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

entering the stream

After the last breath, the wedding ring came off. Rich wouldn't need it; he was now traveling light. Then, mine.

But my load keeps getting heavier and heavier, and I wonder how much weight a heart can take.

His clothes. My walks, in light and in darkness, not one step he has not taken, not one that we haven't taken together. Our memories, now sliced in half, destined to vanish.

There was no way to prepare for this.

Except by entering the stream, alone. No one can do this for me. Grief unbound bruises, but cannot kill what is already dead. Rich and I are in opposite positions now. His container is gone, but his essence moves onward; my container still walks and eats and breathes, but my essence is in the stream, flowing out of me until one day it will cease, and off I will go into a new land.

Meanwhile, my mantra is revived.

Fuck this shit.

The stream needs to know that I can swim.

Candace

Rhinoceros, Ionesco dialect

The problem is, I'm not literate in Rhinoceros.

I doubt if anyone is, but the Rhinos' grunting so brilliantly confounds obscurity for clarity when the matter at hand is transparent simplicity that most of us, in self-defense, sprout horns and say, I understand!

I don't. But I'm trying my best to become bi-species.

Today, back to the Verizon office. With my social security card, required for transferring the contract from Rich to me.

My Rhino rep regards me cooly. He asks the same questions as on Saturday. Why changing? Because Richard is dead, I say. He asks for an ID. I hand over my driver's license, again. Put in your social security number, he says, indicating the electric pad on the counter. I wait.

Don't you want my card, I ask. We got this far on Saturday.

The numbers, he says.

But there are no numbers on the pad.

He frowns at me, then hits a button on his computer and the numbers appear.

We wait. He chats with another Rhino. I catch myself rubbing my naked third finger, left hand, a habit of late. Maybe it will become a hoof. I hold onto my social security card, my humble offering.

He looks past me. You're done, he says.

You don't need my card? I was told on Saturday --

I don't know who told you that, he says.

I go for a long walk near our old home, up and down and around the gorge. At our -- my -- new home, more Rhino works await, piles of them.

Tomorrow is still another day.

Candace

birthday boy

Today is Rich's birthday. Would have been his fifty-eighth. He never spoke about making it.

A year ago he wrote on his chordoma website: "57th birthday. Happy to be here."

I was an occasional reader of his site, not wanting to follow his precise charting of symptoms and surgeries. They were too much like prayer. A source of comfort for Rich, but only a reminder for me of how hard he was trying, how hard but he would lose, he would lose, it was futile.

Better to focus on the day-to-day living, I thought. Not to pretend that the chordoma wasn't eating away his life, but to immerse ourselves in the life that was shrinking.

I haven't made the shift, not fully. And I don't want to, yet. Life is still "ours."

For the past years, and especially the year now ending, whenever I wasn't with Rich I was in a hurry to finish what I had to do, knowing I had to be with him because soon this would not be an option. And when I was with him -- whatever strength I had was siphoned off, then I found more, until the day ended, always until almost the end, with words from him to me, and me to him: Tomorrow is another day. Sleep well, my love.

Happy birthday, my love. Sleep well. Tomorrow is still another day.

Candace

new moon

Day 14

Although the wind

blows terribly here,

the moonlight also leaks

between the roof planks

of this ruined house.

--Izumi Shikibu (Japan, 974?-1034?)

I can't find Rich's grave. Three are in a row, muddy mounds heaped high, all fresh within the past two weeks.

How will we find each other next time around, Rich asked, not too long ago.

We found each other this time, I said. We will again.

He shook his head, doubtful.

Oh, E.T., you have no sense of direction, he said.

I cry. I'm not a dog, I can't sniff him out, sight is all I have and blurriness doesn't help my navigation. But Rich is the only one extending outward from the evergreens; the burial coordinator made this decision because, in this orientation, I will be able to rest shoulder-to-shoulder with him, as always, my right leaning into his left.

As if our bodies will be together. As if they were ever apart. I don't know which is true, but right now I want his flesh, not his energy.

Someone left a bouquet on his grave, wrapped with an ecologically-minded straw string. I leave my apple core, and take another loop around Greensprings, meeting a mountain biker, then four hikers. From their expressions, I'm guessing they're here because it's a nature preserve. I'm here because it's a cemetery.

On the way home, I stop at the Verizon office to terminate Rich's cell phone. Dying is easier. But there's no energy in me for hot anger, only a lukewarm pissed off that is gone by the time I'm back at the house.

And I listen on my phone, for the fifth or sixth time, to his last messages to me from Hospice.

Why did I never hear them before, even though I said I did, of course I did?

They began with hope, in the first days, and ended with tears, with Rich crying it's over, it's over, I can't hold on any longer, oh, I love you so much, so much...

Now I'm opening my heart to the love. All the way, now that this heart is ruined.

How else can the moonlight get inside?

Candace

dying is the new living

We begin to look at death...face-to-face...and find that it is our own image reflected back.

--Trudi Jinpu Hirsch-Abramson, Zen Center for Contemplative Care

During the hellish month of June, I wanted Rich to watch a video produced by the Zen Center for Contemplative Care (www.zencare.org/film/film.html). Okay, he said. Me sitting, him leaning on his four-legged cane, the video began.

There are only two feelings, love and fear...we leave because we have some place else to go...coming back to the live moment is the greatest healing...

I pulled over another chair, and Rich sat.

As the words and images caressed us, of a 57-year-old woman dying of cancer, of a burly Zen priest not holding back on tears of compassion -- he looks like he used to make cement overshoes, Rich said -- of Trudi's hand being gripped by a woman near death -- I felt a shift in us.

"Your life is going forward," Rich said. "That's more important than mine."

We held hands, my right in his left, gripped tight.

I could not pull him back into a life reeling backwards. And he was not pulling me into death, the place of no past, no future.

We shared the now, without fear and with love, understanding that there was no separation between living and dying (except one still has laundry and taxes).

I hold onto Rich's photos, his clothes, his imprint on all of me. This is the hurting part, the part that will dissolve into time.

But what is growing -- exponentially, Rich would say -- is an eroding of borders between past and future, between love and fear, between life and death.

Candace

everywhere

Today I returned to Rich's last home. Familiar faces all, furniture the same, view from the Great Room still of pond and fading trees.

We miss him, they say.

I brought a cake, I say. Carrot, his favorite, in appreciation for all you've done.

I have some coffee, hug, smile some, and they tell me return anytime, we miss you.

It was harder than I thought. Everything is.

I appreciate the assurance that Rich is in the trees or in heaven, that he's a butterfly or a breeze, but this is precisely the problem.

Because the world is saturated with the Rich of body and words that are gone, gone.

Even a damn bench, splintery and faded, shouts here was Rich. There he waited for me over five years ago, outside the doctor's office.

"I'm feeling better," he said. "Doing pretty good today."

"Probably nothing, then," I said, the first of the many lies to come.

Twenty minutes later, everything would change when the doctor read the biopsy results.

But on the bench, Rich pulled a bagel out of his attache.

"How did you know?" I asked.

He knew I was hungry. He knew what I always wanted, my default meal.

Today, all I know is that I don't care if Rich is the brightest star in heaven.

Stars don't bring bagels.

Candace

no expectations

Day 8

Eat when hungry. Sleep when tired.

--Zen wisdom

Phone call from the hospice social worker.

"How are you doing?" he asks.

"I'm eating breakfast," I say.

I don't add: An early breakfast, these days. It's only ten in the morning. Dinner ended near midnight, alone. Ditto the night before, with a friend. And the night before that, with another friend.

I'm doing as expected, I say. I don't mention the toilet plunger in the kitchen, not sure why it's there. Or Thunder was six morsels away from starvation, until I remembered to buy another six-pound bag. Or I'm wearing Rich's sweatshirt, four sizes too big, but his hugs are still in it.

He says, yes, it's a dumb question for such an enormous loss.

But what's expected, exactly?

I am paying the bills. I am washing the dishes (the plunger -- because the absurd food disposal is belching again). I am walking, twice as far today as yesterday, my lungs pumping and my legs happily sore.

I am eating when hungry. I am sleeping when tired.

Sometimes I don't eat much. Always I sleep, wouldn't miss a minute because Rich is the star of my dreams, taking me on a tour neither of us signed up for, but what a guide he is.

I have no expectations, mostly.

Except I will never stop loving Rich. Always, this is enough.

Candace

out of shape

Day 7

One week.

I go for a long hike near our former home where we ran and walked thousands of times. Up and down and around the gorge, my heart is pumping, legs burning -- why is this so hard? This was once a warm-up for the day. Ah, I need to get in shape again.

It's been months since I walked this far, this steep. The last time, with Rich --

Damn the memories to hell.

How can Rich be everywhere, but not here?

There are his trousers, braces still attached to their buttons, there are his shoes, neatly ordered by color and function, his socks, everything waiting, waiting...

I'm still sane, but dropping the pretense.

Nothing the mind mumbles can soothe.

Because my heart knows that he's gone, and I'm not sure how it will get into shape again.

Candace