farewell

The dance is over, as much as I want to stay.  But my partner is gone, and I can't pretend anymore.


Many thanks and love to all who have read this, supported us, and kept us in your mind and heart.


Please don't stop.


I won't.


My new life in the land of Widowhood will be chronicled on the blog www.eatinggrief.blogspot.com.


Hope to see you there.


With love and gratitude,
Candace

sardines

Sardines, I would tell Rich.  Compared to you, that's what other men are.

Aw shucks, he would say.  Though neither one of us were sure what I was talking about, I meant it as a supreme compliment, and he took the bait.

I look around now, and mumble to myself, sardines, that's all that is left swimming.

Sardines, I'm told, are good for regulating the rhythm of the heart and reducing bodily inflammation.  Frequent consumption is desirable.

But as much as my body wants, my mind files everyone as "not Rich, not Rich..." and I swim away, heart still pumping to another rhythm.

Candace

splinched, again

Once before in this space (May 6, 2008) I wrote about being "splinched."  As a reminder for those not familiar with Harry Potter, this is a magical mode of transportation whereby thinking takes us to the place we want to be.  But in the beginning, few can do this neatly.  A torso or leg is in Place A while the rest of us has moved on to Place B.  Confusion results.


So these days. At times, a certainty that I'm in one piece, that I've made the move neatly, all parts intact. So confident, in fact, that I attempt to move further into places that may hurt.


Last week I returned to Memorial Sloan Kettering to question another absurd bill that, I thought, Rich had settled months ago.  First, I'm asked for Rich's ID card.  Rich is dead, I say (isn't this true of most MSK patients, sooner rather than later?) The rep gives me a disgusted look.  She taps, taps, taps the computer.  I wait.  Ten, fifteen minutes.


"You can pay at the cashier," she says.


That's not why I'm here, I repeat.  I'm questioning the bill, not paying it.


Back to the computer for a few more minutes.


She rips a sheet off the printer and hands it to me.


"This is the number to call," she says.  "You can't see anyone. It's confidential."


"The bill is confidential?  You mean I can call someone to talk about it, but not see someone?"


She nods, yes.


What to do?  Off to the hospital cafe, where how many times I don't remember, I bought a scone and latte while my love was somewhere upstairs having nasty things done to him. And I waited.


This time, all I'm waiting for is the bus on the corner to take me home.  I'm okay, though.  I munch and sip and attempt to read the newspaper but I can't, I'm losing my mind to other days when we will get through this, just get through this...


No more "we."  I'll get through this.  In one piece.


Until a man walks by carrying an ersatz plant from the gift shop.  It's made of some sort of felt, an orange and yellow imitation of a sunflower.  It is singing.


You are my sunshine...please don't take my sunshine away...


I separate, sliced down the middle, and liquid erupts.


Splinched, again.


Candace

where we belong

...the loyalty we feel to unhappiness -- the sense that there is where we belong. -- Graham Greene, "The Heart of the Matter."


Tonight I'm packing for my first trip since Rich died.  The first in five years that will not involve surgery or radiation or another medical procedure, that will not include Rich, that death will not be the mistress hugging him while I pretend she's a temporary fling.


Of course, I want to kill her.  Before she takes him from me.


I don't need the usual carry-on.  Even that's too much for someone traveling light.  Anyway, that case hasn't been unpacked yet from its time at Hospicare.  Zippered open, Rich's T-shirts and sweatpants and pajama bottoms hang out, still not bagged and donated.  I can't, not yet.


But I can travel from unhappiness.  A necessary place to visit, and I do, often enough.  But that's not where I belong. Because Rich won't be found there, and I will be damned if I let that mistress thinks she won.


Candace

and: a life

It is good, and it isn't.

It is good to receive a letter from a former student of Rich's, thanking him for his support.

It isn't good because the letter is addressed to Rich, not knowing that Rich will never read or answer it.

It is good when, at a dinner at a friend's house, another guest recognizes me, although I'm sure we never met.  She makes the connection.  She was the volunteer massage therapist who visited Rich at Hospicare.

"He always spoke of you," she said. "He would just light up."

It isn't good because in the last days Rich doubted if he loved me enough, or at all.  I had no doubts, and couldn't relieve this added agony in his too-big repertory.  Hearing her words confirms what I know -- ouch, again.

It is good when joy and excitement shoots through me, as it does, more and more.

It isn't good because the emotion stops dead, unshared.

So I'm living the "and" life, of wanting and not, of remembering and not, of loving and not.

In not having to choose there is relief.  And not.

Candace

jigsaw

So you must not be frightened...if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen. --Rainer Maria Rilke


To those who know Rich, it will be no surprise that he was good at putting together jigsaw puzzles.  To those who know me...I'm not.   


So, as a challenge, I once bought what I thought was an insolvable one:  A cheese pizza broken into 1,000 pieces, mostly red (sauce) and (yellow) cheese, with pieces of brown (pepperoni) scattered throughout.


He set it on a table, and over a week or so, in his spare time, would neatly attach this section, then that, and within a couple of weeks -- done.  He applied a coat of shellac, framed it, and mounted it on the wall.


"Rub it in," I said.  


Looking at it made me not only a bit jealous, but also hungry.  I could taste the hot cheese, sensuously stretching itself through teeth, lightly burning tongue.  It became real.


But it was only a puzzle, not the real thing at all, soon to be broken down and eventually gone to the landfill.  Even when brilliantly pieced together, puzzles are only broken pieces, inanimate and temporary.


And yet and yet -- this puzzle that is gone forever, the days of Rich and Candace -- is a sadness varnished and framed, bigger than life, terrifyingly real.  I can still taste it, I am still hungry for it, at many moments I can't understand how we became nothing more than broken-down dead pieces.


What satisfies, a little, is knowing that puzzles are solved not with "why" but "how."  How to move on...how his memory may continue to bring me (and others) joy...how to attach this piece to another and then someday say: Done.


Candace

reason to live

In the hot early days -- and pretty hot later ones, too -- Rich was my reason to live.  Body, mind, spirit -- all contained in the other until the chordoma years emptied his, and drained mine.

After the burial, after the memorial service, after the first wave of financial and legal commitments, came the fall.  I needed a container for grief, as once I had one for love.

So I began pouring myself into morning and evening Kaddish, into healing meditation (for me, for Rich, for us), into a fixed place where everything could spill out.  In these times there are, mostly, tears at the beginning and joy at the end; sometimes the reverse.  And I can be assaulted at any time by his absence.

But lately I have been awaking hungry.  For love, again.  To love someone, again.  And rejoice that nothing has changed.

Rich, once, was my reason to live.

He still is.

A love-filled new year to all -- and many thanks,

Candace