#SOL16: Dear Rob

Rob at 34.

A letter to my husband that I will read to him when the time feels right. Or perhaps this letter will find its way to a parallel universe where Rob will read it and recall.

Dear Rob,

It's March. I did not think you would see this new month begin. This morning I am oddly thinking about the end of my dissertation, recalling  the Edward Said quote I closed the work with. You know the one where he writes that we are well past the beginning before we recognize it as such. That feels important somehow, although I couldn't say why. One thing, of many, you taught me was to trust my tacit knowledge. I know more than I can say and these months supporting you as you battled cancer and now accepting death have taught me that again.

Me at 35

This morning, as I sit next to you I am sipping tea and watching you sleep. I hear the soft repetitive moans you make as you breathe and I know you are working through leaving--and it is so much harder than I had thought. But how could we know? We who have been so busy living fully, loving sweetly (and not), raising Devon. Is it any surprise that we did not stop to wonder about death; to speculate about endings save the one way off in the future when we were both very, very old? And perhaps that has been for the better.  Had we known that you had less than 2 decades to live when we adopted Devon, how might that terrible knowledge have colored us, shaped what we valued, loved, failed at? Would we have been the risk takers we are? The parents we are? The lovers and friends? I suspect not and it's hard anyway to think of you as conservative or cautious.

I want you to know that I plan to use images I make from your many notebooks in new art collages. I am hoping you would approve and think you would. Making, I was recently told is how I will survive your death.  That and being a mother.

These last two weeks where your hold on the earth has been less tethered have been difficult. And just when I think I have lost you for good--that you have truly forgotten me, forgotten us, forgotten where you are--you wake and motion me to you, take my hand, and tell me, "I love you so much. More than you can know." You tell me to protect Devon, love him for you and though I think I have loved you so greatly before, I find that my love for you grows even more.

These last few months watching you valiantly live and struggle to die have been the most significant of my life. You humble me.

Your wife,
Mary Ann

#SOL16: I've Been to Sea Before

I've Been to Sea Before (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

I.

50 days ago when Rob left home for the hospital, I could not know, nor anticipate the changes we all are going through, and that the man who would return home today would be so dramatically different from the one who left. What strikes me most as I look at him now asleep in the hospital bed that has been set up in our family room is the immense difference those 50 days have wrought.  How did I not see this?

He has been sleeping since he arrived home this afternoon and refuses to wake up. Seeing him here again surrounded by all that is so very familiar emphasizes the somber differences.  My husband is leaving and there is nothing I can do to stop it--to stop his death. 

(There I have written it and what does it help?)

II.

I feel a bit foolish thinking how I fretted so this morning at the supermarket. 7:30 a.m. and there I was giving great thought to the foods I would make for Rob, forgetting that he doesn't eat like he once did, nor certainly the three smaller meals a day with wholesome snacks in between that typified his diet prior to this last hospital stay.  Before, cooking whole grain foods, giving him fresh fruits cups and julienned vegetables, and making sure that each meal had some protein comprised a good portion of my day.  I thought if I did it all just right, held up my bargain with God, that somehow this would make the difference. Tonight I know I have failed. God failed too. 

How can the world let this good man die? 


III.

Each night the three of us ate together and I spent hours talking with Rob, listening to him read aloud pages from Palle Yourgrau's A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein, or a poem, or a section from the NY Times, or a page from a Korean Zen book he said I most needed hear.  

"You need to take care of yourself, better," he'd warn me. "I am.""No, you're really not. You are too much in your mind."

Rob's Zen Bowl.

And it was such a conversation that led us to the ritual of Rob reading aloud from Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn. As I opened it tonight to read, I find a folded piece of paper Rob must have inserted 2 months ago and I touch the paper as if it were some type of communion. A host that binds us.


I begin reading one of the letters near where we left off:  

Your mind is like the sea. When the wind comes, there are very big waves. When the wind dies down, the waves become smaller and smaller until finally the wind disappears altogether and the sea is like a clear mirror...When you keep a clear mind, the whole universe is you, you are the universe.

Tonight I am all big waves and sick, sick stomach. 
Tonight I am extremes. 

I am the sea howling,

                                   the sea disappearing. 

#SOL16: The Familiar Falling Away

The Familiar Falling Away (M.A. Reilly. Devon in Ringwood, 2011)

I.

Today the wind is fierce: a howling menace whose wildness is oddly attractive. It says anything can happen. 

The weekend's frigid weather has turned unseasonably warm and today finds a balmy 60 degrees beyond our front door. It's mid-February and rain falls at first intermittently and then steadily all day. The three front steps were partially covered with a thin veneer of ice this morning. I used the ice scraper Rob always keeps by the door to break it up so that the Hospice delivery could occur.

My life these days is mostly filled with attending to small details. Taking Dev to school. Arranging for friends who are coming in to stay. Figuring out when to go to the hospital. Figuring out how best to get Rob's mom to and from the hospital. Remembering to eat dinner. Doing the laundry. Vacuuming.

The one steady pulse that runs through all of these sometimes banal duties is the hope Rob will be home tomorrow.

II.

Rob Painting. 2.15.16

My home which has always been such a solace feels more like an enemy these last few days. Everywhere I turn is a reminder of what I am losing, what is slipping from my fingers, my heart.

Ours is a house of books. A house of art. A house of play. Yesterday Rob began to feel anxious when the doctor explained how he would be titrated off the high flow oxygen and placed on a nasal cannula. As he waited for Xanax, I suggested to Rob he might want to paint. I had brought watercolor pencils, paper and brushes the day earlier. He agreed. A friend had left lavender essential oil (thanks Liz) that I applied to his temples and within thirty minutes he was calm.

In a 2011 study (Toward A Brain Based Study of Beauty), researchers Tomohiro Ishizu and Semir Zeki found that there was a 10 percent increase in blood flow to the part of the brain where joy is expressed when viewing a beautiful painting. I wondered if joy doesn't increase even more when art is being made, not only viewed.  Rob was calm and pleased by the time he finished painting.

III.

One sure thing Dev and I have learned is that we cannot know the future--be it ten minutes from now or a week. Tomorrow, we hope Rob will be home.  It will mark day 50 since he was last here.  50 days have passed and the house, like us, is unsteady.

Today the wind is fierce: a howling menace whose wildness remains attractive. It says anything can happen. 

Anything.

Anything at all.