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

coming into focus

The mind rambles backwards, trying to skip over the two months -- and two days -- ago, the past year, the past five years, until it settles on a blurry Rich that doesn't come into focus, and then ricochets back to this time a year ago.

Across the valley are two towers, traditionally alight with two numbers that change at midnight on 1 January. Last year, the "0" remained as the "8" became a "9." We made a habit of watching this, our bodies close (yes, this is the New Year's Eve excitement in our town).

"Will I see this again?" he asked.

"I hope so, love."

He knew what I knew but didn't want to know, and knew better than to expect a real answer.

Rich couldn't imagine not being here, and I couldn't imagine being without him.

But here the body kicks in.

And it proclaims: What's the problem? I'm happy. I'm eating. So much energy! Let's live!

Doesn't it know the loneliness, the missed touches, the empty bed?

For now -- always, really -- I trust the body that feels love, not the mind that seeks what has changed forever.

Candace

paradox

We are one day past the solstice. Humans, from first awareness of this astronomical good news, rejoiced with maximum revelry and minimum sobriety. Even though they also knew: The worst is yet to come. Winter, in this part of the world, is only beginning.

Other mammals aren't fooled. They slow down. They grow more fur. They wait for the sun to be more than an ornament. They aren't troubled by the apparent paradox of more light and more ice, snow, frigid air. They're like Ralph, now listing to his right and pressed against Rich's photo.

But he's missing out on the best part. He will never be human (he's too cute, anyway) until he learns the joy of living as paradox.

Which is more than tolerable. It's pleasure. Because Rich continues to teach me in the way lovers do, with surprise and joy as he leads me into a place I could never have entered without him.

We're both heading home, wherever that may be.

Candace

walden on trial

I have begun re-reading two of my most treasured books: Thoreau's Walden, and Kafka's The Trial. Both I read for the first time on the edge of life, when I was perhaps twelve or thirteen. In one I saw the life that would be mine; in the other, I saw the inexplicable tragedy that life could become -- but it wouldn't happen to me.

I held Thoreau's words to my heart: I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...I did not want...when I came to die, that I had not lived.

A life lived in experiential awareness could not go wrong.

Of course it did, more than once.

Josef K., Kafka's creation, found himself principal actor in a farce morphed into tragedy, which may be entertaining to watch or read but, in this case, it was his life in which "he did nothing truly wrong."

At tonight's bereavement support group, a participant, a widower of two years, challenged me when I said that I do find at least a sliver of joy in each day.

"How is that possible?" he asked. "What do you do?"

Mostly, I said, I don't try to fill the holes with my head. I don't ask questions, and I have no answers.

And I haven't left Walden.

We must learn to reawaken...by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.

Or in our deepest tragedies.

Candace

slumber my darling

Day 50

This is the day I will again put on my wedding ring. So I decide upon awaking. Why not? Others do, even when their lover, their companion, their world is gone. Nothing prohibits this.

First I try Rich's ring on my right hand, middle finger. Too heavy, too big, I can't carry the weight.

Back to mine, then. Right hand, left hand, but I cannot, I cannot, who do I think I am? Not a sham, this I will not let myself be. I toss it back onto the top of Rich's dresser, to be buried among his clean socks and underwear (what will I do with them?) and the blue knit scarf he made for Ralph, a hundred years ago.

This is the day after Rich's Memorial Service, when friends from high school drove four-plus hours through rain and ice to tell of Rich the football lineman, Rich the smart boy who (politely) corrected the math teacher's errors, Rich the nicest guy who never made a big deal of any of it. And the next speaker was one of Rich's colleagues who confirmed everything we all knew, and then a friend who spoke of Rich's faith, one that was light on the theory but heavy on the experiential.

I spoke, too, though I don't remember much of that part. What sticks are those who filled the Great Room at Hospicare, the abundance of food, the laughter, my joy in our shared love.

This is the day when I listen to the CD given to me by Hospicare's music director, who with harp and voice performed at yesterday's service the song she did for Rich through the summer and into autumn...slumber my darling...the night's coming on...you, you are the world to me.

I didn't know about this lullaby. I know what I miss so much, and who I miss, but how much else did I miss along the way?

This is the day I was going to end this blog. But I cannot end it, not yet, because I will miss all of you too much, and I need you with me along the way.

With love,

Candace

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

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

saying it all

Day 5

I was doing fine without tissues. Until I received messages from two high school classmates of Rich's who, on Saturday, celebrated their 40th Reunion. Rich was looking forward to being with them but, as one said, he held on, to be with them as best as he could.

From one:

Many times I mentioned him to friends and co-workers, and I was like 'hey, I know this guy Richard Galik and he's the most brilliant person I ever met, and probably the most brilliant person that ever lived, and I went to school with him and he was in my class, and I graduated with him...'

And from another:

He was definitely the smartest guy I ever met. Even better than that though, he was even a nicer guy than he was smart. That says it all.

I can imagine Rich half-smiling and rolling his eyes at reading these praises, and then telling me stories about what he admired in their lives. What Rich had was a rare quality of not making more of himself than he was, but also not less. And that is how he treated everyone.

Which is good to remember, because in the last years, and especially months, Rich's tumor uncovered pieces of himself which he could not control, and even then he was more concerned how his physical implosion and sadness and anger were eroding my life.

I would apologize, sometimes, to the Hospice staff.

This is not who he is, I would say. He is the sweetest guy, always.

And they said of course, they knew that.

But I need to apologize, too. For those I hurt who, I guessed -- only a guess, I can never be certain -- were hurting him. For those I hurt on these pages. For those who hurt others because I hurt them.

Today I will visit Rich in the meadow, as is my habit, my joy, and my sadness.

Candace

the road goes ever...

Day 4

Yesterday we returned Rich to the earth.

A wet day, clouds hugging the almost-bare trees, a downpour as a friend pulls in the driveway. We're going to the funeral home to be with Rich before his last journey.

Rich is beautiful, wrapped in a muslin shroud, while in the background there's jazz playing.

I like hip funeral homes.

There's no sadness as we touch him, as he touches us. Death is the most meticulous destroyer of separation.

Lisa, the funeral director, and Jim, her assistant, lift Rich into the back of the van.

Jim, a retired school teacher, wants to tell me something. When he saw Rich's death certificate, he had shivers.

"I couldn't believe it," he says. "My father died of chordoma. He was 56 years old."

And all that could be done in those days, he says, was get a diagnosis, and then go home to die.

So, another member of the one-in-millions Chordomite family.

By the time we arrive at Greensprings the rain is light, and soon drops to a drizzle, and then a mist. But the friends keep pouring in, doubling the twenty or twenty-five estimate I gave to Lisa. It's noon in the middle of a workday, and I'm amazed and grateful.

We put Rich on the cart, jogging downhill through a muddy meadow that, when I bought our plots in May, was a wildflower field. Rich is lifted from the cart to the slats covering the grave, and then I say the best words I can.

We lower Rich into the earth. We cover him with pine boughs. I take three shovelfuls of mud and toss them down, and invite everyone to do the same. As I squat at Rich's head and watch this somber slip-slide dance -- no one falls -- there's a thick rectangular stone that calls to me. I get up, and find Jen, Greenspring's burial coordinator.

"That's the one," I tell her.

In a year, when the earth settles, I will have it engraved and plant shrubs or flowers in this soil that is more stone than dirt, yet produces grasses and flowers and evergreens.

Jen puts her hands together at her heart and bows to me. I return the gesture, and notice she and Lisa are crying.

I'm not. I have been, and will, but this is a moment not different than when Rich and I met, 36 years and 2 months ago. For no reason at all, I knew: This is everything.

Rich, then wearing a crewcut and his old Boy Scout shorts -- Eagle Scout, actually -- talked to me about his passion for physics and lacrosse and The Lord of the Rings and there was nothing in this that appealed; all of this was on the opposite side of my world.

But being with this boy made me so happy.

Still does.

And that is why the words I read were his words, a gift from Tolkien. He would post them on my dormitory room door, when we thought our road together was only beginning.

But it was not, just a meeting at one time, one place, and we're still on a road that goes ever on.

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and

errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

Still round the corner there many wait

A new road or a secret gate,

And though I oft have passed them by,

A day will come at last when I

Shall take the hidden paths that run

West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

May Rich's life be a blessing for all the world.

Candace

the last dance

Rich died as the sun was setting on Sunday.

He died in exceptional peace, returning to his Rich-essence, smelling sweet and so, so beautiful.

But how many hearts he has broken, how many tears water his way -- I cannot count. Friends, yes. And the staff with us in Rich's final hours. For Meghan, on duty only a few weeks, this was her first Hospice death, and she began crying when she confirmed what I knew -- no more heartbeat, no more breath, only silence as I rested on his chest.

John, of course, to whom I gave Rich's electric shaver, and who with Meghan and me washed him for the final time, and gently placed his head on the pillow, and covered him with a fresh sheet.

And when the funeral director rolled him out of Room #5 -- the best room, the corner room with view of pond and field and autumnal forest -- I kissed and said good-bye, handsome, I love you so much -- she cried, too.

"You must see this all the time," I told her today, as we made the final arrangements.

Not really, she said. There isn't as much love as you might think.

I write because I'm numb. Because I still don't get that this sort of love isn't everywhere, no big deal.

But now that Rich's body is gone, I don't know what will be left behind, or how explosive grief can be when mixed with high-octane love.

Over the past months, I have taken notes. In the days to come there will be many to thank, many phone calls to be made, many rabbits and mice to kill (that's Thundercat speaking; we all grieve in our own way).

For now, thank you for reading this, for all the past days.

For the future, I plan to continue this blog for 49 more days, as Rich and I move on.

In gratitude,

Candace

ready

A brief note. Rich has one, perhaps two days left. A week, says one optimistic nurse, but she loves him too much. As many do, I realize.

No more words, too weak, except five this morning, said loud and with unfathomable effort. To me, resting on his chest, where I still find a peace more soothing than the goosiest down pillow.

"I-am-ready-to-go."

Yes, I murmur. Thank you. I will miss you so much, so much.

How we live is how we die. And Rich never took on a task he couldn't complete with success and integrity. The last item on the list, checked off.

Tonight I will be sleeping at Hospice, until the end. The staff has arranged for a bed next to Rich, so we can be together one or two more nights.

Then I will go on, ready or not.

Candace

seeing what we wanna

Rich is near death.

Even those who know -- don't.

Theresa, an aide who always tries so hard, says Rich is hungry, he wants dinner, it's eight at night and he hasn't eaten since one...

"I'll take care of it," I say.

Out of the refrigerator she pulls a plastic tub of ravioli, a tub of soft spirally pasta covered in red, and now she's opening the vegetable bin...

"I'll stir fry some vegetables...he probably won't want the ravioli, it's out of a can..."

"The pasta doesn't look much better," I laugh. "Go. You have other things to do. This I can take care of."

I bring the microwaved spirals, a dozen or so, to Rich.

Rich?

That's who I wanna see.

I bring the fork to his lips. Hungry? I whisper.

He doesn't open his eyes. Slightly shakes his head, no.

I eat the dishful, and go back for more.

I once believed that humans can know God, but can never be God.

I could even produce theological proofs.

Now I know what I have always known, but didn't wanna see -- the opposite is true.

During these past months, I occasionally slipped back into, as Stephen Levine writes in A Year to Live, the "recognizable neighborhood, no matter how unsatisfying." And too limiting, and too small, and Rich isn't going to see Jesus or Buddha or Einstein (well, maybe).

He is going to see himself.

Then why Rich's broken-hearted sense of defeat and anger that is interpreted by some who visit as "now peaceful"?

Because he can't yet see, and sadness is not the same as peacefulness, and we see who we hope we are, not who Rich is.

And why my nauseating grief?

Because I know this neighborhood, in which all of the world was mine.

And I don't wanna leave.

Candace

who he is

Because I know myself very well, it is difficult to say who I am. -- Taiso Eka

"I am dessert," Rich says.

"That sounds profound," I say. "Or it may mean nothing. Not everything incomprehensible is profound. Or true."

He closes his eyes.

He has better things to do than listen to my gobbledygook. Trying to cough up phlegm, for one, but he doesn't have the strength, and I rub my fingers over his neck, feeling the bulge of the tumor growing, growing, remembering back five years when we first noticed this and thought, oh, just a misalignment of muscles, just nothing, nothing.

Rich came to know the name of what was inside of him. He tried to understand it with precise charts and measurements and CDs on file. But he never became his illness. As he never became what did not matter.

"Professor of Physics," I tell the funeral director when she asks for his work, his position. This is needed for the death certificate.

"He would gag," I then say. "Rich was not his title."

And he would be suspicious of any student that insisted on saying doctor, or professor, and not calling him by his name.

"We're colleagues," he would say. "I just know, maybe, a little more."

Truly, he knew himself very well.

Now, I don't know what he knows. He has entered what Zen masters call the "empty field," the incomprehensible place that can be touched in meditation where there is no object, no goal, yet liberates all desires, all "self-ness," all that is not.

Rich didn't do meditation. But as I watch the tumor swell and listen to his rasping breath and hold on to what still is, I know that he is far ahead of me in a place that is incomprehensible.

And true.

Candace

a new script

The tasks are narrowing. To one big one, and that accomplished today. Funeral arrangements, now set. I wonder why this is bearable.

Afterward, I go to Rich, and I close the door on the world. For a little while longer, it will be "us."

Two days ago, the Hospice "Women Singing" group gathered in the Great Room. Rich was in his chair, eyes half shut, but still eating a dozen forkfuls of a pasta casserole, a thin wedge of quiche, a few crackers.

As they waited for others, the women talked among themselves, and I looked at Rich. I knew exactly, word for word, what he would say.

He did, exactly.

"Men wouldn't be giggling."

Of course not, I agreed. They would be doing more important things while waiting, such as planning a war.

Rich nodded, approvingly.

I never was much for giggling and Rich never was much for war -- except when ruthlessly playing Risk -- but we had our script for almost every circumstance, playing the parts that made us laugh.

Today the words are cut further, limited to I love you and I love you too, as he grips me with his left hand and moves in and out of sleep. No food today, no juice, he doesn't leave the bed.

"Your eyes are still so blue," I say. "Ocean and sky, together."

He opens them, and looks at me.

"I'm ocean and sky," he says.

So this is why I can still laugh (not giggle).

But this is why I also cry.

Candace

open door

I marked Saturday as a day of rest. Visiting Rich, preparing some food, a walk, paying bills, some cleaning, some learning, perhaps write, a list for the coming week -- nothing more, just a day of rest.

I received what I needed.

I was flat-on-back sick, doing none of what I planned except drinking tea and eating some food, none of which I could taste.

A bug, I know; but I prepared a good home with an unlocked door. What this bug saw -- okay, I know viruses don't "see" but this is metaphor, just metaphor -- were Times Square-sized lights: NO ONE HOME.

For the Saturday and the days following (though, slowly, bug's bags are packing) I have been trying to move back. No -- not back. There's no place to go back to, as much as I feel and fantasize. Who I once was is gone, what I once thought can't be tasted, and although this has happened so many times before -- every day, a little -- holding on to what isn't prevents digesting what is.

What is: Rich is dying, perhaps slower than expected but it doesn't matter much if it is tomorrow or next month or even later. It will be too soon, and I won't be ready, and he surely isn't. Neither one of us is ready to open the door, even if there is no lock.

Candace

before the gate

At the end of the second century there lived in Babylonia a Talmudic scholar named Abba Arika, who came to be known simply as "Rav." He left many glorious quotes on how to live, and how to approach death, of which one is my favorite:

Man will be called before the judgment seat of God to give an account for every legitimate pleasure he denied himself in this world.

I have been thinking about these matters. We are not here to seek suffering, but to uncover and share the joy that we may call our soul, our essence, our God.

These are, in the Jewish tradition, the Days of Awe. In two days, Yom Kippur begins, the holiest of days because on this day the accounts come due, the gate closes, and our soul, our essence, our God answers the big question: In the year to come, who will live? And who will die?

Rich shall not live. But neither shall he die.

Because a gate has something on the other side. Maybe it's about the law of conservation of energy -- what is created cannot be destroyed. Where Rich is going is where he once was, and will be again, and in the time in-between he gave others the pleasure of his work, myself the pleasure of his love, and never denying that his life was so, so blessed.

And he enjoyed good Scotch whisky, single malt preferred.

Rav would be pleased. I expect God will, too.

May we all have a sweet year,

Candace