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