With Every Touch

My Dearest Love,

I finished "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion last night. In it she talks about her life, thoughts, feelings during the year that followed the sudden death of her husband. I see myself in her words in so many ways. She talks about trying to avoid anything that triggers memories of her life with her now dead and gone companion. Today, everything I touch forces me to relive our past, one segment after another. The emotional price is draining. On top of this, I took one of the evil green gout pills this morning and I am feeling faint, dizzy, and even more spaced out than usual. This is going to be a hard day.

The reason for the memory replays is the upcoming trip to the Boundary Waters. I have pulled all of our camping gear down from the shelves and spread it out over the garage floor. I have set the tent up where my car is usually parked and have been trying to mentally "pack" what I think we will need. Doing this without your help seems insurmountable at times. Plus, everything I touch carries your touch as well. When I handle something that you once held, I am carried away in time and space to times when we were young and full of love.


I sat this morning on the screen porch, in the early sunlight, mending one of the stuff sacks you made with your own two hands. It is the one that holds our camping silverware. I hand stitched a portion of the seam that had come undone, much as I feel my life has come undone, unraveling under the strain of your loss, awaiting a healing hand to stitch me back together, to make me whole again. Oh, were it that easy.

I had to duct tape the shoulder strap on your old back pack where the mice had chewed the stuffing out to make a winter nest. I found notes you jotted down in little crannies of our communal gear. There was one on the floor of the tent in your own private code. I think it referred to negatives of film that you wanted to do something with. It was numbers followed by one or two word descriptions. I held it for a moment and then set it down before my vision became soggy with wet memories.

I don't know if I can do this. I have to keep walking away from the collection of gear because I become overwhelmed.

On top of all this, I need to organize the family dinner/meeting tonight where I will tell the children that my cancer is back and that I must redo a chemo therapy that did once ten years ago that only worked for a short time. I must tell them that we, as a family, must reboard that uncertain and unsettling carnival ride called "Potential Death of a Parent." What will they think? What will they do? How will I cope?

I write this to you at eleven o'clock in the morning. This will be a long day.

I love you, where ever you are.

D.

Hope Chest

My Dearest Love,

The house is quiet once more.

Joe is off on his bicycle to meet David at the bagel joint. Kate went running. She's pissed at me because I took the car away for 24-hours for missing her curfew time last night. I also have been on her case about getting a job. There is work out there, but she is not interested in working at the places that have been suggested. I don't know where she gets the money to do what she does.

The weather finally broke yesterday. After a week of temps that flirted with the century mark and humidity's to match, a front moved through slowly yesterday that dropped both readings back into the comfortable range and we wound up watching Kate play her last "official" soccer game of the summer under clear, cool conditions last night.

I spent the morning today reading the paper, doing water testing, raking and spraying the dog run next to the garage, and clearing the ever growing weeds out of the path that goes around it. After taking a shower, I paused to cool off a bit while I surveyed our bedroom. I decided to move the heavy quilt off of the cedar chest at the foot of the bed and store it till needed later in the year. After I lifted it off the chest and put it aside, I open the lid of the chest and gazed at the little shelf that rises with the lid where you kept a bunch of your mementos.

I have never closely examined them before. I knew that you were sensitive about them and never encouraged me to be too curious. Today however, I wanted to look closer.

I found your student ID from the Sorbonne and a date book from when you must have been about Kate's age. There were lots of old photos from your junior and senior high days, included some of your old boyfriends. Was that why you never wanted me to look there?

I knelt on my knees by the side of the bed and slowly went through part of the treasure trove. I had to be careful not to drip sweat on the old pictures and clipped newspaper articles. I slowly unfolded notes that look like they were passed to you in secret down the rows of desks in school when the nuns had their backs turned to you. The paper was dry and brittle. The words young and juvenile. Just the sort of thing that I might have done for my sweetheart in my early teens. Some of what dripped onto the bedspread was not sweat, and I had to stop and carefully put the little treasures away and close the lid. I cannot take to much of you at any one time these days. These were your memories, not mine. I am only a voyeur for this period of your life - a girl, a thin young thing with long dark hair and a big smile. How different from the love I knew.

Yours Always,

D.

It Starts All Over Again

My Dearest Love,

I went to see my oncologist on Thursday. The news was as expected, and not good. My lymphoma is on the move again. Of course you knew that. I told you shortly before you passed over that I would not be far behind. You pooh-poohed me, too busy preparing for your own trip I imagine.

I still have not told the kids. I wanted to be sure, have the CT scan again, meet with the onc. Now I have no more excuses. I asked my onc to look at a third alternative to the previously known treatment options (CHOP - which pushed my hair out, made everything taste like garbage, and only got me 10 months of relief; and Fludaribine - which was easier to tolerate but really nailed my immune system). I want to know if there is anything out there in the experimental world that might offer something. When he comes back to me with the answer, I will schedule a family meeting with Pat, Barb, the kids, and Pam if she is available. Doctor Steve even offered to be part of the meeting, which I thought was very touching. There, I will lay out the scheme of things, the disease, the treatment options, what all of that means, and then let the kids be a part of the selection process on what we will do.

I don't want to put them through another long, drawn out ordeal like we went through with you. They don't deserve that (and I don't either). My priority is quality of life, not length. If I have a limited amount of time, I want it to be good - for me and the kids.

Kate and I went out to dinner and a show last night. We went down to one of our old haunts for dinner. Remember the Red Dragon? Do you remember that snowy night that we ended up there with Mikey and Mona? It was either Christmas Eve or New Years Eve and there was a big storm going on. We had the place to ourselves. It was a spur of the moment decision to go and we called Mikey and Mona and asked if they would meet us because they could walk there from their house.

Well, it looks pretty much the same - kind of a dive. My meal was forgettable too. I ordered General Tso's Chicken and was served something that I would have sworn was pork, but the waiter assured me it was chicken - just the dark meat. Hmmmm. Kate liked her Sweet n Sour Chicken however and we walked the block to the theater afterward in the steamy heat of our current weather pattern. I was in long sleeves and long pants and was walking very slowly, trying not to drench myself in sweat before arriving at the theater.

The weather was fitting however because we were going to a performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I wanted to see this performance because it had received rave reviews for Maggie's interpretation and I secretly wanted to see how Brick was done, having played that part myself twenty-five years ago - just before I met you, my love.

Kate loved it. It was very well done. The characters were spicy and despicable. The heat rising throughout the performance (both on stage and in the seats for the air conditioning mysteriously stopped working when the curtain went up). Personally, I thought my Brick was better, but then it was hardly an unbiased and objective assessment.

We drove home through the dark and Kate was mostly silent. She was quite tired having spent the last two nights sleeping over at her scout troop master's house and getting up at the crack of dawn to prepare for, and run, a large rummage sale to raise money for the troupe. So, she actually went to bed before me last night and is still sleeping (no surprise there).

I got a call from Joe yesterday that caused my neck to shrivel and prick up as the ghostly shroud of death wafted over the very tips of the erect hairs; sending me into a primal place of fear and helpless dread. Joe's voice sounded strange over the long distance connection as he faded in and out, making me wonder if he was calling from another plane already.

The story was not delivered in a clear, linear fashion. He sent it to me in bits and pieces - his voice husky from the ingestion of salt water. He was laying in bed with Pat, he said, and his legs felt very heavy.

He had been playing with Georgia, Rachael, and the other one who's name I am always forgetting. They were on a sandbar just off the beach on F8 Island where he and Pat were vacationing. You remember the spot.

He said something to me just as the connection was getting shaky. Something about an under tow and feet being pulled out from under them, and seeing each other drifting apart and away from shore.

There, the story also broke up into incoherent bits. There was a struggle and repeated attempts to get back to the sand bar only to be pulled away again. Pat was involved in some fashion, but Joe had to find a way to swim back to the shore by himself and enlist other adults to come to the rescue. No one on the shore could hear the cries of the children.

It was a parent's worst nightmare: children in danger and no way to try to save them. I kept telling myself that my son was talking to me, that he was all right, that he said the other children were all right, but I sat there with cold sweat running down my sides thinking how can this be. Anyway, the conversation ended. Joe needed to rest. I will call him again as soon as I am done writing this to you. Maybe it was you who lifted his legs and whispered encouragement as he struggled to gain the safety of the shore. He told me that he finally figured out how to swim the distance (you know Joe, swimming was never his strong suit). He lay on his back and did a modified backstroke until he felt the sand under his neck. Was that you?

I feel sick just thinking about it. What would I do if I lost another of us?

Where ever you are, I love you.

D.

Empty on the Fourth

My Dearest Love,

It has been a little over a month now. I sometimes feel amazement that I can carry on at all. Sometimes there are even moments of happiness and joy.

This Fourth seems very strange without you. You were our glue and without you we have spun off due to the centrifugal forces of life. Kate flew off to Portland last Saturday to be with her cousins and other relatives at the family reunion. Joe left a day in advance of her to play with all of the water toys at Dave's cabin. He went on up to Duluth from there to commune with Pam, Mclean, and Morgan. I have been rattling around this empty house followed silently by a hairy black shadow who wonders where everyone has gone.

Where have you gone? Is there a place for a soul after the meat goes bad? I like to think that you are with the stars in all their glory. I look at the Astronomy Picture of the Day every morning and marvel at the beauty of the universe. We are so small and understand so little, but when I see these marvelous pictures of the galaxies and nebulae, I think of you, soaring amongst them.

Sometimes I sit very quietly and listen for you. You did say that you would try to let me know what was out there - remember? I have not heard you though. But then again, my hearing is not what it once was.

I worry about how our little family with survive without you, its center. I try to do the right things, but so far, I don't seem to be able to keep the children here. I know that they need time to process what has gone on and what better place to do that than in the center of family. That is what they are doing I think. It's just not here, with me. I hope that when the hedonistic lure of summer is over and school once again imposes regularity and routine that we will find that connection that says "family."

In matters of a more mundane nature, you will be happy to know that I have been going out in the cool of the morning to do battle with the thistles up on the drain field. I pull for an hour or so before heading in to cool off. I am also trying to fix the seal on the kitchen sink. It has separated from the counter and was allowing moisture to seep in. I have tried to remove the old caulking in the areas where the separation has occurred (about two-thirds of the circumference) and will attempt to squeeze some silicone caulk in there tomorrow after it has had a chance to dry out.

I also have mechanical repairs to make. The brake servo on the Audi went out and I am preparing to replace that. Dave has sourced a new one for about 60 percent of what it would cost me to buy from the dealer, but it is still not cheap. Plus my motorcycle has been laid up for a month waiting for an adjustment screw that is part of the rocker arm set-up. Of course no one had such a thing in stock for a 30-plus year old BMW so it has been coming via yak train from Lower Slobovania. Good thing Kate is gone so I can use the Toyota without having to arm wrestle her for the keys.

Well, it is time for me to continue my chores. I am off to the garage to see how badly I can screw up the hydraulic brake system on the S6.

I love you and get juicy eyes every time I think of it. Nothing will ever replace you in my life and I simply have to remind myself that I am a much different, and better person for having shared it with you. One day, we will be together again.

D.