Someone Asked Me To Tell Our Story

[HAP]

I am a 58--soon to be 59 year old-- school teacher in a rural school district where both my wife and I taught together for the last 25 years. She taught chemistry, physics and AP Biology--and is one of the three smartest people I ever met. I teach AP English, Journalism, and whatever else they need me to do. This year that means teaching English Lit to high school juniors.

In June, my wife and I had planned to retire from teaching. We planned to write a series of books on teaching in our areas. I still plan to retire this year. I will write the books I can and spend the next few years trying to teach the next generation of teachers. And I plan to do some volunteer work with the family center at Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston.

My wife and I met in the copy room at school about a week after I began teaching there. I was looking for a thermal master to print a quiz on. She came up behind me and asked what i was looking for. I turned around, our eyes met, and we both knew. But we were so terrified that we would screw things up that it took us another two years to start going out together. And it was three months after that we kissed for the first time. We were both in our 30s.

We had no children of our own. But we have had many children of the mind--the kids who needed us to help them find their way to a career and a life through the minefields of broken homes and broken parents. Our students meant so much to us that Jane kept putting off going to the doctor so that they could be ready for the AP exam--or her chemistry or physics kids would have what they needed for the careers they wanted to pursue. I'm not sure getting to the doctor much sooner would have made a real difference. They kept telling her that her problems were based in anxiety and all the time she spent on her feet.

The cancer she had was so rare and so strange that even better doctors would have been baffled. As her surgeon said to me the night before she died, "We spend years teaching young doctors that when you hear hoofbeats you should not look for zebras. A zebra killed your wife." He is one of the best heart surgeons in the country--and while that quote makes him sound awful, he really is one of the most caring people I have ever met. He was wonderful with both of us--and cried when she died. All of her doctors did. Nurses drove the 60 miles from Boston to attend the wake and the funeral--as did one of her doctors from Boston. And her primary care doctor and his entire office and nursing staff came as well.

More than 700 people attended the wake. 300 or more attended the funeral. She had a huge impact on everyone she met. Former students came up to us regularly--even before she got sick--to say that their image of marriage--how they treated their spouses and expected their spouses to treat them--was based on what they saw of how we lived our married lives. The people in the hospital told us similar things. She inspired me and made me better than I was--better than I can ever hope to be again.

She would not be happy with how I am handling this grief. She would say I am being selfish--that she is the one who has died--and that I should be rejoicing that she is in heaven rather than rolling around in this grief. She would remind me that our bodies are only vessels for the soul to journey in. And that in the eternity of time this separation is no more than a business trip.

But I miss her body lying next to me in the night. I loved waking up ahead of her in the morning. I would lie there in the dark with my hand on her thigh just listening to her breathe. The light would slowly come into the room and I could see her head on the pillow. I miss they way we woke up together and rolled into each other in the morning, sharing nothing more than a long hug that was every morning's good morning. Going to bed at night was the same: a long hug and a snuggle into spoons that took us to sleep.

Other times we would sit on the couch and I would massage her feet at the end of a long day as we stole an hour to watch television after grading papers and preparing lessons. On Sundays we would clean the house together. On Saturdays we would do the shopping--a task we both hated but that was made bearable because we were doing it together.

It is that absence of together that makes this so hard. I can hear her voice in my head. But I cannot feel her pressed to me, cannot feel her lips on mine, cannot rub the aches out of her back and legs after a long day of yard work or tennis. We both loved to cook and to eat what we grew in the garden. The food does not taste the same, does not look the same, does not feel the same. The table is empty without her at it. I rearrange the furniture, the cupboards, the appliances on the counter, hoping that it will not hurt so much--her not being physically here if I can just make the place look and feel just a little different. But the house is still too quiet, the space in the bed next to me too empty. I have sown the seeds for the new year's garden, designed the new flower beds we had talked about in my mind. But the cutting garden was supposed to supply fresh flowers for the house that we lived in. Now some will decorate her grave. I will put some in the house--but will I be able to use the vases the faculty gave us when we got married--or that we bought together for the flowers that did not feel right in those vases?

We built this house 16 years ago. We made every decision about what to buy together. We made every decision about where to place things together. We decided on the colors and the cabinets and the floors--agonized over ever tiny decision because we wanted everything to be just right--together. Now every decision leers at me, reminds me of what is lost. I don't want to turn the place into some kind of monument to her or to us. I can't live in a tomb.

But I don't want to leave the place either. We built here for a reason. And the logic of those choices has not changed just because she is absent. The house has good bones--and as I read somewhere this week, there will come a time that I will want the memories this piece of land--this huge small house--holds. I said as much to our neighbor when she asked me if I thought she should sell her house after her husband died a dozen years ago: that the house held memories and visions of his life she might want back some day if she sold it. I don't know if she listened to me--we never brought the subject up again--but she and her children live there still--and I like to think she takes some comfort in the trees she and her husband planted there.

The day may come this house does as much for me. I will build her a memorial garden this summer. I will fill it with mums, and glads, and lilies--and all the other flowers she loved--and the flowers that will bring the hummingbirds that we have both loved all these years.

I wrote a poem for her every year on our anniversary--and others for other events. The last I wrote for her focussed on the hummingbirds and our relationship with them. The final couplet is "We tend a greater vineyard when the fall wind blows/We tend a greater vineyard than the hummer knows." We both knew then that the deck was badly stacked against us--that she might fly off like a hummingbird before their small forms returned north again--though we both believed devoutly to the day she died that she would beat this thing. I gave her the poem just before dawn on September 2. She read the piece and we folded into each other's arms and wept.

The figurative vineyard is still there. I keep working in it, trying to do the work we once shared so gladly and so well. But for now, it is all dust and ashes. I know it will not always be so--that the hummers will fly north again, will fight their little wars, and raise their children before my eyes. This year will be different--harder, perhaps. But they will still need their nesting materials and the feeders will have to be filled. Their lives, my students lives, my life, will go on. And I will find again some joy in it.

But not tonight. Not his week. Not next month. But someday I will again be surprised by joy--like that day in the copy room, when I had given up all thought and hope of love, and found it staring back at me out of those root-beer-barrel brown eyes.

HAP

[Dimcl]

HAP, the love and tenderness shines out of your words and my heart breaks for your loss.

The fact that our partners in life would want us to go on in life and be happy is one of the hardest things to reconcile, isn't it? Personally, I don't want to be happy without my Glenn, but I know that he'd say "Hey, you're the one who's still alive... enjoy it". They are the ones who were cheated, and I try to keep that in mind.

Glenn and I had no children either, HAP, and as wonderful as children are, I think the lack of children tends to reinforce a couple's "oneness". I know it did for Glenn and I. We were a team of two and had no family (including extended) to break through that wonderful tightness we had built around us.

And, yes, it is the lack of a physical presence that is so hard. When I lay down on the couch for an afternoon nap, I cry because Glenn was usually sitting there at my head, and he would always massage my back as I lay there. I miss the feel of his lovely fingers. I miss knowing he's in the kitchen making us a tea and coffee. I miss the energy that our home used to have. Now it's just a big void. The atmosphere in the house has changed and it's never going to be what it was.

I am coming up on my 5th month, HAP. The sadness and grief are still as huge as ever, but I'm slowly learning coping mechanisms to deal with them. You sound like you are, too, and I can only send you a virtual hug, and say that I'm thinking of you.

Di

[Deb625]

That was beautiful Hap and a true testament to the love you shared. I feel (I'm 10 months into this journey), that we have lost our love, our partner and our best friend, such a loss it hard and while I would hate to diminish anyones pain of loss, losing a spouse, someone you come home to everyday is different. We have changed fundamentally from a "we" to just "me" and it is devastating. I know I miss Michael's smile and the laughs we would share - usually about the corniest things most. I just pray that he is at peace and feel blessed that I had him as a part of my life. No one will ever replace him in my heart and soul and I recognize this. I hold onto what ever life may bring and there is a future that this will always hold true - we can never lose the love we had - they changed us and made us who we are today. We go through and cope and get through one step at a time.

[LostmyHoney]

Hap I lived in Nevada when I met my Honey shooting pool online. He lived here in North Carolina. I came for a weeks visit in Dec., on May 19th (my b-day) he was in Reno to drive back here to NC with me. He was sick when I met him and we didnt think we had much time left to be together, but we got an amazing 3yr 3mo. He past away Sept 2 2010. It was more time than we had thought we would get but, not as much as we had hoped for. He had this thing for the #37, came from a joke he heard as a young man where the punch line was "I accedently fell on the knife 37 times". He would say things like "could you imagine if we won 37 million of thease things" or if I asked how many scoops of ice cream did he want he would say 37 then laugh and say no just 2. I counted out 37 weeks from the 2nd of Sept and I came up with May 19th, I was dumbfounded. I take it as a message from a higher power that my life is to be celebrated as well as it was time from him to go, to be out of the pains of his earthly form. I will see him again!

Rachel

[Country Sunshine]

That is such a beautiful testimony to the love you shared. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Carolyn

[Chrissie]

Hap,

That was so beautiful. I can feel the love the two of you shared, so real, so complete. Thank you for sharing your story with us.

Chris

[kayc]

Hap,

It sounds as if the love the two of you shared was much the same as the love George and I shared...only you got to do so much longer. What a tribute to your wife that she touched so many lives and affected everyone so much! Your wife might chide you for how you are handling things...but she is not experiencing what you are, so be easy on yourself, your loss is great. Each loss must be grieved...the loss of spooning together in the night, the loss of working on the place together, the loss of your dreams for the future, the loss of being able to work on your book together...many, many losses, so it is natural you should grieve. Continuing some of those shared dreams sounds like a positive way to proceed through your journey. What a tribute, that so many looked up to the two of you as mentors for their own marriage roles! You have truly had a beautiful life together and my heart goes out to you as you try to make your way through what is left to experience.

[HAP]

[We have changed fundamentally from a "we" to just "me" and it is devastating.]

I spent all those words to say what this one sentence says. It is us that is so hard to let go of. We rarely used I or me with people--it was always we or us. And now I still can't get used to the idea that we is gone--that us is no more. I am back to I and me--and I cannot accept that--at least not yet. It is, in many ways--the source of all my grief.

Thanks,

HAP

[HAP]

Thank you all. I cried my way through all of these a couple of hours ago to the point I had to go for a walk to clear my head before I could respond to what you have said. And now I find I have no words for the kindness you have shown me here.

Thank you all again.

HAP

[west]

I too teach in MA, know all too well Dana Farber, and lost my precious husband. I love the fact that each day I can smile with my students; they help us get though the day.

May god bless.

[Lainey]

[We have changed fundamentally from a "we" to just "me" and it is devastating.]

Your story was beautiful and I'm glad that you used all those words to tell us your story.The truth is that we do become "I'or "me" again and yes it is devastating.

Thank you for sharing.

Lainey

[michelle5]

That is a wonderful story. I am a little bit jealous that I did not get as long with my husband as I would have liked. I only had 7 years with him. It is still hard to do things alone. It took me about a year to go for dinner and request a table for 4 instead of 5! It is the little things that are the hardest, it seems.

Michelle

[HAP]

Dear West, Lainey, and Michelle--and everyone,

West is right--my students make me smile more often than not. They get me out of bed every morning--they and Jane--who just won't let me quit the work we did--and the work we have before us. But that will change some in June when we were planning to retire together--and when I will, in fact, retire. I have new work to do on at least three fronts. First, I swore to her Ii would find a way to kill this disease. That means going back to Dana Farber regularly--I went up there in January for the opening of the new Yawkey Building and cried my way through the tour. They have tried so hard to learn from every patient they have had--and the new building speaks to that. But so little is known about the cancer Jane had. Some of her doctors want to put together a Center for Carcinoid Research and Treatment at Brigham & Women's Hospital and I want to do all I can to make that happen. That means going back to the scene of all that struggle, but as Victor Laslo says to Rick Blaine in Casablanca, "This time I know our side will win."

On that same front, I also want to do all I can to spread the gospel of the Family Support Center as they practice it there. It was, in part, how i got through that month she was in the hospital. They gave me somewhere to go that there was always someone to talk to. But i need to understand the process better than i do, so I want to volunteer there so I can see how it works from the inside.

Second, my wife and I had planned to spend the next ten years teaching young teachers how to do the job we have done. Part of that will be finding places i can teach some courses in teaching, but the lion's share of that will be writing the books--as many as i can do on my own--which means some of the science books just will not happen. But even those i may try to find a way to do.

The third task I will not raise here as it is not helpful to this group as it has nothing to do with grief, medicine or healing. But it does have to do with working with people to solve problems. That is what Jane and I tried to do in our teaching above and beyond the subject matter. We both believe that teaching people to use their brains and bodies to create solutions to problems is the fundamental purpose of education and learning. There are an awful lot of problems out there that need trained minds.

Michelle, thank you for reminding me that i need to be thankful for the time we had. Listening to others on this site I often feel jealous about the shortness of our 21 years, three months and eight days. Our vision was that we would slowly decline together physically until we had to check into the rest home. I think we both dreamed of being like the Toynbees--a pair of married history professors who died in the same hospital on the same day within hours of each other. That vision is gone--but one of us had to stay behind to continue the work. And realistically one or the other of us was going to be here like this. That is cold comfort. But she is home and out of the struggle for a time--and i am glad for her. Now if I could find a way to be glad for me...But that sounds way too self-pitying and that is something I really have to find my way through.

And Lainey--as always--thank you for your kindness in encouraging me to use whatever number of words it takes to get the emotions and ideas out. My wife sometimes said I talked too much to hold my audience--but that it was also the only way to get people to really understand the things i was trying to say. She wanted things quicker sometimes--but knew I was trying for clarity rather than brevity. We laughed about how many words I would use to say something she could reduce to a sentence and get people to understand. She was my first editor and was always looking for ways to help me be clearer.

And thank you all for your words, thoughts, prayers, advice and meditations. I cannot tell you how much of a difference being on this site and reading the struggles we are all going through has made. Nor how much sometimes feeling that I am again of some use has mattered to my mental state. The peace i feel now will likely not last--I cried again this afternoon when a person i had not seen since the beginning of the year came to see me at work at the end of the day. But they were good tears that came of memory and were not fueled by anger or self-pity. That is a huge change for me in the last week--and this group has had a lot to do with that. I feel less alone, less isolated. You all know what I feel because you have been--and still are going--through it--just as I am. Our grief may have brought us together--and as everyone says, this is a club we would all prefer not to belong to--the initiation fees being what they are ( a little dark humor there)--but I am glad to have met you all. Reading these posts every night has lightened this burden.

Spyder Robinson, a science fiction writer, has a series of stories about a place called Callahan's Bar. The drinking is not why people are there--in fact the second bartender is a recovering alcoholic. Rather, they are there because they have all experienced deep hurt that needs healing. They subscribe to a simple idea: That shared sorrow is lessened and that shared joy is multiplied. At school, I try to engrain that idea in my students. The newspaper i advise has that idea as its central credo. But I serve as Callahan there. I needed a place where I could come out from behind the bar. Robinson says in one of the prefaces to one of his books that when you need to find Callahan's, one will turn up. Here, I have found another Callahan's. MaryT: Thanks for giving me a place where i don't have to pour the drinks.

So here's a toast to you all--readers, writers, listeners, but most of all--friends.

Peace,

Harry--Time that pseudonym went away--at least here.

[MartyT]

♥

[Lainey]

Harry (friend)

I'm glad you're able to come to this site and benefit so much from it. I know it is still a godsend to me many times when I feel like no one understands what I'm feeling.

You have so many wonderful missions to fulfill once retired. I wish you the best of luck in all of them, with the dedication I "hear" in your post I'm sure everything will go as planned. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you did find a cure for such a terrible disease?

I hope the sense of peace you are feeling lasts for a long while. I find the peace I have comes and goes, right now it's gone.. but it will come back. Patience is something I've had to learn in this journey.

Keep the posts up, your journey is very interesting.

Lainey