It's four years since Kevin left this world. Much has happened and at the same time, nothing has happened. The death of a person who is the center of your life dwarfs everything. Nothing that comes after, short of your own death, I suspect, can touch the enormity of that event. So much has happened but nothing has happened.

It's been ten years since 9-11. The grief that surrounds that day, the painful images, the families broken and hollow, bring back all my own deep sadness. I'm sure everyone who has lost someone finds 9-11 difficult to get through without grieving once again for their loss no matter how many years later.

But 9-11, this year, brought out something clarifying to the emptiness that I feel now, so different than the first few years. No longer do I expect to see him when I come into the house. Now it's possible to talk about him without holding back tears. I've given up missing the annual things we used to do – Montauk, Mohonk, holidays with friends. Those have been replaced with different places and friends, old and new, that mean a great deal to me. I've even found some things that are “better” without him. You know, no pile of clothes on the bedroom floor, the “honey do list” that never got done gets done in 48 hours - that's what handymen are for - and no more disagreements about those insignificant things...wall colors, peas or green beans and how early to get to the airport.

What I have realized, however, is that I can't go “Home” any more. Remember on 9-11, the only good thing about that day was coming home. Home was safe, secure, protected. All those terrible things couldn't penetrate Home. I remember coming in that night and we just hugged and hugged and held each other, happy to be Home. “I want to go Home!” “I want to go Home!”

Kevin was my Home. I was home when I saw him on the couch, working on one of his projects. Home was the piano chord sound of his Mac computer starting up and the endless groans of music editing drifting up from the basement. Home was hearing his deep breathing and seeing the faint silhouette of his body next to me in the dark. Home was the two of us...it was the certainty that he was there, with me and we'd be there, safe and protected...together...where no one and nothing could get us.

Four years later I feel like I've been away from Home a long, long, long time. “Please, can I go Home now?”

Are You All Right?

Like a mantra, an incoherant whisper, a heart murmur, I keep repeating - "Are you all right?" I've stopped talking to you throughout the day, telling you what I'm doing, asking you questions about where you last saw the philips head screwdriver or the beach towel with the stripes. Not as often, but I still do beg you to please come back and let me get back to my life. The life that, even when bad, was my life. The life I chose to live.

Now, I just chant - "Are you all right?" "Are you OK?" Most times I'm not really sure if I am talking to you or to myself. But in either case the answer is "No, I'm not all right!"

I can't fathom that you are not you any more. That you are not anything any more. You filled my life with purpose, with drive, with pride, anger, lust, insecurity, confidence, hatred and profound love along with thousands of other deep emotions. How could you not exist any longer? I still don't get it? Will I ever?

No, neither of us is all right - not all right at all and never will be again.

February 10, 2011

Today, on what would have been the fourth anniversary of our wedding I went to the beach with another man. There was no outward sign of what this day meant, how it had been the celebration of your life – your living wake; your opportunity to see all your friends together one last time (as I would, soon enough) and be the center of attention – even though that was not something you often strove to be. There was no indication at all except for the tight knot in my stomach and the smoldering fear that I was missing something important. A pain in my body that just went away now knowing what I had been missing as I woke in the middle of the night remembering what February 10th meant...February 10th!

This day was cold, windy, crisp and diamond clear, a gorgeous winter day at water’s edge. Making it past the mounds of ice that threatened to block access was easier than it looked with a steady, warm hand to guide me - a simple pleasure – but one I had not often experienced with you. And once there the choppy bay sparkled in the February sun – surprisingly warmer than expected. The sense that winter was passing. The sky – oh the sky was so blue and without a cloud. You would have preferred an overcast day – better for the camera lens – flat light a photographer’s dream.

But this was a day you would have marveled at. And as was my role – I would have groused – whining of the cold but secretly delighted to be with you wherever you wanted me to be. You would have strolled the beach and salt marsh with your camera in one hand – seeing the world as only you could see it through that incredible artist’s lens that shaped your life. You were most alive, at least I thought you were, when you had a camera in your hand, capturing images that no one else could see until they printed out on paper.

You would have been far away from me. Too preoccupied with your visions to hold my hand on an icy patch or see that my ears were turning blue. I was there – always there, at the perimeter of your world – waiting for instructions, waiting for the action to shift to me - a frustration that needed to be smoothed away; a shim under a shaky chair, a road grader making the travel easier. You knew I was near, lurking, waiting to be called in for my part – making life bearable for you.

But this day felt different, perhaps because for the first time I was unaware of your presence in my life. This wasn’t a trip to remember you, or feel the power of your influence on me or just try to get closer to my devastated life with you. No, this day was not about you – or even me and you. I sucked in the freezing cold air into my lungs like I had been holding my breath. Seeing familiar things I never saw before in a place I’d never been to – again.

Today, on what would have been the fourth anniversary of our wedding I was finally, nearly bearably without you.

2-1 - Memories

Remember the day that...

Remember when we were...

...The time we went...

Remember this, remember that? Remember? Remember?

What do you do when you don’t have anyone to remember with? Years and years of singular memories that just the two of us were witness to. Without you did these things really happen? Were we really there? Did we see it, feel it? You know, it’s the old “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there…”

When I’m gone, or soon to forget, none of it will have happened at all.

2-1 - Safety

I was with a dear friend last week…a fellow traveler on this painful road and much appreciated kindred spirit. We got to talking about feeling safe. Although her experiences and sense of safety are different from mine, that conversation brought some clarity to me about what I lost with Kevin’s death. Well, Kevin, of course – a husband, friend and lover, but also life as the lucky know it. There was a sense of confidence, security, and joyful anticipation; that youthful feeling, long after youth had turned to maturity that “trouble would come and trouble would go.” That “nothing could keep us down” or that “where there’s a will there’s a way” and all those other clichés that we took for granted and believed with all our heart.

In traveling to see my friend I saw the embodiment of this sense of security, safety. I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the nearby Back Bay train station. The streets and the train depot were filled with young people. They moved with such self-confidence and assurance. It all seemed so easy for them carrying all their gear, while balancing a latte and IPOD and cell phone. They laughed and talked endlessly on the five hour trip about majors, school gossip, impending birthdays (yikes 23!), about their mother’s wardrobe (to be borrowed) and their new lives in new apartments, with new lovers and spouses and surprise but welcomed pregnancies.

Yes, that youthful sense of safety. I guess you could say I was lucky as some lose that illusion much sooner – the early death of a parent, sibling, friend; the childhood witness to a long, painful illness that no amount of wishing or hoping or praying to your God ends in remission or cure. Or the realization that – as Kevin said, once he was diagnosed - “Now, there is no place safe anymore.”

I try to take refuge in the memories of our trips out west and to the mountains, our lost weekends in bed, and our leisurely strolls around New York City. It was safe then. It all appeared endless. I touch the treasures we bought along the way, tucked around the house to remind us of the week in Bodega Bay, our trips to Santa Fe, Utah, ah….Mohonk Mountain House. My mind retreats to those times, those times when there was no inkling of “nowhere safe”. But all I get is a feeling of panic – like in a nightmare when a monster is chasing you. Rushing room to room, memory to memory cannot secure a feeling of safety. I know - I know too much. Bad things happen and they happen to people I love and to me and there is nothing you can do to change it, control it, stop it or pray it away.

Does that make me a grown-up? Finally?

2-1 - Where is "on"?

People talk about “moving on” after a catastrophic event…but where is “on” and how do you get there?

I’ve been trying to figure out why the days are getting harder to get through rather than easier. I know the realization of the finality of death has sunk in. Year three – at least for me – has been the most difficult. You are over the shock, have moved through the pain of physical separation and now, now you have to deal with the reality of never, not ever getting your old life back. As imperfect as it may have been, it was my life. It had a past, a present and an assumed future. It was anchored, pinned to someone else’s life. A life that had its own past, present and future that I knew intimately through shared experience or through stories told to me so many times I thought I lived them myself. And, you know, you count on that other life to coincide with yours, effect yours, bring its own unique energy to bear on yours - shaping the future. Without that other life, well, the concrete things are there – the past, the present, ah, but the future. Where is that?

My life now consists of only the past and the present. I alone seemingly cannot generate enough energy to move “on”. It is somewhat like Groundhog Day. Each day is adrift, a separate entity from the next. Not really building to anything, not going anywhere, just another day that you fill with activities. Sure there are plans, but they are not plans for the future, they are more like scheduled activities. They are pathetic attempts to create a future.

And I do fill my days with activities, but at the end of the day or in the beginning of the day, in the quiet of the house, the depth of my missing him, seeing him, hearing his voice is still there, still the main focus of my life. Nothing I have done or plan to do fills the void of my future. Nothing brings me any closer to a sincere joyful moment, an anticipatory thrill, a momentous idea about what I could, should, would do in the days ahead, the months ahead and certainly not the years ahead.

Have to go….have so much to do today….

2-1 - The Sink Hole

A giant sink hole developed in my heart last night. It was nothing I did, saw, said, heard. It was simply the enormous weight of the grief that fell through the fragile layer of future that had begun to develop over the gaping wound.

It had almost begun to work…the tiniest, thinnest layer of life without him, solitary plans, visions of what it will be like once the muffling is complete; the ability to listen to music without dissolving into tears; the courage to watch a favored movie; to wear a tee shirt that was brought back from a great adventure; the imagining of life – for years and years – without him. But it all came crashing in late last night and dissolved back into the beginning when the tears would just not stop and the pain – the familiar physical pain – came unrelenting --again.

All that progress, all those strides forward gone in a moment and its 2007 again, the year that the world ended. It was such a struggle to get as far as I had and now I’m back to the foot of the wall – a sheer, vertical wall that has to be climbed – such effort and I can no longer see the handholds I had once so carefully chiseled.

So I think I’ll just stay here for a bit…with his pictures, his things and re-read his letters. In particular that one letter, one of those from the African trip in 1992 where he declared – 11 years into our life together – 11 years - long after many relationships hit the hum-drum! “You are the love of my life…” How could I have ever been uncertain? But there it is in black and white. It cannot be denied …I cannot question or doubt or disbelieve. Although I read that letter 18 years ago, I didn't really get it until now.

Of all the thoughts he put into the thousands of words he wrote to me over the years…declaring all sorts of things – that declaration - those seven words are the only ones I wish I could hear his voice say – right now!