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….