This is How You Heal

Arriving (M.A. Reilly, Over the Atlantic Years Ago)

I.

In the year after his death, broken from its moorings, my body no longer felt like mine.  Adrift, I felt legless. Yes, I lifted an arm to take down the tea cup. I pressed an arm against the doorway. I moved in the world with a mindlessness that kept the separate, broken parts of me together.  The limbs I once knew for 56 years propelled me into the world where I least wanted to go and where I was most desperate to escape to.

Sorrow weighs and now I see it is more anchor than burden.

II.

Three years have passed and sorrow lifts like the first rays of morning sunlight across the sea. I am home in this body again, different than I was before. But aren't we all moving to stay whole?  Isn't that the impetus in life?

Here's a truth to hold close in those early days when you most want to distance yourself from the pain of loss. Sorrow does lift and you lift it with the grace of something you could not know before.

#SOL17: What Sorrow Reveals

An Offering (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

I thought grief was an experience to move through, like a figure walking through calendar pages amassing new understandings that would ease and redefine the pain. Grief does not yield to time as I first thought. It is impervious to calendars as it has never been a linear matter. Rather,  grief is more fluid, less borderlands. It unfolds and refolds new landscape and old triggers revealing what was cherished, forgotten, lost, and remembered. It is both sweet and bitter.

Most everything animate is a trigger. A couple out walking. The call of birds from trees. The rustle of wind through leaves. The change of seasons. The random mention of John Cage on a radio show. Most everything inanimate is a trigger too. Every read book in a house built from books. The creak of a stair. A found post it note wedged in the back of a drawer. The forty journals left behind. The brush used to lather when shaving. The anticipation that still arrives with Friday evenings.  Habit is the largest trigger.

There has not been a day since Rob's death when some recollection has risen sharply and reminded me of what Rob can no longer experience. Life pulses on. Perhaps that has been the hardest to accept--the grand indifference of life and this understanding of how life presses on has allowed me a few insights.

1. Feelings are not truths, nor are they doors into the future. They are quick moments of the present that tell me: I will not die from this loss regardless of the sharp awareness that still happens when the enormity of the loss swamps me. Time does not avert the flood of feeling, although it does reduce its duration.
2. Acceptance is a choice and perhaps more importantly, a practice. Each matters. Choosing to accept Rob's death is also choosing to accept responsibility for my life. Practice at each is often far more deliberate than how I lived previously. 
3. In the span of five months,  life as I knew changed dramatically. Loss like this can happen again. The best antidote to such uncertainty is to live and love deliberately, beginning with my son. 
4. Love remains solid, informing after Rob's death. Love did not die. Knowing I have been so well loved centers me each day. Rob's love continues in the absence of his corporeal self. I remain the most loved person on this planet as I carry with me the love that formed me. I did not know that such a gift would be revealed as sorrow edged.

#SOL17: Noah and the Raven

Today's slice of life grew out of a painting I did in a journal. I stared at it for a while and the story emerged. A year after Rob's death brings the knowledge that I am responsible for my own life. It isn't the acceptance of his death that I now struggle with. Rather it is the acceptance of the life that rests in my hands and what I am making of it.  

from my art journal (digital remix - 3.22.17)

#SOL17: Half Song, Half Mourning Cry

I.

After the death, in the months that follow, a sudden and lingering sorrow reforms the body.

Whose arms are these?
Whose legs?
Whose heart beats here?

We are not who we were. We will not be again.


II.

It was nothing less than shock and terror that I felt as Rob and I waited for my older brother to bring Devon to the hospital. We waited on that too-cold, too-blue Wednesday in mid February after hearing that Rob's prognosis was now terminal.

Terminal. Nothing could be done to prolong his life, save hooking him into machines that would breathe for him--a pathway Rob rejected immediately. No machines.


III.

While we were learning that his dad had but a few weeks left of life, Devon was 20 miles away moving through his regular morning classes at high school. Moving through the routine of school. That morning I had arrived at the hospital after dropping Devon at school and was surprised when I ran into the oncologist as he had been away on holiday and was not supposed to be back until later in the week. He asked to meet with us at 8 in Rob's room. In the step-down unit it was quiet. Even the attending and residents who moved from room to room seemed more of a murmur than the loudness that typified such teaching. We waited that morning in the narrow, undersized room. Dr. Gallinson arrived with another doctor and told us quickly that the cancer had spread and that Rob's prognosis was now terminal.

What about immunotherapy? asked Rob.  He had been scheduled to receive his first treatment the week earlier but could not because he had been running a fever.

It would not be effective as the cancer has progressed, Dr. Gallinson told us.

The cancer had spread to Rob's spleen and liver, ribs and sternum, and both lungs. It was aggressive and nothing more could be done. He then explained about palliative care and we agreed that being out of the mainstream hospital would be better. The goal, however, was to bring Rob home. As he was hooked up to a high flow oxygen machine we learned that he would need to be taken off of that before he could leave. That process took another week. On February 17, 2016 Rob came home.

But on that Wednesday, we waited in the undersized and narrow room uncertain what we might say to our son. What words might we find that could somehow explain to our just-turned 17-year-old child that his dad was dying and had a few weeks left?  What words were there?

IV.

To this day I don't know what we said or who spoke first.  What I do know is that my brother, Jack, Jane and Rob's mother left the room so that only Devon, Rob and I were left. What I mostly recall is the awful keening sound Devon made as he collapsed onto his father.

Half-mourning song.
Half-mourning murmur.

More breath expelled than wail.

To cry loudly, deeply requires a strength none of us had. We were worn, tired and so sad.


V.

After great sorrow, we are never what we were. We are stories--stories that we must tell.

#SOL17: It Is In Your Hands

What is Written (M.A. Reilly, Tuscany, 2009)

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.                     

                                            - Toni Morrison, 1993  

I.

It is never quite as simple as missing him.

It isn't until the late 15th century that regret works its way into the definition. Before that missing was more about failing to get what you wanted. 

And then regret showed up.


II.

Missing is too anemic a posture. Too sterile. Too boxed-up-pretty. 
Too wrong. 

I don't simply miss Rob. I wish it could be that simple. That kind.


III.

Sometimes when my language shows its limits, it also brings to light a deeper syntax and for a moment I notice how interchangeable wishing and feeling are. How they obfuscate as they reveal. 

Most everything is moveable and mute.


IV. 

Grief is more tacit than not. More implicit than voiced. Even as scores of writers attempt to codify grief with their memoirs and remembrances or fill pages with the strict talk of psychological stages and loose advice--the desperate pain that has broken and re-formed my body's too-slim bones, still resists the easy metaphors about time and roller coasters, waves and shore.


V. 

Once upon a time 
all the king's horses 
and all the king's men 
and even Humpty himself 
knew that missing was never a consideration.


VI.

Yesterday I was rereading Toni Morrison's Nobel lecture. It's been at least ten years, if not longer, since I last took a look. This time it was the repetition of what rests in hands and the space the narratives open that caught my heart. It was the stories that get made between the old woman and the group of young people as they circle each other, equally blind and seeing, that moved me, that forged a path through these multiple narratives to arrive at the end when the old woman says to the young people (and us)

Finally...I trust  you now. I trust you with the bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it. Look. How lovely it is, this thing we have done - together." 

VII.

In the last hour of Rob's life I clasped his hand between both of mine and held. I held and murmured words, bits of phrases that sounded like, Let go. Find peace. We'll be okay. Let go. 

A litany of half poems, half prayers. I was anchoring him, not to this earth, not to our time together, but to something more enduring than our hands, our bodies, our selves. 

I was wrapping him and me in this story I am telling so that when he crossed from here to there he would do so feeling the touch of his wife, his lover, his best friend. Feeling until what was earthly gave way to what would be next.


VIII.

What was within our hands then was unnamable in that late afternoon light. I remember those last minutes. The rough sound of his breathing. The way his jaw unlocked, loose like the lift of a bird finding new flight. 

A wild bird lifting.


IX. 

I don't remember lifting my phone and making a photograph of my dying husband--one I found this week. One I must have taken sometime during that last hour when the rose colored towel was beneath his head that rested on the pillow I now sleep with each night.


X.

Do I miss him? Could love ever be so ephemeral? So fleeting?


XI.

Imagine a story you know by heart. One you love more than the words you use to tell it. It is a story that has transcended the language in which you think. It is a story that lacks meaning.

Now, imagine what it costs to willingly open your hands and release that story, that man, your heart.


XII.

That story was never mine alone and it is this connection that sources beauty and pain as it touches me here, now.


XIII.

What is not in my hand now is what I most trust.


XIV.

I didn't, perhaps couldn't, know what we caught as we lived and languaged each day. What we made.


XV.

I didn't know what I sealed between his and mine hands as he crossed from here to there. 

I didn't know it would be this simple act of love that would sustain me a year later and would allow me to say here and now--that this thing we made together was truly lovely.

Mary Ann's One Little Word for 2017

from my art journal, January 1, 2017 (gesso, water based markers and crayons, pencil, digital remix)

I. 

2016 saw the loss of my husband, my partner, the father of our child. It felt as if one minute we were planning a holiday to Maine and the next I was planning a funeral. I would like nothing more than to say that 10 months later, I am all healed, but that simply isn't true--no matter how much I might have once wished it to be so. 

My one little word for 2017 is heal. It is a word that represents both goal and process. To heal means to restore to health. It derives from the Old English word, hǣla, which also means to make whole. 

I am more parts than whole. 

II. 

Sometimes this loss feels like an amputation. There is an emptiness that (in)forms my life--deep holes I cannot seem to fill. I know Rob is dead and yet I find myself anxious to get home at the end of a work day. For decades, I arrived home with the certain knowledge that my husband would be there. My voice would ring out expecting to hear his answering call. My body would anticipate meeting his body. My eyes would seek his above the edge of the newspaper he was lowering. There is no getting over such a loss. 

I am lost.

III.

Nothing about grief is simple or straight forward save the way sorrow rises up and strikes unexpectedly. Friends ask how I am doing and having just gotten through the holiday season, our 26th wedding anniversary, and each of our birthdays in the span of 6 weeks, the most I can say is that I know where my feet are and I am standing. Some days this is enough.   Now that the shock is mostly gone and acceptance is more the norm, I can feel how worn out I am, how emotionally spent I feel. It has been such a long 16 months.

I am weary.

IV. 

Within such turmoil there are moments where the rich life Rob and I made across these last few decades is revealed.These noticings surprise and comfort as they show newer understandings of love--ones I could not have known had it not been for my marriage and this loss. 

Love steadies. It steadies the oscillating nature of grief and shows me the resiliency within.

I am mending.

V. 

Heal--my one little word for 2017. A word I can return to again and again as I work through the pain and dislocation of heart and spirit. That's it. Just heal. And frankly, that is enough.

#SOL 16: Now

Rob showing Devon how to work his first camera. We were in the Redwood Forest in late December.

I.


When someone knows sorrow--sorrow others could well experience, feeling relieved that such loss does not have your name written on it is natural.  I was listening to Kim Snyder, the director of the documentary film, Newtown speak a few weeks ago and I remembered that guilty feeling that arose when the horror of Newtown first happened. I thanked God my then 13-year-old son was alive and not touched by such misery. I was relieved to not be any of those parents. This did not stop me from feeling for those families, wondering across these last four years about them and their slain children.

II.


A few weeks ago, a woman anticipating a first wedding anniversary expressed sorrow about the death of my husband.  Her expression was timid and she explained how she felt uncomfortable about her joy given my recent loss. This surprised me for I so keenly believe in love. To have been loved so well by Rob makes belief in love easy. Yes, this loss is life altering and as such there are now certain closures and openings to my life that are uncharted. No map exists.  But honestly, no map ever did.

Love has a way of shaping reality, softening ambiguity, curbing disappointment, allowing us the pretense of an endless life.  For in the glory of love time functions without borders, curves and folds as we need, as we desire.


III.

We have this moment.  Among those who know such sorrow, the value of the present is not lost.

#SOL16: Sorrow at 7 Months

from my art journal Sept, 2016 (gesso, ink, acrylic paint, pan pastel, stabilo pencil)

When Rob was first diagnosed and I understood how dire it was, I would calm myself by saying, "It's okay. You can still touch him. He's here." I would repeat those words over and over, soothing myself by holding the fear that surfaced in abeyance. He was still here. I could reach out and touch him. And when the time came, when we were told that his prognosis had changed from at least another year to live to terminal in three weeks, I no longer needed a mantra. His needs consumed me and my fear was subdued by shock and answering that need. My husband was not going to his death without me holding him up as much as humanly possible. I would make the last month of his life whatever he needed. I'm uncertain if there has ever been a time in my life in which I had such clarity.

Tonight I am wishing that I would have memorized each and every encounter, gesture, touch, word we exchanged those last few months of his life. A year ago, Rob was in the hospital having been diagnosed with the first of three staph infections. He would be hospitalized for twelve days--it would mark the longest time we had ever been apart in 28 years. He would be home for less than four weeks before returning to the hospital because an abscess had formed in his chest from the staph that had not been treated correctly.  Then he would be in the hospital for another fourteen days. He wouldn't come home this time until the night before his birthday. He would stay home through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and our 25th wedding anniversary before being rushed to the hospital the morning of December 30 because he could no longer walk. As we waited for the ambulance to arrive he told me he feared he would not be coming home again. Fifty days later he would come home and one day shy of three weeks, he would die.

I know these dates like I know my name. And now it is another fall and I think of all that my husband will not experience. I'm wishing that I could replay, like a film, each moment during the last six months of his life so I might savor what has been lost--substitute the film for the emptiness I know now.

I miss my husband's touch, his voice, the weight of his arm wrapped around my shoulder. I miss the certainty that came when he would lightly grip the back of my neck and pull me closer for a kiss. I miss the smell of him, his feet touching mine in bed, his boisterous laugh, and our late night talks. I miss our shared love for our son, how we knew the other's thoughts, the times he played guitar. I miss getting dinner ready together, dancing together, coming downstairs in the morning and finding him at the kitchen table with The Times spread out before him and his hand wrapped around the Black Dog Cafe mug--the same one we bought when Dev had just turned three and we had spent a week on holiday on Martha's Vineyard. I miss talking shop, commuting together, trying out a new theory, reading aloud the rough draft of an article, and hearing him read a poem aloud. I miss seeing him through the viewfinder of my camera tangled up with Dev or years earlier our dog, Max. I miss our many road trips, our travel around the world. I miss watching him with Devon, how they would lean heads together and talk. I miss our future and how we planned to travel across the country making art and writing. He was always after me to make a photography book about learning at school.

This afternoon Dev and I were at a diner when I looked up at a TV and realized for the first time that it is football season. The only time our television was on was when Rob would try to convince me and Dev how great the Giants were going to be that year. I'd sit next to him during the games and read-watch and he'd shout at the TV and cheer. Usually Sunday dinner would be cooking and I'd time it so that we could eat at halftime or after the first game. When his dad was alive Rob would call down to Florida and they'd rehash the game.

This past weekend, Devon submitted an application to the college he hopes to attend next year. His college essay about a critical incident that helped him to mature brought laughter and tears.  Next week Dev will take his driver's test. This past weekend Dev and friends went to Brooklyn for a gaming tournament--just a few blocks from Brooklyn Tech, Rob's old high school. So many firsts that Rob is not here to see. I mourn not only my loss, but my son's loss and as time moves on, all that my sweet husband is no longer here to experience.

How do I carry on knowing the loss is so immense? An ocean of sorrow that does not end. Where might I tuck such grief?  In whose pocket might sorrow reside? Seven months have past since Rob's death and the world is no less certain than it was when he was alive, it just feels that way.

#SOL16: Seek Its Name

from my art journal, 9.28.16  (acrylic paint, pan pastel, marker, stabilo pencil) 

"...weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

I. 

"Would you have a silver Sharpie?" a friend of my son's asks this morning. It's not quite 7:30 and soon Devon and some friends will be off to Brooklyn for a gaming tournament. Apparently silver Sharpies work best for signing the oversized badge each wears. 

"Silver?  I'm not sure," I say as I head downstairs to check a supply of materials we have for workshops. Instead of heading into the garage though, for reasons I don't know, I stop at Rob's desk. And there, right in view, is an oversized pencil case--unzipped--and I can see it is stuffed with Sharpies. Just Sharpies. I carry it upstairs and as I do I begin to look through, finding the silver-inked pen. 

Early in the summer, I began to go through some of Rob's things in his office and so overwhelmed, I stopped.  It simply was too hard to do. So much of our lives were entwined and work was certainly not an exception. His desk is largely as he left it nearly 14 months ago and now I'm grateful that I waited--for finding the pens this morning was a small, pleasant gift--almost as if he had been here, helping out. 

II. 

Today is a better day and I'm not sure why. Today, reminders of Rob don't blindside me, but rather offer comfort. I wish I knew how this all works--how one day's reminder is a wave that nearly drowns me and the next may be nothing more than a slight pull, an undertow that reveals what I did not know had been hidden years before. A love note unexpectedly found on a rainy afternoon.

Perhaps sorrow and grace are more kin than not--allowing what is deep in us to rise up, seek its name. And naming is what these last 14 months have largely been. A rising up of that which I did not know, but intuited. 

And I do know things now. Dark things and light. Each present in the breath I take and exhale, in the memories that undulate shaped by tremor and joy. I know what comes only when the heart is shattered, when loss is bone deep, when you are compelled to watch your own son's delicate heart take shape. And what I am learning is not mired in grief and sorrow, even if these sourced it, even if these seem to have replace the very blood in my veins. 

III.

On that last day, I grasped Rob's right hand between both of mine, watching as his jaw unhinged, grew slack. He was a too wild bird seeking flight, finding it in that last moment of breath, defining wholeness in a way I simply had not known.

"There is in all things...a hidden wholeness," Thomas Merton tells us and that is what I am learning this last year--how to discern that hidden wholeness within.  Nothing has been as profound.  Even in, or perhaps especially in the mundaneness of our common lives, we too are wild birds seeking flight, compelled to live, to seek a wholeness to heal our divided selves.

Yeats was right. Things do fall apart; centers do not hold and out of that "twenty centuries of stony sleep" are loss and an occasion to seek wholeness.

#SOL16: Time

I.

Watercolor on Yupo Paper (August 2016)

I wonder how long it will be? How much time needs to pass before I no longer feel that sickening shock when I acknowledge that Rob has died. And it is shock--not that he is dead, but rather that he died. I realize that those might seem like the same statement, but they are not. I still can't believe that someone so good, so young has died. Yesterday I was food shopping when I felt my stomach sour as I realize that the package of fig bars I had just put in my cart I didn't need. It was something only Rob loved--something I would routinely buy for him. There are habits of the heart and habits of the body we cannot outrun.

II.

Yesterday, I felt blindsided--unprepared for the sadness that felt so heavy. I was shaky at times as if the adrenaline I felt was an untapped river flowing. I hadn't experienced this since the end of last April--almost two months after Rob's death. And last night I thought how the more time moves along the harder it all seems to feel.

Time passing is hardly reliable.

III.

A few nights ago Devon and I sat together talking about his dad. It was a tough, emotional evening. We made some time to just talk about what Rob has meant to each of us.  I mentioned how intense the feelings of loss suddenly are again and Dev reminded me what I had told him shortly after Rob died. I said then that the intensity of feeling doesn't ebb much over time, but the duration and frequency does.  I was telling Devon how I felt after my mom's death and he reminded me of those words again last night.

Time bends, he said. What's longer: A year? A day? 28 years?  Time is relative. It's how you spend that time that gives it shape.  We're lucky to have had the time we did with Dad.  You've said this to me. You lived so much. You and dad didn't wait to live. 

No, we didn't and I am grateful, I tell him. But truly I wanted another 28 years.

IV.

These days I know that gratitude doesn't remove sorrow.  It may soften it a bit, but sorrow remains like a river flowing. Sorrow is more aquifer than pool. It moves beneath me as I walk through each day, surfacing at breaking points, yet always present. 

#SOL16: Rereading

I did something I thought I would not do.  Last night I reread earlier posts written this past February and March. I read just a handful of posts--not in the order they were written, not one after the next, but rather I read randomly selected posts. I alternated between rereading and crying some and throughout the sick feeling that was more norm than not all through those months returned. And with it some insight.

Rob at home before we knew he was so sick. 

Rob before a 7-hour VAT Surgery, end of Aug. 2015

Rob using oxygen at home in Sept. 2015

My husband suffered in the last 6 weeks of life--he suffered more than I had recalled. Confused, frightened, in debilitating pain he moved from being mostly present to being largely absent from the here and now. And though there is no finality like death, I realize as I reread that I had been losing Rob in bits and pieces throughout the winter and I wonder did he understand this loss of self, too? While Rob was home for the last three weeks of his life, I took photo after photo of him while he mostly slept.

Rob in October 2015, right before chemo treatment

Rob in the hospital after surgery in Nov. 2015

 

Rob at home in late December 2015

Rob in ICU in January 2016

   

Rob in Palliative Care in February 2016

Rob at home a few days before he died, March 2016

I was obsessed with framing him, as if the click of a shutter might somehow preserve the most animated man I have ever known. Now when I find courage to look at some of these images, I feel profound sadness and loss. The man captured barely resembles my husband. I had forgotten so much of those days and for the first time my love for Rob is less selfish and though I miss him more than breathing, I would not want him back given his agonizing death. No one should ever have to relive such misery. In his passing--I want to believe that he achieved both solace and peace.

Rob holding our new dog , Max--years ago

At first, after Rob died and for several months beyond I saw in my mind Rob as he had been as he neared death. I visualized Rob's final minutes on earth over and over and over again. And so as I looked at images of Rob from those last few weeks, I was surprised to see how little the man pictured actually looked like Rob.  This is important as I understood that without much notice I had stopped seeing Rob only as he existed as he neared death and instead had begun to think of him in earlier times when the threat of death was unknown.

Five months have past and I still find myself thinking how unreal all of this last year has been. Shock is no simple matter. Shock is more like Bach's permutation fugue. No exposition, just a collection of thematic fragments that occur and at times, reoccur.

I find myself wondering, still:

How could my husband have died? What happened to spring? How could the world have lost such a fine, fine man? Is the summer light brighter than in previous years? Where did he go? How can Dev and I be making new memories without Rob? Are birds carriers of the spirit of the dead? Where is heaven? Is Rob living in a parallel universe? Does he exist at the edge of where my fingers grasp--just out of reach? How do I live as Rob directed? What does it mean to live brilliantly? How could he leave me? How could he not? How will Devon fare? 

And so on.

Meaning gives dimension to sorrow--allows us to know it's size and shape. But with Rob's death, there is no meaning, no given dimension, no box to contain sorrow that grows as if it has only known spring. Grief is boundless, subdued now and then by love.

#SOL 16: Moving through Grief

from my art journal, 6.19.16 - The Wisest Know Nothing
(stabilo pencil, gesso, acrylic paint, newspaper)

Grieving is largely days of normalcy punctuated by deep sorrow which gives way to feeling sad. Sometimes the triggers are known, like yesterday was Father's day, and sometimes the triggers are not. When grief sets in, I feel like I have been lying most days, faking this life I am making without Rob. Pretending that the loss is manageable when the loss feels so huge. This is what yesterday was like. This depth of sorrow feels as if I might die and no one can fill what has been lost, make me whole again. No one, except myself. And so, I also knew that the feelings would dissipate and I would feel differently again. I knew this because I have been through this pain before and I have marked it, named it. I knew even when I was sobbing that I would feel more normal than not, just not at the moment.

So what do I do when sorrow is deep?  I feel sorry for myself for awhile and I don't will away the tears.  But I don't allow feeling sorry for too long. It simply isn't helpful. In fact, feeling sorry for myself fuels the hurt. When I remember this and can identify what I'm doing as feeling sorry for myself, I get moving and doing instead.

Yesterday I meditated before anyone was awake in the house and then Jane and I hiked before she left to return home.  I prepped a few pages in my art journals with gesso and I wrote and posted on this blog. Writing helps me to name what I don't know I'm actually thinking. Naming is powerful.

Later in the day I suggested to Devon that we go visit my brothers and Dev drove us north for our visit and got a little highway driving under his belt (he did very well). Being with my brothers is bittersweet as it is still strange to see them and not have Rob there.  Yet, we talked and as we did the grip that was tightening around my stomach eased. When we got home I made dinner and Dev and I ate and talked as we do most nights. I did laundry, watered plants, cleaned the kitchen, and I felt really sad throughout most of it.  Now and then I came across something of Rob's and cried a bit. Later in the night, I returned to painting with the idea of painting what I was feeling. The result I have posted here: The Wisest Know Nothing.  Like writing, making art also helps to ease the pain.

When I was ready to sleep and had turned off lights, I felt a bright blue light cover me.  Yes, cover me. I thought at first this must be because I had moved from light to darkness but I know not to doubt what I do not know. Watching Rob die and listening to what he had to say as he edged closer and closer to death has taught me that mysteries abound and that we cannot know all there is--all the possibilities simply through our five senses.  During the night I recall waking and for the first time, feeling as if Rob was lying next to me. This was so comforting.

Today feels more normal than sorrowful. I woke, meditated and wrote. For today, this is enough.

#SOL16: Your House Stands

Dust of Snow (M.A. Reilly 2014)

I. 

The death of my husband unseated a sense of sureness that once framed the place I know as home. Now home feels less permanent, less safe. Where I live now, sorrow grows like trees, deep rooted with leaves that silver as if rain might be expected. Sometimes I'm filled with expectations about the new life I am making, but these moments are inconsistent. Rather, pain anchors me and just when I think I've given name to this sorrow it shows up donned in some new garb. 

Yesterday, it was the unexpected Yes song, "And You and I" that came on the radio. It wasn't just the song that stirred a deep unease. It was also the memory of hearing Rob talk about the purity of Jon Anderson's voice and as I remembered I was transported back to the townhouse we shared in Fort Lee nearly 30 years ago and I could still feel the warmth of sunlight which filtered each morning through the windows in the room where we each wrote. There, we could see the very tip to the George Washington Bridge and what I see mostly is how impossibly young we were. 

Two days ago, I was at home when the phone rang. On the other end of the line was an art therapist I had met when Rob was in Morristown Hospital. She was phoning to return art work Rob had made in January and she asked to speak with him. Whereas I can now write that Rob died without erasing it, getting my voice to utter the same phrase destroys me. My breath gives out.  It is these types of surprises that trigger the understanding of what absence feels like. My Rob is no longer here. Today it was an unmarked envelope that came addressed to me in the mail.  I opened it and found Rob's art that he had made while on the oncology floor of the hospital that the art therapist had returned.

II.

Profound sorrow is bone deep and terribly known.  Earlier this morning I was reading Bonnie's latest letter to her husband, Tuvia and her words helped me to realize that it is the familiar that is so difficult to contend with when the one you love is gone so permanently. The familiar foregrounds the absence, the tragedy. The field shifts. And most everything is unsteady. And here's the thing: there's no place to hide.  There's no way out of this.  There is only living each day, each moment. Trying to make sense of the the senseless.

III.

Tonight I'm thinking about safety and pain and desire and the way sunlight moves across carpet when I come across the Rilke poem, "Entrance."  He writes:

Entrance 

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Whovever you are: step out in to the evening  

out of your living room, where everything is so known; 

your house stands as the last thing before great space: 

Whoever you are. 

With your eyes, which in their fatigue can just barely  

free themselves from the worn-out thresholds, 

very slowly, lift a single black tree  

and place it against the sky, slender and alone.  

With this you have made the world. And it is large  

and like a word that is still ripening in silence.  

And, just as your will grasps their meaning,  

they in turn will let go, delicately, of your eyes . . .

Rilke's words remind me of the tenuousness of safety and how in many ways my house--this home I made with Rob "stands as the last thing before great space."  Rob told me to live brilliantly after his death and I suspect doing so will require me to walk out beyond the borders of home into unmarked, unnamed space. 

I'll get there. Just not tonight.  For now, the weight of the wedding band Rob placed on my finger so many years ago, feels right. Necessary.