lighting up

This week I returned to Hospicare for the annual "Lighting the Landscape." Strands of bulbs were wrapped around trees, shrubs, fenceposts, symbolically representing those who died.

Every memory lit up, four months' worth. Of his caregivers whom I came to love -- and loved Rich -- and all the meals I heated up in the kitchen, and the hours every day sitting with Rich in the garden, in the Great Room, in his room, number five, at the end of hall...

How could he not be here?

Because I felt him ripping at my heart, every step.

Like the old days, I open the door and see John having dinner. He jumps up, hugs me, says it must be so, so hard...and Theresa, how much she misses him, misses me...and Kathy, the nurse on duty, who jogs down the hallway for a hug...yes, yes, yes, they say, they will do everything possible to be at Rich's Memorial Service.

That will be in a few days, in the Hospicare Great Room. To say "thank you" to all who cared for him, to fulfill Rich's repeated anguished request how can we thank everyone, to believe that the best cure for love is more of the same.

Candace

Ralph

Today, I found Ralph under a pile of books and papers.

Five-plus years ago, he came home with Rich, a gift from Sloan Kettering. One and a half feet tall, 100% pure polyester, with a "Polo" emblazoned red scarf around his brown furry neck, Rich immediately named him: Ralph the Care Bear.

At first, he was -- well, an inanimate object, made in China and donated to Sloan Kettering patients by designer Ralph Lauren.

But soon we gave him a personality (bearnality?) and soon after that we forgot that he was our creation.

He sat with Rich on the rocking chair.

"Fight the chordoma, Ralph," Rich would say, and we would see a fierce look in Ralph's eyes.

And he joined us for dinner, sometimes, propped between the candlesticks.

When Rich hurt, Ralph looked sad. When we asked him questions -- will Rich get out of this, what's next -- he looked thoughtful and hopeful.

When I said, once, that Ralph was useless, he wasn't curing anything, Rich defended him.

"He's not a cure bear," Rich clarified. "He's a care bear."

About this time a year ago, at the beginning of the final unraveling, Ralph disappeared. Maybe I moved him, maybe Rich did; I don't remember. But he was gone from the table, gone from the rocking chair. Our fantasy couldn't help, not anymore.

Today, I lift Ralph up, wiping some dust off his scarf. A heap of polyester, nothing more.

Then I look into his eyes.

Dazed, stunned, sunken with sadness.

He is my reflection.

You didn't fail, Ralph. I didn't fail. We cared, that was all we could do.

Candace

retreat

Day 43

Don't write about what you know. Write toward what you want to know...in making that peculiar shotgun leap toward what we supposedly don't know, we transform our vision of what we are.

--Colum McCann

I always knew how "Chordoma Dance" would end, and I guess you did, too. The suspense was not in how Rich got over the chordoma, but how we got through it. Rich's footwork was dazzling, always; I lurched and stumbled behind him, damning the road we were on but helpless in making it safe from the bombs that exploded here and there, at first, and then -- everywhere.

So I did a retreat, verb and noun.

Removing myself from what didn't matter into the world where the only thing that mattered was leaving no matter how much Rich tightly held to life, and I held to him, but the grip slips while moving backwards and I had no answer when Rich, near the end, pleaded oh, E.T., how did this happen, how did we get here.

Being on retreat for the past years would explain nothing, I knew; only a front-row seat into the pain and sorrow that would dissolve neither by ignorance nor knowledge but by sucking it into the hole left by that boy who loved me more than I could ever absorb.

I try not to look backwards, much. I look forward, a little. I cry, a lot. And I soak in the love that remains.

Candace

zigzag

Day 38

It's nine at night and I'm eating cold oatmeal. This is supper.

If it were you who died and Rich survived, what would he be doing?

So asks the bereavement counselor.

Eating cold dinners, I say, and we laugh.

I start answering, but zigzag into I can't believe he's not in the world and don't know where I'm in the world and then end -- as if this isn't already obvious -- that when I get out of bed in the morning I have no idea what Candace-without-Rich will do or say. Sometimes she runs off to a movie and stays out late, sometimes she's in her pajamas by sunset, sometimes she starts filling out yet another after-death form and soon finds herself away and gone at a cafe where she's having a latte and making a list of what must be done.

And it's okay.

Candace

living koan

A shallow box holds it all. A few physics books, to remember. An 8x12 black and white, photographer unknown, of Rich as a young graduate student in T-shirt and khaki green Boy Scout shorts, adjusting a piece of the experiment. A pen, once it was his, no other reason. His business cards, for no reason at all.

And a pocket-size cobalt blue plastic comb, found on the third look through his desk drawer. This is the day's find. Breathing in comes the aroma of his after shave, of his body. Breathing out I cry.

Cleaning out Rich's two offices should have been quick. His separation of personal and work life was almost total. I found what I expected. Files neatly arranged, books arrayed on shelves, all ready for another day of work.

Almost all of it, I leave behind. The books and the files along with some awards, a few name tags, his name plaque removed from the office door.

What remains is the tsunami; literally, the place where the "harbor" and the "wave" meet and destruction is inevitable. Exactly what will vanish, or be moved, or left unscathed cannot be predicted by my usual crutches of intellect and belief.

What emerges is the koan, appropriate always but becoming most alive in times of death and dying (which is pretty close to always...). Zen teacher John Tarrant writes: "The situation is insoluble and you hang around with it and something shifts to another level."

Or, as others have said, koans are can-openers for the mind. What do I see? A nauseating mass. Not who I am, no way.

Tarrant suggests an antidote: With every out breath, breathe the words I don't know. Do this for minutes, for years; while sitting, standing, waiting.

I cry because I don't know.

A shallow box is enough. More than.

Candace

distractions

The envelope, please.

Today's winner of the Most Absurd Distraction Award --- the MADDY --- is a much-crowned champion, tough to beat in any MAD competition.

It is: The IRS.

And it has nothing to do with Rich.

They are interested in my mother, who died almost two years ago.

Give us, they say, her forwarding address.

No wonder we fear the IRS.

They are God.

But like all worthy MADDY contestants, the IRS cannot be ignored. They must be responded to and (temporarily) dispatched.

These days, all is absurd. From the Latin absurdus, "out of tune," this applies to conversations, news reports, and what I once called reality. I am trying to avoid the conversations and the news, all of which assault me with notes thunderous and dissonant, but the reality of my illusions --- where would I be without them?

Perhaps where Rich is. Far from me, now; and as it should be. The dead have better things to do than chat with the living or file IRS forms.

As I do, but I'm not officially dead. I'm weary of expectations that I'm the same -- minus Rich. And so distractions are hurled at me, as if I have learned nothing in these past months and years, as if the person before 25 October is the same as afterward, as if I have "plans."

I have an opportunity, of course. Or I can continue as before, knowing that the most deserving winner of the MADDY --- the envelope, please --- is me.

Candace

blank

Day 25

On Wednesday, I collapsed.

Because there was nothing more that had to be done, immediately. Or at least for another 24 hours.

Grief doesn't dance. It's too heavy, too thick, too sad, absorbing my thoughts and my words.

I'm blank.

Candace