"He was born on a summer's day, 1951."

Because I have a lot of musical "friends" on FB, I received the news today that Andrew Gold had died. I didn't recognize his name, but I did recognize his hits. There are a lot of musicians like that, I think--people you don't realize you know until something puts it together for you. Like a eulogy. It was only today that I found out he'd died at 59, of a sudden heart attack.

Even though I wouldn't have been able to pick Andrew Gold out of a lineup, and didn't know him by name until today, news of his death has hit me hard, because it echoes A's death. A was born on a spring day in 1951; they were born the same year. And A died, also too young, of a sudden heart attack.

My feelings are a jumble: frustration that men of a certain age are so vulnerable to deadly heart attacks; sadness that I seem to be moving into a stage of life where the actuarial tables showing that the mortality rate quadruples once you're in your 40s are illustrated daily among friends, family, and acquaintances; and also envy, that Andrew Gold and his loved ones got an extra 5 years that my sweetie didn't.

It's selfish, I know, to find in someone else's death, some other family's misfortune, an occasion to think about my own loss and my own pain, but I am not immune to triggers; it'd be more surprising if, given the parallels of the cases, if I didn't make those connections.

I learned Friday that the wife of a coworker has most likely received a death sentence, via metastatic cancer that was just found. They're probably in their sixties, but still relatively young, to me. Maybe they will have a miracle happen; but miracles are always a bit thin on the ground.

That's the thing about death. It's easy enough to accept intellectually as something that happens, and something that happens to every living thing. But it's difficult to accept the mighty upheaval it causes in your life and the lives of all who are left behind. Death in the abstract is simple enough; death, concrete and immediate, is complex, and takes years and years to unravel. How many years? I don't know; I'm still unraveling it. Obviously.

Hello darkness, my old friend

I had death on the brain yesterday, considerations I'll not detail lest anyone reading this panic for me, because they didn't really reflect how I was feeling, personally--it was all very detached and theoretical, if graphic. But it was still an unpleasant train of thought, and I tried to shake it off as I drove across town for band practice, even as I was puzzled as to where it was coming from.

It wasn't until later last night that it hit me; it was Memorial Day. The last day I kissed and touched A; the last time I saw him without two computers between us. Consciously, I was thinking about other things, more current things, but my subconscious was busy dancing with the Reaper, dredging up all kinds of creepy scenarios and thoughts. Even when you forget for awhile, or for a minute, you never really forget.

I had a long telepathic talk with A once I went to bed, and talked about the stuff I never talk to anyone about regarding his death and the circumstances of his being found and how much that bothers and baffles me, still. His best friend identified him, having arrived about the same time as his sister and the cops I called. The friend told me he'd been found in his bathroom, and that he looked peaceful. I accepted that at the time, and never asked for more details, because I didn't want them, even if I sometimes wonder about them. Better to not know; better to speculate wildly than to have a clear vision of the truth to torment myself with. I talked about how awful it was that he might've been taking a shower or brushing his teeth or combing his remaining hair and just collapsed, with no warning on a Saturday morning. How awful it was for him to be there, waiting to be found; and how he probably wasn't waiting at all, and maybe I could eventually get my head around that enough for it to be a comfort. He was probably gone quickly, because why would he stick around when his spirit was free? How it was just really awful for me, for all of us who loved him, because we only knew him in his body, and so we'd have to be forgiven for confusing his body for his being, and hurting about it.

I talked about how the Mystery itself causes people to deny there's any mystery at all, and how it would be easier, and really not so painful, to believe that this IS all there is, that when we die, that's it, and there's nothing to hope for beyond that, because that's what I believed for a long time and it didn't bother me at all back then. I had no evidence otherwise, so it made sense. I talked about how it would be easier to disbelieve in a future when he and I would cross paths again, once I died, and that it was worthwhile to keep the one-way line of communication open in the meantime, even if it was sometimes painful, and just walk on and not ever look back. Except that I've had evidence otherwise since A died. But it all happened soon after he died, and after awhile, you're on your own, and doubts creep in. Some people manage that inner conflict through faith. I don't have faith; I have reason and experience...and hope. And sometimes, that's just not enough to keep your spirit bright and moving forward. It's like knowing the sun will come up tomorrow, because it always has. But if it didn't for a few days or weeks or years in a row, no matter how many times you saw it happen before, you'd start to wonder if it ever did.

I don't talk about those things, even in my head to the man they happened to, very often, because they hurt like hell to revisit. But I guess they needed an airing for that very reason. In articulating it, I allowed it, and in allowing it, I was a bit more free, a bit more whole. Over and over again, I've felt that grieving and healing are a process of integrating the experience into who and what I am. If I can't even talk about it to myself, then it will continue to plague me. If I can't talk about it to A, if I can't take advantage of the heightened intimacy of death, where all cards are laid on the table and honesty rises to new levels because you can't possibly hurt each other more than the pain the separation of death causes, then I am an obstacle to my own healing that continues even now. You've got to process this stuff; if you just stuff it down, it'll come back to bite you. Maybe even 5 years later.

This morning a song came up on shuffle on my iPod that I will take as a sign, because I needed to hear what the song had to say, and the people saying it was a sign in and of itself. I need to believe it; I need to hope.

DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WITH LOVE By Carl Perkins


WHILE I'M OVER THERE, YOU'LL BE OVER HERE
BUT WE'RE IN LOVE SO HAVE NO FEAR
'CAUSE DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE, GIRL, WITH LOVE.

WHILE THAT SAME FAT MOON THAT SHINES ON YOU
IT'S THE SAME OLD MOON SHINING ON ME TOO
AND DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE, GIRL, WITH LOVE.

SO LET'S DREAM, DREAM, DREAM,
LIFE IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS.
YOU'RE THE GIRL I'M DREAMING OF
SO DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WITH LOVE.
(Makes no difference, girl, with love)

FOR LOVE TO ME IS BOTH YOU AND I
IT SURROUNDS THE GLOBE, FLOATING ON THE SKY.
SO DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE, GIRL, WITH LOVE.

FOR I AM YOURS AND YOU ARE MINE
AND THIS WILL BE TILL THE END OF TIME
AND DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE, GIRL, WITH LOVE.

SO LET'S DREAM, DREAM, DREAM,
LIFE IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS.
YOU'RE THE GIRL I'M DREAMING OF
SO DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WITH LOVE,
DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WITH LOVE,
IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WITH LOVE.

Happy anniversary, Sweetie

"Postsecret.com is a website where people can anonymously reveal their deep, dark feelings. I came across one entry that I think would be perfect for you to use as your own in the coming weeks. "I don't want to cover up my scar," it read. "It's a good conversation starter and it makes me look bad-ass. But thank you anyway!" To further inspire what I hope will be your fearless effort to claim the power inherent in your wounds, I also offer this spur from musician and author Henry Rollins: "Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on."

This was my horoscope today, for the next week. Been thinking a lot about my scars...or rather, the scar.

In a strange twist of fate, my anniversary of meeting A falls three days after my anniversary of marrying E, which makes for an especially fraught week as it leads into Memorial Day weekend every year, the last weekend A and I were in the same place at the same time. (If you don't count my walking through the redwood forest where his ashes were scattered.  Which I only count when I'm engaging in dark widow humor to myself.) Even though I talked to him every night between then and when he died, when I think of our last goodbye, it is always the one where we hugged and kissed and said "I love you," my eyes filled with tears as I went through airport security.

The attempt to balance the celebration of one relationship with the mourning of the loss of another is something that generally leaves me feeling entirely unbalanced. I find I alternate, swinging between them: I celebrated during the day; I cried at night.

When I am really missing him, I remember a hug we had in his kitchen that last morning before I left. He was wearing a red shirt, and he felt so big and strong. My sweetie was 6'2"; he made me feel safe and protected; it's such a rare, surprisingly sweet thing, my being smaller than anyone. In remembering that hug, I can feel the solidness of his chest and the strength in his arms holding me close, and the muscles in his back as I ran my hands over them. It's one of the strongest physical memories of him I have, and I try to keep it evergreen, because it means so much to me, and does so much to calm me when the ache threatens to tear me apart.  I feel like I have lost as many memories as I've managed to keep. I cannot remember his voice now.

I cannot remember his voice.

It's been nearly 5 years, and mostly, when I hear his words in my head, they're in my own voice, and it feels like an exceptionally grave loss. There are one or two phrases I can almost hear in his voice, but even that I doubt the accuracy of. I went to sleep the other night, on my wedding anniversary, thinking about that, crying a little, begging both him and my own memory banks to conjure up his voice in my dreams so that I wouldn't lose that, too, but as usual, my dreams did not cooperate.

I tried to tell myself that perhaps I heard my own voice in my head because he and I were so truly connected that it was one and the same. But while I considered the possibility that it might be true, I didn't really believe it.

I remember reading my first grief book a couple weeks after he died, and seeing the chapters that dealt with beyond the first year, going out to the fifth, and I couldn't imagine what that meant. Would I still be grieving 5 years out? That terrified me. Would I be better 5 years out? I couldn't imagine how that could be true.

The answer to both questions turns out to be "yes." Time has passed, and I've grown accustomed to the duality, accepting that while there may be momentary confusion in the comparison, it really isn't so impossible to live in seeming emotional contradiction. Our hearts are not linear, feeling one thing at a time, in its turn. I wonder, now, why I ever thought mine was.

I suppose this is true for many, if not most, widows, but I can't "celebrate" these anniversaries. I met A 7 years ago; I've celebrated 5 of these anniversaries without him. The day passes each year without failing to give me a blithely malicious kick. There are few days on the calendar sadder than birthdays never attained and anniversaries celebrated by only one person.

At every step of this journey, I've wondered if whatever stage of healing I was at was as good as it was going to get, and then I've ended up finding out it wasn't. But it's been the same for a really long time now, and I think maybe this IS it. And what does it look like for me? It means missing him a little every day, and terribly some nights; it means a few quiet tears in memoriam here and there; it means sighing and carrying on, because there's nothing else to do.  It means appreciating every little good thing that comes my way.  It means realizing the strength, and moving. On. Forward. Sideways.  Sometimes backwards. But moving.