Yesterday I came across an old piece of writing from January 2012, and was struck. It was done 4 years and 9 months before my husband’s death (Oct 20, 2016). How aware I was already back then that losing him would be very hard. Of course I did not know yet that in 2016, in the span of one year, first my mother would die, and 3 months after my husband’s death, I would find my best friend, colleague and confidant dead in his bed. And with that, the most important pillars in my life vanish in one big swoop. Total disorientation, aggravated grief, the deepest shattering of my life. Friends around me cannot comprehend the magnitude of this earthquake. So I go into hiding. But I had experienced so much grace when care giving for my mother in Germany twice for 3 weeks, and then full time for Bob his last 9 months. The utter beauty, messiness, and healing of it all carried me through the deep valley of grief years, often standing at the precipice.

So today, returning back from my cello lesson I feel so fortified, so alive, so refreshed that I am compelled to reflect, and write about this openly.

Here is an excerpt from my 2012 piece On Living and Leaving – how did I know that much already? It seems to foreshadow what we increasingly are experiencing now worldwide. As my husband’s health slowly deteriorates over the course of his last 6 years, I am able to keep him at home, and care for him myself into his last breath. Grace.

“A light, very light-blue morning opens my senses as I awaken from a deep sleep. The wooden cottage that holds my raised bed cradles me, protects me, soothes me, and shields me. And yet every morning I vaguely am aware of the unavoidable impending loss, change, shattering. Tragedy. Or is it just life? Life with the inevitable helplessness in the face of forces bigger than us. Death, earthquakes, imprisonment, sickness, torture, firebombing, hunger, injury. Forsaken we might feel. Bereft. What is left?

What will be left of me when Bob will die one of these days? Not anymore do I add the obligatory, yet false note: “I might die before him.” It’s silly. Because I won’t, I am taking care of him. This responsibility will keep me in life. This task: my burden and anchor. And yet I know the other task of mine is to keep myself anchored to life itself, the life in me. The joy and irrepressible delight in hummingbirds, visiting the salvias and red tall poppies while I sit outdoors and am making notes for the assembly of my new film project.

I watch him fading away from activity, his writing, his driven-ness, ambition, and even memories. They have been such strong and good companions to him, and yet it is all right for them to fade. His obsessions now center on the daily half-grapefruit in the morning. Even organizing another poker game is not on the top of his list. Bi-weekly chess with Henry, men’s groups, doctors’ visits they all are not so important anymore. He is living and leaving, all at the same time. Are we not all?

But I am still attached. At times, so furiously attached to his old capacities. Their silent, elegant vanishing leaves me bereft. My so independent partner of 20 years is on his journey, undeterred, seemingly with not many concerns. Not so for me. And yet, at times a plentitude of concerns and inevitable selfishness are vanishing. His and mine. Each of us on such different paths, now co-existing increasingly peaceful. And this I need to remember like a mantra: him leaving life on earth actually signals my arriving ever more so solidly in this life on earth.”

Part two for another day…..