mom’s famous Jewish chicken soup that prevailed.
When my dad had a heart attack he came immediately to dad’s bedside to tell him he loved him. He was sniffling and upset when I told him Dad was sick. Billy rarely cried, but when he did it was utterly heartbreaking and seeing him cry was far worse than seeing what cancer was doing to his body.
Dad and Billy both got sick around the same time, but Billy was more worried about my dad than himself. Even when he first started getting chemotherapy and my father was in rehab, he always asked how my mom and dad were doing. And of course how Maggie the dog was.
He loved Maggie and she looks and smells for him still. Billy and Maggie had their differences but they bonded over cookies and socks and he could always expect to see at least one sock, and possibly a shoe, on the bed after watching her for the night. He called her EV—Evil Vizsla. But, he loved her and she curled up by his legs and made him feel better when he was really sick.
My mother always teased him gently about lots of different things like religion and my vegetarianism, and he would laugh about it. He always thought she was hilarious, she made him feel good, like he was their son. When he first met them he worried that they wouldn’t like him because he was not Jewish and was not formally educated. But, they fell in love with him immediately, as I did. We had Chinese food every Sunday for years, this is the Jewish Sunday feast, and he was always thankful that he got to spend that time with my wonderful, generous and supportive parents. He never took one dinner for granted, he appreciated every egg roll. And always, always said Thanks for dinner.
I loved when Billy and dad would have Jack Daniels and watch football on Sunday nights. He was quiet and ALWAYS listening. Their bonding was sweet and made Billy feel like he had a father in my own dad. People think Billy didn’t talk, but I lived with him and honestly he was a chatterbox from the moment he walked in the door from work and told me funny stories about work, or about customers at his job. He was very funny and had me laughing constantly.
When I was suffering really badly from severe panic attacks in my early 20s, just when I first started teaching, he didn’t mind if I woke him up in the middle of the night just to hug me and kiss me. And for the whole ten years that we lived together, we fell asleep holding hands. He gave the BEST hugs and kisses—they were hugs and kisses from the soul. Not some selfish, oh I have to do this to make her happy hug, those were hugs and kisses from the heart every time. He never, ever left for work in the morning without giving me his special Billy hug and kiss.
He read Dostievsky and Kakfa, Nordic sagas, John Cheever stories, JD Salinger and Tolkein, and anything else I would give him that I thought he would like and then we would talk about it all and he was always so insightful and it deepened our relationship. He said he wanted to read to keep up with me. And then I introduced him to art, my greatest passion next to reading, and he really lit up. He LOVED Van Gogh, the Icelandic artist Kjarval, Rembrandt, VanSteen, Munch and others.
Everywhere we traveled, Amsterdam, Norway, Sweden, Iceland four times, and Washington DC five times, he always wanted to go to the museums. He loved art.
In Amsterdam, he was mesmerized by Rembrant’s Night Watch and kept asking me “How did he do that! That’s amazing” He walked back and forth and back and forth and kept looking at it wondering how it could have been painted because it is this enormous painting and he just couldn’t fathom how the perspective, and line was so perfect.
Last summer, one good day when he was feeling well, we went to the Cloisters, a monastery/art museum in New York City and he was mesmerized by the architecture, the tryptics and madonnas and again I had more fun watching him study the art than looking at the art myself.
When he read A Tale Of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, he loved it so much we rented the movie after that and he identified with the hero Carton who gave his life for others during the French Revolution. He was an intellectual without formal University training, curious and interested in everything.
The first day we flew into Oslo, Norway, Munch’s Scream had been stolen by some crazy bandits in a van. We laughed about it like Oh, that’s our luck, that’s the exact painting we came to see. I loved the way he looked at paintings in a museum. It was more fun watching him study the paintings than looking at the paintings themselves. Some light was going off in his head and he started to see what I told him about all those years I studied at NYU. We used New York City as a playground. We went to every museum, walked in all the parks, went to a few clubs and we always went to dinner at this friendly and fun Irish restaurant called Limericks, where we had our first date, that became our special place. And the piano guy, Jimmie George who used to play with The Supremes played songs for us while we sat at the bar and waited for our table.
I took an Irish Literature class at NYU and he loved to hear me talk about Irish mythology. He identified with the brave hero, Cuculain. He always said I was lucky to have such wonderful parents who gave me that amazing opportunity of NYU. And now, I think it was really my parents who brought us together. Had I not gone to NYU, I never would have met Billy. I remember meeting him that first day at NYU in my friend’s dorm room and he was SO very shy. But all I did was smile at him, and we were together from then on.
He loved History channel and The Learning Channel and when he became homebound, he would always tell me what he watched and learned that day after I came home from school. .
He was a human being, a humanitarian that understood the suffering of others and internalized it the way I do.
Even when I was being difficult and angry and nasty, he would always forgive me because he knew I was just mad at whatever I was snappy about. And then, when I apologized for snapping at him, he always said, I could never be mad at you, you’re too cute. All of my flaws he chocked up to being “part of my charm”. That was his quote: I couldn’t do dishes well, and my housework is terrible, I forced dishes into the dishwasher and after the third broken dish he said, you are not allowed near the dishwasher anymore. When I told him I was sorry, I couldn’t figure out how they fit, he said, “Don’t worry about it, it’s part of your charm.” He also said that, because my job was more homework than his, that the housework was his responsibility and that if I had any free time on the weekends, I shouldn’t be spending it cleaning, but relaxing instead.
When he moved in with me 10 years ago, it was so easy. We didn’t have to adjust to anything, it was as if we had always lived together. My nephew Michael asked us over and over again when we would get married. I always say and think still, I married Billy the day I met him because I just knew he was the one. B’shert is the Jewish word for the intended one, that everyone has an intended one for them. Billy is my b’shert.
He would do anything for his own family. Whenever his father needed him for something, he would just drive the 1 and ½ hours to West Milford and do whatever his father asked. One day last Spring, he was feeling okay and we rowed out onto the lake in front of his father’s house and we sat in the boat and just listened to the water. It was a good day. Billy and I met around the time his nephew Jason was first born and he was so proud of every milestone, when he talked and walked and started school. He told me about Jason’s sports, his basketball and football. He loved his sister Jill’s generosity and caring for her family as well as his mother when she got sick. He had so much respect for his own parents and family, he cherished them. He loved his sister, Jill and her husband Jason’s humor about Kentucky. We spent every Christmas with them and were generously welcomed into their family. I felt lucky, as a Jewish person to get to celebrate Christmas with him and his wonderful sister, father, brother-in-law and kids. And, when his niece Jacquleine was born he thought she was the most beautiful little girl in the world. I loved watching them play together when she was really little. It made me think of how warm and loving a father he would be and I’m sorry that he never got the opportunity to have his own children.
Billy was also lucky to have excellent friends in his life. Chris Ruggere and Karen Batista were our best man and maid of honor at our very quiet, private and humble wedding. He loved when I threw the bouquet and almost hit Karen in the head. He laughed as if that was just typical me, I don’t always think and can be so impetuous. He and Chris shared the same taste in movies. I don’t like horror movies, but when Chris came over, they could watch bloody, gory movies together without me. He thought Chris was hilarious and he knew when he was gone that I would have such good friends to take care of me. He also said Chris had an amazing singing voice and when he came with me to Hunterdon Central’s 50th Anniversary and saw Chris sing, he said Chris was so talented and that he should have gone on American Idol. He knew Karen had the biggest heart and it was a comfort to him to know that these people would be with me always and that they were helping me through our difficult situation. Chris, Karen and Bill were the last people from Hunterdon Central to see Billy alive. Somehow, I believe he held on until he got to see all the people that he and I both care so much about.
He was so very funny. When he was first diagnosed we thought he had kidney cancer and that he would have to have his kidney removed, he said, “Damn, Lori, I needed that kidney, I was going to sell it on E-bay for my retirement!”
He taught me patience, understanding and generosity. He taught me to slow down and be a little more mellow about life. He told me that my friend and colleague Bill Fernekes was a good person, he could tell that from the first time he met him and from other things that I had told him.
When He was really sick, he said “Listen to Bill, let him help you, he’s a good person who cares about you and he’ll help you with all of this.” Of course, he was right. He and Bill share similar qualities: intelligence, patience and deep, deep compassion for human beings, and Billy could see that about Bill. In his illness, his biggest concern was not upsetting anyone, but the one thing he did not have to worry about was how I was being taken care of by my parents, friends and employers. He taught me what selfless, generous love looks and feels like. And when he started to get sick he was more worried about being a burden, and upsetting me than being sick. He told his sister and his oncologist as much.
Billy knew that I look for what is to be learned from every situation and I asked him what he thought we were supposed to learn from our situation, and he said he thought we were to learn how strong one needs to be in difficult times, that we were to learn that love is so enduring, and that I am stronger than I think. He knew how much I struggled with anxiety and that I could overcome it, even in this, the greatest test I’ve ever been given.
He taught me not to hold grudges, because he never, ever held a grudge because he said life was too short to hold grudges and that I can’t take life so seriously. When we were going to doctors appointments and I kept getting so anxious and nervous over everything the doctors might tell us, he just laughed at me and said “Don’t take it so seriously.” When my sister and I weren’t talking for awhile he said, “What are you doing? She loves you as much as I do, stop being so stubborn.”
In 16 years together there are so many memories and it’s never easy to understand why people die young, or why couples who were meant to be together for a life time are suddenly torn a part, but I know Billy better than anyone here and he would be more worried about you and your grief than about his own pain in his illness. And I tried very hard not to be sad in front of him because I wanted his last days to be happy and for him to know that I, his family and friends were all okay, but I don’t know if we’ll ever really all be okay again. We’ll all just be different.
I’m lucky that I had these 16 years with him. I’m lucky that I got to know this amazing person and that I have these wonderful memories and that I was treated like gold by someone who loved me more than life itself, which he told me often. He taught me how to be kind, and polite and patient with others and he taught me that love is giving the most of yourself, selflessly to others when you don’t think you can, even when you’re at the end of your rope. And I know that he wanted my parents, his friends and his family to know how much he loved and cherished them. And that, more than anything, he would not want any of us to be sad. He would like everyone to know that although he was shy and could not always express how he felt, but that he loved all of you immensely and to keep that love with you forever. I think a lot of times he couldn’t express himself verbally because he felt things very, very strongly and deeply, so that words could not always express what he felt.
He was my very best friend, the love of my life and the man I waited for, but I know that if he is seeing us all now, which I really believe he is, he would not want us to be burdened with painful grief. He would want us to move on and just remember him for the wonderful person that he was. He would want us to listen to the Beatles, have a Heineken, and talk openly to each other. So I think we should not be sad, but celebrate the fact that we got some time with this incredible human being, however short the time was.
And lastly, and I hope this doesn’t sound like an infomercial, but it is really important to me: don’t ask me what I need from you to help me feel better, because I’m going to tell you right now what that is: this whole difficult, tragic experience was made enormously better by the compassionate, caring, and loving people of Hunterdon Medical Center and The Hunterdon Cancer Center. So, the one thing you can do for Billy and for me is to donate money in Billy’s name to either the nurses and doctors at Hunterdon Medical Center or to the Cancer Center. Make sure you mention his name, though because I want them to know that it was their direct compassion and care for him that helped us through this time. Over this last year, the nurses and doctors at Hunterdon Medical Center came to love Billy and I know that they went absolutely above and beyond for us. And I know his brilliant oncologist, Dr. Myron Bednar, helped us get a little more time together. And for that, I will forever be grateful, so please let them know that you appreciate them as much as Billy and I do and give whatever you can in his name and memory.
When it snowed, and I forgot to put my car in the garage he dug me out in the morning even though I had a delayed opening and he had to be at work on time.
He sent me flowers or did some other special thing for me on the first day of school every September for ten years. And every September, when I worried about meeting new kids, he said, “They will love you, they always love you and you’re too lovable for them not to love you.” For ten years, he drove me to every back to school night because he didn’t want me to have to try to park, or deal with the traffic.
When he got sick and had to stay home, every morning before work he told me I was the most beautiful woman in the world, so I got to go to school every day feeling wonderful even though I was worried to death about him. And while my students discussed Nabakov, all I could think about was whether or not Billy was comfortable and not in pain. He told the oncology nurses at the cancer center that I was the best teacher at the school even though he never saw me teach. He taught me that because I give my life to others through teaching that I am doing a noble and honorable thing and for that I should be proud.
He cared about and loved my parents as if they were his own and happily did everything they asked him to do from helping to fix cars to windows and doors, to understanding how to use the new TV. He had more patience with them than I did. When he could still eat and his appetite was still okay, my mom made him his favorite chicken dish; he said she was keeping him alive on the Costco chicken diet. And when solid food did not appeal to him, it was mom’s famous Jewish chicken soup that prevailed.
When my dad had a heart attack he came immediately to dad’s bedside to tell him he loved him. He was sniffling and upset when I told him Dad was sick. Billy rarely cried, but when he did it was utterly heartbreaking and seeing him cry was far worse than seeing what cancer was doing to his body.
Dad and Billy both got sick around the same time, but Billy was more worried about my dad than himself. Even when he first started getting chemotherapy and my father was in rehab, he always asked how my mom and dad were doing. And of course how Maggie the dog was.
He loved Maggie and she looks and smells for him still. Billy and Maggie had their differences but they bonded over cookies and socks and he could always expect to see at least one sock, and possibly a shoe, on the bed after watching her for the night. He called her EV—Evil Vizsla. But, he loved her and she curled up by his legs and made him feel better when he was really sick.
My mother always teased him gently about lots of different things like religion and my vegetarianism, and he would laugh about it. He always thought she was hilarious, she made him feel good, like he was their son. When he first met them he worried that they wouldn’t like him because he was not Jewish and was not formally educated. But, they fell in love with him immediately, as I did. We had Chinese food every Sunday for years, this is the Jewish Sunday feast, and he was always thankful that he got to spend that time with my wonderful, generous and supportive parents. He never took one dinner for granted, he appreciated every egg roll. And always, always said Thanks for dinner.
I loved when Billy and dad would have Jack Daniels and watch football on Sunday nights. He was quiet and ALWAYS listening. Their bonding was sweet and made Billy feel like he had a father in my own dad. People think Billy didn’t talk, but I lived with him and honestly he was a chatterbox from the moment he walked in the door from work and told me funny stories about work, or about customers at his job. He was very funny and had me laughing constantly.
When I was suffering really badly from severe panic attacks in my early 20s, just when I first started teaching, he didn’t mind if I woke him up in the middle of the night just to hug me and kiss me. And for the whole ten years that we lived together, we fell asleep holding hands. He gave the BEST hugs and kisses—they were hugs and kisses from the soul. Not some selfish, oh I have to do this to make her happy hug, those were hugs and kisses from the heart every time. He never, ever left for work in the morning without giving me his special Billy hug and kiss.
He read Dostievsky and Kakfa, Nordic sagas, John Cheever stories, JD Salinger and Tolkein, and anything else I would give him that I thought he would like and then we would talk about it all and he was always so insightful and it deepened our relationship. He said he wanted to read to keep up with me. And then I introduced him to art, my greatest passion next to reading, and he really lit up. He LOVED Van Gogh, the Icelandic artist Kjarval, Rembrandt, VanSteen, Munch and others.
Everywhere we traveled, Amsterdam, Norway, Sweden, Iceland four times, and Washington DC five times, he always wanted to go to the museums. He loved art.
In Amsterdam, he was mesmerized by Rembrant’s Night Watch and kept asking me “How did he do that! That’s amazing” He walked back and forth and back and forth and kept looking at it wondering how it could have been painted because it is this enormous painting and he just couldn’t fathom how the perspective, and line was so perfect.
Last summer, one good day when he was feeling well, we went to the Cloisters, a monastery/art museum in New York City and he was mesmerized by the architecture, the tryptics and madonnas and again I had more fun watching him study the art than looking at the art myself.
When he read A Tale Of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, he loved it so much we rented the movie after that and he identified with the hero Carton who gave his life for others during the French Revolution. He was an intellectual without formal University training, curious and interested in everything.
The first day we flew into Oslo, Norway, Munch’s Scream had been stolen by some crazy bandits in a van. We laughed about it like Oh, that’s our luck, that’s the exact painting we came to see. I loved the way he looked at paintings in a museum. It was more fun watching him study the paintings than looking at the paintings themselves. Some light was going off in his head and he started to see what I told him about all those years I studied at NYU. We used New York City as a playground. We went to every museum, walked in all the parks, went to a few clubs and we always went to dinner at this friendly and fun Irish restaurant called Limericks, where we had our first date, that became our special place. And the piano guy, Jimmie George who used to play with The Supremes played songs for us while we sat at the bar and waited for our table.
I took an Irish Literature class at NYU and he loved to hear me talk about Irish mythology. He identified with the brave hero, Cuculain. He always said I was lucky to have such wonderful parents who gave me that amazing opportunity of NYU. And now, I think it was really my parents who brought us together. Had I not gone to NYU, I never would have met Billy. I remember meeting him that first day at NYU in my friend’s dorm room and he was SO very shy. But all I did was smile at him, and we were together from then on.
He loved History channel and The Learning Channel and when he became homebound, he would always tell me what he watched and learned that day after I came home from school. .
He was a human being, a humanitarian that understood the suffering of others and internalized it the way I do.
Even when I was being difficult and angry and nasty, he would always forgive me because he knew I was just mad at whatever I was snappy about. And then, when I apologized for snapping at him, he always said, I could never be mad at you, you’re too cute. All of my flaws he chocked up to being “part of my charm”. That was his quote: I couldn’t do dishes well, and my housework is terrible, I forced dishes into the dishwasher and after the third broken dish he said, you are not allowed near the dishwasher anymore. When I told him I was sorry, I couldn’t figure out how they fit, he said, “Don’t worry about it, it’s part of your charm.” He also said that, because my job was more homework than his, that the housework was his responsibility and that if I had any free time on the weekends, I shouldn’t be spending it cleaning, but relaxing instead.
When he moved in with me 10 years ago, it was so easy. We didn’t have to adjust to anything, it was as if we had always lived together. My nephew Michael asked us over and over again when we would get married. I always say and think still, I married Billy the day I met him because I just knew he was the one. B’shert is the Jewish word for the intended one, that everyone has an intended one for them. Billy is my b’shert.
He would do anything for his own family. Whenever his father needed him for something, he would just drive the 1 and ½ hours to West Milford and do whatever his father asked. One day last Spring, he was feeling okay and we rowed out onto the lake in front of his father’s house and we sat in the boat and just listened to the water. It was a good day. Billy and I met around the time his nephew Jason was first born and he was so proud of every milestone, when he talked and walked and started school. He told me about Jason’s sports, his basketball and football. He loved his sister Jill’s generosity and caring for her family as well as his mother when she got sick. He had so much respect for his own parents and family, he cherished them. He loved his sister, Jill and her husband Jason’s humor about Kentucky. We spent every Christmas with them and were generously welcomed into their family. I felt lucky, as a Jewish person to get to celebrate Christmas with him and his wonderful sister, father, brother-in-law and kids. And, when his niece Jacquleine was born he thought she was the most beautiful little girl in the world. I loved watching them play together when she was really little. It made me think of how warm and loving a father he would be and I’m sorry that he never got the opportunity to have his own children.
Billy was also lucky to have excellent friends in his life. Chris Ruggere and Karen Batista were our best man and maid of honor at our very quiet, private and humble wedding. He loved when I threw the bouquet and almost hit Karen in the head. He laughed as if that was just typical me, I don’t always think and can be so impetuous. He and Chris shared the same taste in movies. I don’t like horror movies, but when Chris came over, they could watch bloody, gory movies together without me. He thought Chris was hilarious and he knew when he was gone that I would have such good friends to take care of me. He also said Chris had an amazing singing voice and when he came with me to Hunterdon Central’s 50th Anniversary and saw Chris sing, he said Chris was so talented and that he should have gone on American Idol. He knew Karen had the biggest heart and it was a comfort to him to know that these people would be with me always and that they were helping me through our difficult situation. Chris, Karen and Bill were the last people from Hunterdon Central to see Billy alive. Somehow, I believe he held on until he got to see all the people that he and I both care so much about.
He was so very funny. When he was first diagnosed we thought he had kidney cancer and that he would have to have his kidney removed, he said, “Damn, Lori, I needed that kidney, I was going to sell it on E-bay for my retirement!”
He taught me patience, understanding and generosity. He taught me to slow down and be a little more mellow about life. He told me that my friend and colleague Bill Fernekes was a good person, he could tell that from the first time he met him and from other things that I had told him.
When He was really sick, he said “Listen to Bill, let him help you, he’s a good person who cares about you and he’ll help you with all of this.” Of course, he was right. He and Bill share similar qualities: intelligence, patience and deep, deep compassion for human beings, and Billy could see that about Bill. In his illness, his biggest concern was not upsetting anyone, but the one thing he did not have to worry about was how I was being taken care of by my parents, friends and employers. He taught me what selfless, generous love looks and feels like. And when he started to get sick he was more worried about being a burden, and upsetting me than being sick. He told his sister and his oncologist as much.
Billy knew that I look for what is to be learned from every situation and I asked him what he thought we were supposed to learn from our situation, and he said he thought we were to learn how strong one needs to be in difficult times, that we were to learn that love is so enduring, and that I am stronger than I think. He knew how much I struggled with anxiety and that I could overcome it, even in this, the greatest test I’ve ever been given.
He taught me not to hold grudges, because he never, ever held a grudge because he said life was too short to hold grudges and that I can’t take life so seriously. When we were going to doctors appointments and I kept getting so anxious and nervous over everything the doctors might tell us, he just laughed at me and said “Don’t take it so seriously.” When my sister and I weren’t talking for awhile he said, “What are you doing? She loves you as much as I do, stop being so stubborn.”
In 16 years together there are so many memories and it’s never easy to understand why people die young, or why couples who were meant to be together for a life time are suddenly torn a part, but I know Billy better than anyone here and he would be more worried about you and your grief than about his own pain in his illness. And I tried very hard not to be sad in front of him because I wanted his last days to be happy and for him to know that I, his family and friends were all okay, but I don’t know if we’ll ever really all be okay again. We’ll all just be different.
I’m lucky that I had these 16 years with him. I’m lucky that I got to know this amazing person and that I have these wonderful memories and that I was treated like gold by someone who loved me more than life itself, which he told me often. He taught me how to be kind, and polite and patient with others and he taught me that love is giving the most of yourself, selflessly to others when you don’t think you can, even when you’re at the end of your rope. And I know that he wanted my parents, his friends and his family to know how much he loved and cherished them. And that, more than anything, he would not want any of us to be sad. He would like everyone to know that although he was shy and could not always express how he felt, but that he loved all of you immensely and to keep that love with you forever. I think a lot of times he couldn’t express himself verbally because he felt things very, very strongly and deeply, so that words could not always express what he felt.
He was my very best friend, the love of my life and the man I waited for, but I know that if he is seeing us all now, which I really believe he is, he would not want us to be burdened with painful grief. He would want us to move on and just remember him for the wonderful person that he was. He would want us to listen to the Beatles, have a Heineken, and talk openly to each other. So I think we should not be sad, but celebrate the fact that we got some time with this incredible human being, however short the time was.
And lastly, and I hope this doesn’t sound like an infomercial, but it is really important to me: don’t ask me what I need from you to help me feel better, because I’m going to tell you right now what that is: this whole difficult, tragic experience was made enormously better by the compassionate, caring, and loving people of Hunterdon Medical Center and The Hunterdon Cancer Center. So, the one thing you can do for Billy and for me is to donate money in Billy’s name to either the nurses and doctors at Hunterdon Medical Center or to the Cancer Center. Make sure you mention his name, though because I want them to know that it was their direct compassion and care for him that helped us through this time. Over this last year, the nurses and doctors at Hunterdon Medical Center came to love Billy and I know that they went absolutely above and beyond for us. And I know his brilliant oncologist, Dr. Myron Bednar, helped us get a little more time together. And for that, I will forever be grateful, so please let them know that you appreciate them as much as Billy and I do and give whatever you can in his name and memory.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
The Night Watch in Amsterdam
One day, Billy and I decided to fly to Amsterdam. I had been a teacher for six years and the summer allowed us to travel because he always took his vacation when I had mine. As an Art History minor, I spent many days in museums in New York City and Philladelphia writing about the Humanities, but I never took anyone I loved with me. It was beautiful, yet academic, at the time. What I did not realize was that the most novice appreciation of art is really the most honest and beautiful.
Two steel-toed workboots clapped loudly on the floor of the Rijksmuseum on Museumplein in the most touristy district in Amsterdam. Billy had finally met Rembrandt. He stood in front of this painting for more than ten minutes just staring and wondering-- mesmerized by Rembrant’s Night Watch
“How did he do that! That’s amazing” He said.
He walked back and forth, and back and forth, and kept looking at it wondering how it could have been painted because it is almost the size of one wall in our apartment. In my memory, it is the size of the side of a building. He just couldn’t fathom how the perspective and line were so perfect. As a welder, Billy always considered the size and shape of the canvas. His attention to deatail is alive and well in my apartment with my "hand made" steel DVD holder and bookshelf that he created on his lunch hour at work. His observance of this painting was scientific: HOW did Rembrandt complete this masterpiece? I told him that pulleys and lines and ladders were all used, but the look in his eyes was more important to me than the "academic ways" that painters in the Flemish school worked. I think we fall in love with our partners a little more each time we learn something new and this was that moment for me. That curious little cinch of his mouth,furrowed brow, and steely eyes on a painting that I had studied years ago in college was the moment I fell in love again.
Friday, October 15, 2010
This Time of Year
Three years ago today I was watching my best friend slowely waste away in what is called in cancer terms "wasting syndrome." The body begins to essentially disintegrate. While this time of year is always difficult for various reasons, I have come to a new understanding of how to deal this time of every year that will follow me for the rest of my life.
Three years ago today I was on "family leave." During this time, Billy and I watched movies, talked, rested, and just lived our lives in ways that only those without jobs are able to do. We were both homebound, alone in our own worlds with nothing to interrupt the love we had for eachother, the friendship that existed, or the knowledge that this would be the last few weeks we would have as a partnership. I recognize that I had a great life with this man who made my life so wonderful in many ways that I can recount in several posts down the road, but today I am tearful and sorry that I am unable to spread his ashes. I can't part with that black box of his body locked up in ashes that I got from the funeral home. It's wierd, yet comforting, knowing that he is stil there on a shelf. Clearly, he can't talk to me, but he's stil there. If I spread those ashes, he's then gone from my life in some strange manner that I can't seem to put my finger on.
I still have not thrown out certain clothing. There is the dark blue sweatshirt that he wore on cold days, the flannel shirts he wore to work and yet another pair of workboots--of which he had many! That all still remains alive in my closet, but of course, dead in the sense of the word. Those items do not belong to me, they belong to another living organism, one that knew me once, knew my laugh, my smile, my hugs and kisses. He is alive in some senses, but October always brings back family leave to me. It was the longest time I went without a job since I was 14 years old and I was thankful that I got that time to spend with him, but it's cold comfort. I know I missed some things. I missed saying more than I could at the time because we pretended he would not die.
During our time together we never talked about death. He simply refuses to acknowledge that I took time off from school to be with him in his last days. It was an unusual situation for a 35 year old person, who was essentially in the middle of a good life with a partner, to be losing the best part of that expectedly long life, but there we sat: on the couch, alone in our misery and non-observance of death pending.
Now, I see this time of year as so beautiful in its weather, but so sad in in the past memories of a beautiful life so full of hope and promise. It's gone now, never to be seen or heard from again. That life once known by many is a memory, but I can recall it with something bittersweet in the best sense of the word.
Three years ago today I was on "family leave." During this time, Billy and I watched movies, talked, rested, and just lived our lives in ways that only those without jobs are able to do. We were both homebound, alone in our own worlds with nothing to interrupt the love we had for eachother, the friendship that existed, or the knowledge that this would be the last few weeks we would have as a partnership. I recognize that I had a great life with this man who made my life so wonderful in many ways that I can recount in several posts down the road, but today I am tearful and sorry that I am unable to spread his ashes. I can't part with that black box of his body locked up in ashes that I got from the funeral home. It's wierd, yet comforting, knowing that he is stil there on a shelf. Clearly, he can't talk to me, but he's stil there. If I spread those ashes, he's then gone from my life in some strange manner that I can't seem to put my finger on.
I still have not thrown out certain clothing. There is the dark blue sweatshirt that he wore on cold days, the flannel shirts he wore to work and yet another pair of workboots--of which he had many! That all still remains alive in my closet, but of course, dead in the sense of the word. Those items do not belong to me, they belong to another living organism, one that knew me once, knew my laugh, my smile, my hugs and kisses. He is alive in some senses, but October always brings back family leave to me. It was the longest time I went without a job since I was 14 years old and I was thankful that I got that time to spend with him, but it's cold comfort. I know I missed some things. I missed saying more than I could at the time because we pretended he would not die.
During our time together we never talked about death. He simply refuses to acknowledge that I took time off from school to be with him in his last days. It was an unusual situation for a 35 year old person, who was essentially in the middle of a good life with a partner, to be losing the best part of that expectedly long life, but there we sat: on the couch, alone in our misery and non-observance of death pending.
Now, I see this time of year as so beautiful in its weather, but so sad in in the past memories of a beautiful life so full of hope and promise. It's gone now, never to be seen or heard from again. That life once known by many is a memory, but I can recall it with something bittersweet in the best sense of the word.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Iceland
Traveling along at 60 KM an hour on the Round Road of Iceland among the cracks, crevices and ditches that volcanos make on an island, we rounded the top of the bend and saw it. It was a dead volcano. Alone among the masses of glaciers, hot springs, fields, valleys, grasslands and tundra that make up the country that's called an ice wasteland by most. Only the interior can not be traversed. It's really the most beautiful island, more interesting than than the Bahamas, more colorful than Aruba, or any South American continent, Iceland is home to some of the most gorgeous landscapes that such artists as Kjarval (the country's famed painter) can produce. It's a painting of colors: black volcanic ash, green moss on the rocks and a rosy horizon among the glaciers represents the scenery that most people assume is just a block of ice.
We climbed to the top of the inactive volcano that once erupted and created the setting. Looking down at the empty hole, we said "This is where it was. A lasting footprint of a shaky, ferocious world."
And, after the hike up the volcano and back down again, I motioned to Billy to come look at moss on a rock. This hole doesn't exist in America. This particular land has not been touched by commerce, it leaks history. We imagined Erik The Red, a viking, had landed here and created a grass thatched roof to dwell in when he wasn't plundering other lands. We imagined a beach at Vik full of Icelandic ponies carrying wooden cooking tools and weapons to settle the area.
Down the volcano we crawled at a frog's pace, leaping across rocks and jumping through the dirt as if we were on a hunt, a mission to find the end of the foot path that led us up to the great hole. It was a lesson in patience as we traversed the rocky pathways that led to the opening of the hole. At the end we saw what had been the bubbling of an inferno, a fiery ruptering of molten gasses and lava. We could almost feel the heat that once existed at this grand place, a new and obscure event had made even the most weary travelers marvel at such a feat that the earth could create in this once flat area a hole so large, a mouth so agape that a city or town could fill it.
And that is my last memory of us in Iceland.
We climbed to the top of the inactive volcano that once erupted and created the setting. Looking down at the empty hole, we said "This is where it was. A lasting footprint of a shaky, ferocious world."
And, after the hike up the volcano and back down again, I motioned to Billy to come look at moss on a rock. This hole doesn't exist in America. This particular land has not been touched by commerce, it leaks history. We imagined Erik The Red, a viking, had landed here and created a grass thatched roof to dwell in when he wasn't plundering other lands. We imagined a beach at Vik full of Icelandic ponies carrying wooden cooking tools and weapons to settle the area.
Down the volcano we crawled at a frog's pace, leaping across rocks and jumping through the dirt as if we were on a hunt, a mission to find the end of the foot path that led us up to the great hole. It was a lesson in patience as we traversed the rocky pathways that led to the opening of the hole. At the end we saw what had been the bubbling of an inferno, a fiery ruptering of molten gasses and lava. We could almost feel the heat that once existed at this grand place, a new and obscure event had made even the most weary travelers marvel at such a feat that the earth could create in this once flat area a hole so large, a mouth so agape that a city or town could fill it.
And that is my last memory of us in Iceland.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
One Day
There are four key facts about grief:
The way out of grief is through it.
The very worst kind of grief is your grief.
Grief is hard work.
Effective grief work is not done alone.
From I’m Grieving As Fast as I Can by Linda Feinberg
Billy is dying. Today, November 7th, 2007, Dr. Bednar came in to our hospital room to see machines, wires, tubes, Billy’s exposed collar and chest bones, the morphine drip machine and the plastic pink puke bucket at the foot of his bed. The doctor is here to tell us to be “comfortable.” Billy will die today. I know this because it is the year-mark of his terminal, stage IV “you have one year to live” cancer.
I see a fly rummaging in the curtains of our private room with the lovely view of the hospital lawn, stone courtyard for other helpless visitors, and what look like weeds that masquerade as pretty yellow flowers along the window pane outside. I hope the fly does not shit on his frail immune system. So what do I do, at 35 years old, knowing that my husband will be dead in hours, maybe even minutes? Occasionally, I worry about the banality of insects flying around hospital rooms.
Here is what happens: The night the fly irritates me and visits your blood deprived graying skin, your nose, your pink bed sores, your ankles and the sweep of my hand over your chest, you are vomiting so much that you finally just look at me and say, “I just don’t know what to do?” At that point you are deciding that it is time to go. Your fever is 103.5. The nurse gives you oxygen. Your heart rate is 145; that’s as fast as mine gets when I run on a treadmill, but you are lying still in bed. It is 4am, long after Dr. Bednar has left us this time, and you keep looking over at me to make sure my face is on the pillow next to you, but where would I possibly go? I am lying right next to you wearing the sweater you got me the first time we went to Iceland 10 years ago.
The fingers of our left hands are intertwined so five fingers turn to ten, two hands into one. When the nurse comes to check on you she puts the oxygen clamp on my finger by mistake. Your gray sweatiness is rubbing off on my hair as I stare into your tired eyes. You keep looking both at me and over my head out the window when the sun stings through the bed sheets and up to our chins and cheeks. We laugh a little at the size of our private hospital room.
“Bigger than the one in Rejkavik, right?” you say.
“It’s a goddamm suite. I’m glad we decided to upgrade to a private room.” I snicker with that breathy helplessness one gets in the face of total loss.
You vomited again and again looked out the window.
“What are you looking at?” I ask.
“She’s here now. I need my pills.” You are mumbling, beginning to fade, to lose me.
Who is “she?” I wonder. Delirious.
It is time. I need to say it now, even though I’ve said it in a thousand different ways over the last year, because I know you will leave me soon. I’ve already said it by changing your feeding bag in our living room, sitting right beside you as we listen to the arrogant doctor at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia say “This is not a curable situation.” I said it by watching you sleep and thinking of our first date at an Irish pub as we laughed and made comments about patrons named Pinkie, Jimmy George, and the “Iron Irishman” O’MalleyHaniganMcMurphy. I must say everything now or it will be lost.
I skim the pillow with my cheek and whisper, “You have made my life so wonderful.” The last words I ever spoke to you came in a stuttered whisper by your left ear.
Morning comes quickly when Dr. Bednar makes another visit. Your oxygen mask slips. I quickly replace it. I take the metal bed guard down and gently roll myself out of bed, check the oxygen mask again and see the doctor waiting for me in the hallway. He is a young man capable of miracles. Surely he will say to me that this is just a fluke of enormous magnitude. As I walk the third floor hallway behind him, I think he will tell me you will come out of these new symptoms, these sweats and delirious talks about women with pills coming to give you relief.
We search for a private place to talk, which I know is a deadly sign. If we can’t have this conversation right her, right now, in this hospital room, in your earshot, then there is nothing else that can be done for you, but clearly a private room must be found.
There is a bulbous woman with a Real Simple magazine balanced on her large stomach sitting comfortably on stark and worn couch. The consummately polite and compassionate oncologist asks, “May we have the room please?”
Visibly upset, she mutters an obnoxious comment: “You know I just got here and I finally got to sit down and read this damn magazine.” Losing my temper, I quickly snap, “Yea, well, my husband’s dying and I need to talk to this doctor!” She turns sweet, immediately compassionate, lunges at me and tries to give me a hug as I pull back away from her selfishness. “Oh, I’m so sorry. God bless you, dear.” She exits the room in an apologetic waddle.
The room gets smaller with her gone and the doctor begins to peel away the layers of your state. “There is crackling and fluid in his lungs. We can bring the fever down. I have to ask you, Lori: Are you comfortable with the code, the DNR, or do you want to do more? Do you want to take him to the ICU?” Dr. Bednar asks. I can’t answer that. Billy, you and I never signed a DNR, we never talked about your death.
I go back to the room where your Chaines-Stokes breathing—the deep, hard inhale, and slow, submissive exhale—has already started. I have to know. I have to know what you want. You say in staccato, “I…love…you. Die.” The decision is made and then I continue to go through your death with you.
The blankets rise and fall as your swollen stomach holds the last bit of air. The fly is clicking on the window glass and I can’t decide whether to leave you to try to kill it, or to stay with you until I stop seeing your chest move. There is something disrespectful about a fly observing your death, but I choose to stay in your bed.
The nurses who have known you well from your many hospital stays come in one by one, stroking my hair and your hands.
“He is such a sweet guy” Charmaine’s throat cracked before she got the “such” out of her throat. Liddy, your favorite nurse, describes your politeness in the past tense even though you are not gone yet: “He always said “Thank you” after I drew his blood.”
Your blood oxygen goes to 82%. 80%, 78%. Your blood pressure is 40/20.
I see your chest stop moving and the resident is called. Time of death: 3:42 pm. One by one, all of the machines, oxygen, morphine and portable toilet are taken out of the room while I sit with you. I look, and look and look at you. Your fingers are already turning oxygen deprived blue. Your jaw is hanging open. When I try to shut it, it just drops open again. Then, I want to inhale as deeply as possible, put my mouth over yours and fill you up with oxygen for just a few more minutes.
After you died, I decided that I knew what love was. I was the expert, the resident Professor Emeritus on what it meant to love another human being so much that you will travel together through the process of dying. People make the vows every day: “in sickness and in health.” But, I want to say to those people: just wait until you’re tested. I want to tell all those people with 4 month marriages and silent dinners “here is what love is.” Love is wiping blood from a nose, sleeping in an uncomfortable chair in a hospital room, dressing the exhausted who was once charming and actively hiked up inactive mountains in foreign countries. Love is going to doctors’ appointments and hearing “I’m sorry, but you have about a year.” Love is holding a hand and watching the last rise and fall of the last breath of the last minute of someone’s life.
And so I become the most judgmental person I know. Watching couples eating dinner in restaurants I want to know simple things like is he good to her? Does he do the laundry when she’s tired from work? Does she make dinner for him when he’s had a long day? Does he wrap his arms around her and bury his face in her hair while they sleep at night? Does he call her if she’s driving in the rain just to make sure she’s safe? When friends at work say things like, “Mike was such a bastard last night, he wouldn’t stop playing on-line poker” I think, is he still breathing? Will he come to bed when he has finished playing? I become consumed with the minutia of day to day couples’ lives, with what I think others should be doing and saying because, of course, I know what love is. And then it all becomes important. A toilet seat left up, the garbage not taken out, an anniversary forgotten are all just pockmarks. They are healed over scars that reveal an organism still alive and breathing not appreciated for simply being alive. Then I hate myself for this judgment.
Two years later the carpet near the door of our apartment still has the oil stains from the work boots that I simply can not place in the purple mouth of the donation box outside our grocery store. Your flannel work shirts now serve as my blankets on nights that I most miss you. I would like to form them into a quilt, stuff them like a body and make believe you are with me still. When I walk the dog I look for your shadow on the sidewalk next to mine. When I don’t see that second shadow, my chest expands and sharp achy pai go through my stomach. But, sometimes when I am driving, I can hear your Chaines-Stokes breathing rhythms, see your jaw open, your nails turning blue. Then, I go back to the first time you stopped swallowing food. The romantic lemon butter flounder dinner I made for our anniversary ended up floating in the toilet as you vomited while your esophagus began to fail earlier that year. Now, the brakes of the car hiss as I almost hit a truck because I have, for just moments, glided back to the hospital on the day I went through your death with you, and the year that made us split apart so abruptly.
When we first found out about your cancer, we thought it started at the kidneys and that you would have one removed. You said, “Damn, Lori, I was going to sell a kidney on E-bay for my retirement.” Never taking anything seriously was your forte and your simple smile and hands on mine saved me when we were most desperate toward the end of your life. You were a quiet man, never slamming doors, or raising your voice. That part of your stillness remains in my apartment (mine, no longer ours) and I revere silence now as your presence at the empty dinner table, the vacant couch in front of a foreign film I will watch alone. I can’t ask you what you’re reading these days, but you remain on my shelf alive in photographs, but dead in your ashes, locked up in a black box, that I was asked to spread on a black sand beach in Rejkavik. When I am able to take that black sealed box to Iceland, travel to Vik beach alone and revere your life on this earth, I will do this for you.
At my local bead store, I sit around the glass table that sparkles with beads like unwrapped presents: seed beads, rocailles, teardrops, Swarovski crystals. I have been taking beading classes for a year now, the year since you left me. I have learned patterns and stitches that create beautiful pieces of woven jewelry. I am learning spiral stitch today. At the end of this class, I will have a thick rope necklace spiraled with two different colors.
I thread the needle, pick up an 11mm round seed bead and thread through the next bead. I do this again and again until a pattern starts to form and I am left with what looks like a spiral staircase of blues and purples. I am building this necklace using skills that I have just learned. Spiral stitch is one of the easier stitches; it only requires that I combine two or three colors of beads, know how to use a needle and thread and weave the colors to sit next to each other. There is a pattern of one central or core bead and three outside Czech crystals which spiral around the core creating that two-color look. The other women in my class begin to speak among each other.
“Where did you meet your husband?” Jan asked. Oh, this woman does not stop asking personal questions and my stomach begins it’s churning; I don’t want this conversation to start, but I am alone in this class and will be forced to speak, I just know it!
“Blind date. And it’s been 41 years since.” Says Laura, a kind-eyed woman with little to say suggests that it’s not a happy marriage.
“And you Laina?” She’s the young one, the world is ahead of her, no illness in sight, so tragedies have marked her life; what does she possibly know!
“We were childhood friends. I knew him when I was like 10 and he was 13.”
“I met Doug at college. We were cheating on our significant others back home.”
“Mark took over my job when I quit, but my old company wanted me to keep coming to their social events, and we just hit it off.”
No one asks me. Perhaps I wear my grief on my skin, and maybe, just possibly, they all know. But, then, suddenly, I want to tell them “Ask me! Ask me too. As long as I can still remember what I had, I am alive.”
The way out of grief is through it.
The very worst kind of grief is your grief.
Grief is hard work.
Effective grief work is not done alone.
From I’m Grieving As Fast as I Can by Linda Feinberg
Billy is dying. Today, November 7th, 2007, Dr. Bednar came in to our hospital room to see machines, wires, tubes, Billy’s exposed collar and chest bones, the morphine drip machine and the plastic pink puke bucket at the foot of his bed. The doctor is here to tell us to be “comfortable.” Billy will die today. I know this because it is the year-mark of his terminal, stage IV “you have one year to live” cancer.
I see a fly rummaging in the curtains of our private room with the lovely view of the hospital lawn, stone courtyard for other helpless visitors, and what look like weeds that masquerade as pretty yellow flowers along the window pane outside. I hope the fly does not shit on his frail immune system. So what do I do, at 35 years old, knowing that my husband will be dead in hours, maybe even minutes? Occasionally, I worry about the banality of insects flying around hospital rooms.
Here is what happens: The night the fly irritates me and visits your blood deprived graying skin, your nose, your pink bed sores, your ankles and the sweep of my hand over your chest, you are vomiting so much that you finally just look at me and say, “I just don’t know what to do?” At that point you are deciding that it is time to go. Your fever is 103.5. The nurse gives you oxygen. Your heart rate is 145; that’s as fast as mine gets when I run on a treadmill, but you are lying still in bed. It is 4am, long after Dr. Bednar has left us this time, and you keep looking over at me to make sure my face is on the pillow next to you, but where would I possibly go? I am lying right next to you wearing the sweater you got me the first time we went to Iceland 10 years ago.
The fingers of our left hands are intertwined so five fingers turn to ten, two hands into one. When the nurse comes to check on you she puts the oxygen clamp on my finger by mistake. Your gray sweatiness is rubbing off on my hair as I stare into your tired eyes. You keep looking both at me and over my head out the window when the sun stings through the bed sheets and up to our chins and cheeks. We laugh a little at the size of our private hospital room.
“Bigger than the one in Rejkavik, right?” you say.
“It’s a goddamm suite. I’m glad we decided to upgrade to a private room.” I snicker with that breathy helplessness one gets in the face of total loss.
You vomited again and again looked out the window.
“What are you looking at?” I ask.
“She’s here now. I need my pills.” You are mumbling, beginning to fade, to lose me.
Who is “she?” I wonder. Delirious.
It is time. I need to say it now, even though I’ve said it in a thousand different ways over the last year, because I know you will leave me soon. I’ve already said it by changing your feeding bag in our living room, sitting right beside you as we listen to the arrogant doctor at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia say “This is not a curable situation.” I said it by watching you sleep and thinking of our first date at an Irish pub as we laughed and made comments about patrons named Pinkie, Jimmy George, and the “Iron Irishman” O’MalleyHaniganMcMurphy. I must say everything now or it will be lost.
I skim the pillow with my cheek and whisper, “You have made my life so wonderful.” The last words I ever spoke to you came in a stuttered whisper by your left ear.
Morning comes quickly when Dr. Bednar makes another visit. Your oxygen mask slips. I quickly replace it. I take the metal bed guard down and gently roll myself out of bed, check the oxygen mask again and see the doctor waiting for me in the hallway. He is a young man capable of miracles. Surely he will say to me that this is just a fluke of enormous magnitude. As I walk the third floor hallway behind him, I think he will tell me you will come out of these new symptoms, these sweats and delirious talks about women with pills coming to give you relief.
We search for a private place to talk, which I know is a deadly sign. If we can’t have this conversation right her, right now, in this hospital room, in your earshot, then there is nothing else that can be done for you, but clearly a private room must be found.
There is a bulbous woman with a Real Simple magazine balanced on her large stomach sitting comfortably on stark and worn couch. The consummately polite and compassionate oncologist asks, “May we have the room please?”
Visibly upset, she mutters an obnoxious comment: “You know I just got here and I finally got to sit down and read this damn magazine.” Losing my temper, I quickly snap, “Yea, well, my husband’s dying and I need to talk to this doctor!” She turns sweet, immediately compassionate, lunges at me and tries to give me a hug as I pull back away from her selfishness. “Oh, I’m so sorry. God bless you, dear.” She exits the room in an apologetic waddle.
The room gets smaller with her gone and the doctor begins to peel away the layers of your state. “There is crackling and fluid in his lungs. We can bring the fever down. I have to ask you, Lori: Are you comfortable with the code, the DNR, or do you want to do more? Do you want to take him to the ICU?” Dr. Bednar asks. I can’t answer that. Billy, you and I never signed a DNR, we never talked about your death.
I go back to the room where your Chaines-Stokes breathing—the deep, hard inhale, and slow, submissive exhale—has already started. I have to know. I have to know what you want. You say in staccato, “I…love…you. Die.” The decision is made and then I continue to go through your death with you.
The blankets rise and fall as your swollen stomach holds the last bit of air. The fly is clicking on the window glass and I can’t decide whether to leave you to try to kill it, or to stay with you until I stop seeing your chest move. There is something disrespectful about a fly observing your death, but I choose to stay in your bed.
The nurses who have known you well from your many hospital stays come in one by one, stroking my hair and your hands.
“He is such a sweet guy” Charmaine’s throat cracked before she got the “such” out of her throat. Liddy, your favorite nurse, describes your politeness in the past tense even though you are not gone yet: “He always said “Thank you” after I drew his blood.”
Your blood oxygen goes to 82%. 80%, 78%. Your blood pressure is 40/20.
I see your chest stop moving and the resident is called. Time of death: 3:42 pm. One by one, all of the machines, oxygen, morphine and portable toilet are taken out of the room while I sit with you. I look, and look and look at you. Your fingers are already turning oxygen deprived blue. Your jaw is hanging open. When I try to shut it, it just drops open again. Then, I want to inhale as deeply as possible, put my mouth over yours and fill you up with oxygen for just a few more minutes.
After you died, I decided that I knew what love was. I was the expert, the resident Professor Emeritus on what it meant to love another human being so much that you will travel together through the process of dying. People make the vows every day: “in sickness and in health.” But, I want to say to those people: just wait until you’re tested. I want to tell all those people with 4 month marriages and silent dinners “here is what love is.” Love is wiping blood from a nose, sleeping in an uncomfortable chair in a hospital room, dressing the exhausted who was once charming and actively hiked up inactive mountains in foreign countries. Love is going to doctors’ appointments and hearing “I’m sorry, but you have about a year.” Love is holding a hand and watching the last rise and fall of the last breath of the last minute of someone’s life.
And so I become the most judgmental person I know. Watching couples eating dinner in restaurants I want to know simple things like is he good to her? Does he do the laundry when she’s tired from work? Does she make dinner for him when he’s had a long day? Does he wrap his arms around her and bury his face in her hair while they sleep at night? Does he call her if she’s driving in the rain just to make sure she’s safe? When friends at work say things like, “Mike was such a bastard last night, he wouldn’t stop playing on-line poker” I think, is he still breathing? Will he come to bed when he has finished playing? I become consumed with the minutia of day to day couples’ lives, with what I think others should be doing and saying because, of course, I know what love is. And then it all becomes important. A toilet seat left up, the garbage not taken out, an anniversary forgotten are all just pockmarks. They are healed over scars that reveal an organism still alive and breathing not appreciated for simply being alive. Then I hate myself for this judgment.
Two years later the carpet near the door of our apartment still has the oil stains from the work boots that I simply can not place in the purple mouth of the donation box outside our grocery store. Your flannel work shirts now serve as my blankets on nights that I most miss you. I would like to form them into a quilt, stuff them like a body and make believe you are with me still. When I walk the dog I look for your shadow on the sidewalk next to mine. When I don’t see that second shadow, my chest expands and sharp achy pai go through my stomach. But, sometimes when I am driving, I can hear your Chaines-Stokes breathing rhythms, see your jaw open, your nails turning blue. Then, I go back to the first time you stopped swallowing food. The romantic lemon butter flounder dinner I made for our anniversary ended up floating in the toilet as you vomited while your esophagus began to fail earlier that year. Now, the brakes of the car hiss as I almost hit a truck because I have, for just moments, glided back to the hospital on the day I went through your death with you, and the year that made us split apart so abruptly.
When we first found out about your cancer, we thought it started at the kidneys and that you would have one removed. You said, “Damn, Lori, I was going to sell a kidney on E-bay for my retirement.” Never taking anything seriously was your forte and your simple smile and hands on mine saved me when we were most desperate toward the end of your life. You were a quiet man, never slamming doors, or raising your voice. That part of your stillness remains in my apartment (mine, no longer ours) and I revere silence now as your presence at the empty dinner table, the vacant couch in front of a foreign film I will watch alone. I can’t ask you what you’re reading these days, but you remain on my shelf alive in photographs, but dead in your ashes, locked up in a black box, that I was asked to spread on a black sand beach in Rejkavik. When I am able to take that black sealed box to Iceland, travel to Vik beach alone and revere your life on this earth, I will do this for you.
At my local bead store, I sit around the glass table that sparkles with beads like unwrapped presents: seed beads, rocailles, teardrops, Swarovski crystals. I have been taking beading classes for a year now, the year since you left me. I have learned patterns and stitches that create beautiful pieces of woven jewelry. I am learning spiral stitch today. At the end of this class, I will have a thick rope necklace spiraled with two different colors.
I thread the needle, pick up an 11mm round seed bead and thread through the next bead. I do this again and again until a pattern starts to form and I am left with what looks like a spiral staircase of blues and purples. I am building this necklace using skills that I have just learned. Spiral stitch is one of the easier stitches; it only requires that I combine two or three colors of beads, know how to use a needle and thread and weave the colors to sit next to each other. There is a pattern of one central or core bead and three outside Czech crystals which spiral around the core creating that two-color look. The other women in my class begin to speak among each other.
“Where did you meet your husband?” Jan asked. Oh, this woman does not stop asking personal questions and my stomach begins it’s churning; I don’t want this conversation to start, but I am alone in this class and will be forced to speak, I just know it!
“Blind date. And it’s been 41 years since.” Says Laura, a kind-eyed woman with little to say suggests that it’s not a happy marriage.
“And you Laina?” She’s the young one, the world is ahead of her, no illness in sight, so tragedies have marked her life; what does she possibly know!
“We were childhood friends. I knew him when I was like 10 and he was 13.”
“I met Doug at college. We were cheating on our significant others back home.”
“Mark took over my job when I quit, but my old company wanted me to keep coming to their social events, and we just hit it off.”
No one asks me. Perhaps I wear my grief on my skin, and maybe, just possibly, they all know. But, then, suddenly, I want to tell them “Ask me! Ask me too. As long as I can still remember what I had, I am alive.”
Sunday, September 12, 2010
It Goes On
"I'm crossing that bridge with lessons I've learned. Playing with fire and not getting burned. I may not know what you're going through, but time is the space between me and you. Life carries on. It goes on." Seal.
Listening to a "Prayer for the Dying" and thinking of how much time has come between Billy and me, I've realized that healing takes time. Grief is a process that time changes. When Billy first died, I did not believe anyone who told me time would heal me, but now I am starting to see that adage come true. Perhaps because I am busy; school has started and I have more to focus on than Billy's death, perhaps because I am surrounded by people who are incredibly giving and optimistic, or maybe it's just that so much time has gone by (nearly three years) that I realize Billy's death can not control me in ways that it did in the past. Seal is such a funny song to be inspired by because he's not even one of my favorite musicians, but that line is so telling. The cliche of the bridge being crossed almost seems immature and cliche; however, it's true. I have crossed some threshold, some line now. I don't cry as much as I used to, and I certainly have stopped feeling sorry for myself. Those days are behind me, but the loss is still so great and virtual. This is a short post, simply just inspired by a song I was listening to the other day. But, it needed to be written and I will remind myself of the quotation when I find myself taking backwards-steps into grief-land.
Listening to a "Prayer for the Dying" and thinking of how much time has come between Billy and me, I've realized that healing takes time. Grief is a process that time changes. When Billy first died, I did not believe anyone who told me time would heal me, but now I am starting to see that adage come true. Perhaps because I am busy; school has started and I have more to focus on than Billy's death, perhaps because I am surrounded by people who are incredibly giving and optimistic, or maybe it's just that so much time has gone by (nearly three years) that I realize Billy's death can not control me in ways that it did in the past. Seal is such a funny song to be inspired by because he's not even one of my favorite musicians, but that line is so telling. The cliche of the bridge being crossed almost seems immature and cliche; however, it's true. I have crossed some threshold, some line now. I don't cry as much as I used to, and I certainly have stopped feeling sorry for myself. Those days are behind me, but the loss is still so great and virtual. This is a short post, simply just inspired by a song I was listening to the other day. But, it needed to be written and I will remind myself of the quotation when I find myself taking backwards-steps into grief-land.
Friday, August 20, 2010
What Beaders Do
I bead because I think it's cool. I bead because it's fun. I bead because when I create I feel alive. I bead because when I finish a necklace, bracelet, or pair of earrings, and there is something tangible and beautiful in my hands, I feel like I have given birth to something unique. I also bead to heal.
People say that the oppostite of peace is war, but I think the oppostite of peace is creation. I heard the phrase used in one of my favorite musicals, Rent. When someone close to you dies there is an overwhelming numbness initially, but as time wears on, you seek out life in any shape you can find it. I sought life in creation. Bringing to life beaded works of art is the only sound way I know to live again in an inspiring way. The initial blurb about myself on this blog is that "I don't live my life as well as I used to." That includes not going out and doing the things that once made me happy...that is, until I realized that beading makes me happy.
Billy used to look at my work and praise it, and criticize it. I welcomed his criticism because his taste was impeccable. I never knew that such a man, this blue collar, hard scrabble, welder could actually comment on the aesthetic of beading, but he could and did. He was my best critic commenting about a necklace once and proclaiming that it looked like I hung a cracker from the center--that memory always makes me laugh because it was so true. The necklace resembled a hanging Ritz cracker on a chain of woven, colored beads. Those fragile memories are ones that make me bitterly happy.
I bead for so many different reasons that most of the time I don't even realize it's actually grief relief. Now, when I create a new piece, it has to pass the "cracker test": Does the centerpiece hang like a piece of food, or does it look like art. So Billy continues to inform even my hobbies these days and, for that, I can be happy.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Tech and the Brain
This summer has been technology overload. Although I am comfortable with most things techie, I am nervous about the new year; starting with new technologies and new students is never easy, but I am also excited about the possibilities. Diigo is an interesting way to gather great websites for kids to peruse as they are taught new ways of learning language skills. Twitter is the most bizarre but perhaps most fun social networking site. What can you say in 140 characters? Not much, but OH so much! It also has the ability to link to other websites so it's another way to make sure that my students are viewing websites that are both relevant and inspiring in some way. We can teach them to surf the web in ways that will make them productive and engaged, but it can also be social. Diigo also allows for "mark-ups" and teaching good reading strategies of sites that may be challenging and not something they would normally read. I also have become more interested in blogging in general. I began using this blog as a healing process, but it has also turned into a record of what I notice, learn, read, and engage in myself.
I want my kids to use their blogs to practice their writing in the same way that an artist uses a blank canvas to practice, play, create and inspire. During my own grief period I was unlucky in that I shut down completely. I turned off. I was unable to read, write or think for several months. Then, slowely, and much more slowely than I wanted, it started to come back. I read a paragraph at a time, 20 minutes at a time. My pace was slower, I was slower in general. My normal quick, rapid fire thinking went away and I feared it was the curse that comes with great loss, but it's coming back to me as I write this and as I know I will read tonight little by little.
I engrossed myself in an abundance of TV viewing, lying on the couch, or bed and watching nothing at all really. I didn't really watch, I simply gazed and thought about other things. But, I'm coming back bit by bit. I'm seeing colors again. I'm tasting things again. It's all part of the bigger grief picture. My loss is total and engrossing and it has changed the way I view my world, so everything is different, but I'm moving on as best I can. This blog is just another way.
I want my kids to use their blogs to practice their writing in the same way that an artist uses a blank canvas to practice, play, create and inspire. During my own grief period I was unlucky in that I shut down completely. I turned off. I was unable to read, write or think for several months. Then, slowely, and much more slowely than I wanted, it started to come back. I read a paragraph at a time, 20 minutes at a time. My pace was slower, I was slower in general. My normal quick, rapid fire thinking went away and I feared it was the curse that comes with great loss, but it's coming back to me as I write this and as I know I will read tonight little by little.
I engrossed myself in an abundance of TV viewing, lying on the couch, or bed and watching nothing at all really. I didn't really watch, I simply gazed and thought about other things. But, I'm coming back bit by bit. I'm seeing colors again. I'm tasting things again. It's all part of the bigger grief picture. My loss is total and engrossing and it has changed the way I view my world, so everything is different, but I'm moving on as best I can. This blog is just another way.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Images That Remain
My parents went away this weekend and I did the isolating thing again, but forced myself to leave the house. Thursday and Friday were the worst days; I sat, ate, watched TV, tried to read and beaded a little, but not much. My energy was just zapped completely. I was watching the dog for my parents while they were away and I realized that if they died, I would become a hermit. Bad idea! For some reason, I was again back at the hospital in my memory. I keep thinking about the doctors and nurses that watched us as Billy slowly faded away. These occasions come to me every now and then. His hospital memories are very fresh still. I often wonder if I will be 70 and still thinking about him and his illness, but I never know. Perhaps I'll move on one day, but that look on his face when he decided to die is just so stung into my brain. I can't seem to look back into the 15 years we were healthy, alive and thriving in this world. I'm still stuck on his death for some reason. This seems tragic, but I don't get panic attacks when I think about that day anymore. He was lying in bed and left in a matter of minutes. The oxygen just went out of him and that was the last I saw of his life. Everytime I pass Holcombe Fisher funeral home I also remember him because that was the last time I saw his face. I would like these images not to remain, but they do in and out of consciousness. I had two recent dreams that tell me I'm healing. One: Billy is holding my hand. And two: he is in the room and walking around my bed, I could hear his footsteps. Considering I never dream of him, it is amazing that I had such dreams as these.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Tin House
I did it; I stepped out of my comfort zone as I have been told to do over and over again for the last year: get out, do more, see people, get involved with your life. A plane took me 6 hours out to Oregon and there I met the most fastidious and intelligent group of writers I have ever encountered. These people appeared unblemished by life's losses; I admit I was jealous of the talent, but I learned more than I ever expected. I met writers, yes. I met friends, sure. I met literary agents, wierd. But, more than that, I realized that human suffering comes in all shapes, sizes, ages, wisdoms, and talents. My writing group was amazing to put it mildly. There were losses of all kinds: body parts (a cancer survivor), spouses (me), children (poor woman), and friends. These losses composed the workshop of Creative Non-Fiction with Ann Hood. A phenomenal leader, Ann tore our pieces to shreds so that we could build them back up to something that resembled good writing. I am trying so hard to get back to the writing I used to do as a regular practice, but am still struggling with times of blockage, unknown white page demons that regale me at all times of the day. The white page is my least favorite color. But, I got started again and I will not stop because it helps. Billy would call my adventure this summer heroic and he would say he was proud of me for going to a writing group, sharing my story and moving forward with my life by meeting new people that fulfill me. I'm proud of myself as well, but hope to write more, and better, as time moves forward. The days without him are simply not forgotten. Everyday something, somewhere (a sign post, a road, a song) reminds me.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Summer
Summer for teachers is a necessary evil for me. I am not good with unstructured time and I feel very burned out. The unstructred time leaves me with too much time to think about my losses. I got great correspondance and praise from students over the year, so for that I am thankful; but now, I am left to my own devices. I am alone thinking of summers that I used to spend with Billy and now I am alone in my apartment thinking of times I used to spend with Billy. A little repetitive yes, healing, no. Today was a "school day" developing curriculum and using my time to create a new plan. My brain was not working today and my curriculum partner and I were hashing out old plans and seeing what worked and what didn't. It went well, but again, my brain is just not working. I'm alone on this wierd island (sorry for the awful cliche) but alone nonetheless. I feel awkard in a crowd, so of course, I am awkward in a workshop. It feels like I am on the outside of a glass restaurant looking in at all the people eating and enjoying their company and their meals. This summer should be a time for growth. We'll see how it goes.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
The End of the Year
The end of the year for teachers begins in June. That doesn't mean we don't work over the summer; on the contrary, many of us have second jobs, tutor, or write curriculum all summer. Most people think that teachers don't work over the summer. Simply wrong. We do. I will be writing curriculum, revising curriculum and reading about curriculum all summer. I am looking forward to these new endeavors, but I have more things I would like to accomplish. I want to read more. My concentration has been "off" since Billy died. Reading and writing is now very hard for me. It is almost as if I have ADD and everything just takes a little longer. I used to be very "quick" with my thinking, reading and writing. But now, language can sometimes escape me. I often am at a loss for the right word. This seems to be a product of grief. People don't understand how I could be grieving for so long, but I lost the best my very best friend in the world and that is the sad reality. SO, this summer will be devoted to reading, writing, getting my thinking stamina back and continuing on with my technology pursuits in education.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
The Dog
We sat quitely awaiting an evening of great entertainment: my mom, dad, Chris, Phil and...the dog. Well, she didn't wait to wreak her awesome havoc. The cheese tray went out and apparently she had to "check it" for poison as Phil said. She was just doing a taste test. I have to say I envy my dog. I envy all dogs. They don't know time. They live in the moment...something humans forget to do ALL the time. I am most guitly of this last indescretion. I do not live in the moment, but instead, relive the past everyday. Billy come to my mind (never my dreams) several times a day, and far too many to count. He is usually in the hospital, unfortunately. I can't get the image out of my head, but when I spend time with my dog, I am reminded of what time means. The moment, playing ball, eating, snuggling on the couch...those are the moments she lives in and is never disrupted by the future or the past. Although I have to leave her alone at times, she never holds a grudge. She cares about food, love and sleep in that order and with as much enthusiasm as a child with a new toy. I've written about her often because she reminds me of what I do not have: the abilit to live for now, in the present, at this moment. She does not let the stress (what stress could she possibly have! She's spoiled to death) of the day get in her way of having a great morning, afternoon and evening. Everyday is a good day for her. We need to learn the lessons of the dog. They can only help us heal ourselves, I swear!
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Grief to GO
I don't eat takeout food, fast food, or any food that has been processed, but I'll take a bag of grief to GO out of my life please. I'm on my way through the grief fest here. I've been in the process for over 2 years now and it subsides, then rears it's ugly fried head somedays. While we all lose loved ones over a lifetime, few of us lose the loves of our lives untill we are well into our golden years. Sorry to use the cliches. As an English teacher I should know better than to blog on the cliche, but hey man, it is what it is. What do I miss most: smells, tastes, touches, kisses in the morning and a whole host of other fast and furious emotions that are just not available to me anymore. I am totally numb somedays, but other days there is the sunlight and the smile my dog gives me at the end of a terrible day. But then fast grief, like fast food at a checkout stand...small order of fries, cheeseburger and a toy...turns to small order of tears, big memory and a frosty helping of laughter at a cool, sweet memory. I like that last part best, but it doesn't happen often.
Monday, May 17, 2010
School Daze
Oh man, Mondays are rough. The kids are tired, I'm tired, we are in the home stretch and I think the kids are done with school. I feel like there is SO much more to go, but some days, I'm also quite exhausted and just want the year to end as well. The weather is beautifully, thankfully, and I am truly grateful for nice weather. My mood shifts with the weather, which makes me think I have a bit of seasonal affective disorder. My friend Chris is always saying that his partner is much more "alive" and less depressed when the weather is nice and the sun is out.
Today, I am just plain out of it. I slept well, but somedays are better than others. I missed Billy a lot last night and yesterday. Sundays were our days. We spent them shopping and doing chores, which doesn't sound interesting, but chores with the one you love is actually kind of fun. Now I do everything alone and it's very depressing. Some days I just do not go to the supermarket and I try to subsist on whatever is left in my pantry. Also, we used to watch a Sunday night movie. I have not seen a whole movie since he died. I watch Law and Order and other shows about degenerates and killers. What have I become?
Today, I am just plain out of it. I slept well, but somedays are better than others. I missed Billy a lot last night and yesterday. Sundays were our days. We spent them shopping and doing chores, which doesn't sound interesting, but chores with the one you love is actually kind of fun. Now I do everything alone and it's very depressing. Some days I just do not go to the supermarket and I try to subsist on whatever is left in my pantry. Also, we used to watch a Sunday night movie. I have not seen a whole movie since he died. I watch Law and Order and other shows about degenerates and killers. What have I become?
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Cyberspace
I'm blogging for the first time. I suppose it's a kind of on-line journal. Some people say we are most honest in cyberspace; you can say anything to anyone about anything and so on and so forth, but really it could be quite private. I've thought about how blogs are used in other ways. I know that celebrities use blogs in annoying ways. I think I will use my blog for more personal reflections, fiction and non-fiction writing and ways to just get myself to keep writing. I used to write all the time, but since Billy died, I stopped reading and writing. It just sort of happened. I used to be an "intellectual." I don't mean that in an elitist way, but I used to read the most high-brow literature and then write in such a fashion, but now I can hardly put two sentences together. I'm hoping blogging will help me move forward and continue what I started before my life changed so drastically.
Another Day
The end of the weekend always makes me sad...and happy. It's a new week, new chance for new possibilites, but then another week without Billy. It's two years, 6 months and 10 days since I last saw him breath, so of course, I'm still thinking of him. I thought I would try a blog and see if that might help me heal more. I can't believe I'm still grieving so much, but there is a reason for it. FIfteen years with one person is half my life, so of course, there is so much more grieving to be done. I suppose I'll be sad forever, but I'm taking a writing class and hope that it makes it somewhat manageable. I'm also blogging to learn how to do it so I can create one with studetns. Should be interesting.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)