A compendium

This may interest no one but me, but I have cut and pasted one excerpt (each about Diane if I could find one) from the best blog post I made every three months since retirement. It shows what our life was all about, and I cherish each memory, even the painful ones;  it helps me to see my grief journey through a wide-angle lens. I hope this encourages others who have lost a loved one to remember them with fondness and gratitude every day.  To help you with the chronology, Diane’s first illness was from May through August 2019, and her second and fatal illness was from November 2020 through February 2021.

Summer 2018: This week, Diane and I watched the National Treasure movies, known for their shocking lack of historical accuracy. The second film begins with a Playfair cipher, about which you can read on Wikipedia. This code is impossible to solve (or was before supercomputers) without a keyword, which is often hidden within a riddle. The riddle in the movie was “the debt that all men pay”. You have likely already guessed the answer.

Autumn 2018: Diane and I are semi-vegetarians today; we won’t eat anything that once breathed air. (Fish are allowed.) We like to make our own meals from scratch, unlike some younger people who order pre-packaged meal kits from the Hello Fresh corporation or, as I like to call them, Hello Lazy. They claim that the resulting meals are homemade, which would be true if you came from a family of drones. We bake our own bread, for instance. We knead to do this.

Winter 2018-2019: Last night, Diane and I went to a traditional Christmas carol service at Highland. We enjoyed singing all the old songs, which took me back to my childhood. One of those we sang was the first carol I learned as a child sixty years ago, “Angels We Have Heard On High”. It’s still the only bilingual carol I know. When I was younger, I could sing the entire phrase “Gloria in excelsis Deo” without having to take a breath in between. That was then. My pulmonologist says that my lungs are fine, but that’s easy for him to say without having to take a breath in between. Talk is cheap, but whatever.

Spring 2019: There is a place suspended between sleep and wakefulness where mysteries are kept. When Manoah and his wife were visited by the angel of the Lord, Manoah dared to ask the angel for his name, so he might send him a friend request. “Why do you ask my name,” replied the angel, “seeing that it is wonderful?” The Hebrew word means “beyond all comprehension”. The most important things are often the least comprehensible, and our job is to receive them with gratitude, not to speculate aimlessly, to parse and probe. They are good gifts from a bountiful Creator: marriage, cats, memories, a nap. Afterwards, the angel rose to Heaven in a flame of fire while Manoah and his wife looked on. I’ll come back later, he warns. It’s not time yet.

Summer 2019: Today, a large black-and-white stray cat made his way through our yard. He looked sad, a wanderer on the search for a place to rest. I empathized with him; in some ways, I feel as if I am him, only larger and with less fur. My home is where Diane is, which right now is too far away. We are separated by a hundred miles and three roundabouts. There’s a home around the corner for me, but not yet.

Autumn 2019: When I was young, I loved playing dominoes with my grandfather. We would visit him during holidays, and after supper (including the world’s richest layer cake), while my parents were still sipping the coffee that was denied to me as a subadult, Gramps would get out the ancient set of dominoes, made of ivory or, perhaps, an ivory-like substitute (I now hope, being an animal welfare advocate). We would ritualistically turn each domino spot-side down, including the mysterious blank domino (the invention of zero was a milestone in human cultural evolution), and vigorously mix them about in the elusive search for randomness. Then, the fun would begin.

Winter 2019-2020: Diane and I had to drive to County Market this morning to pick up a few incidentals, and most of the shoppers seemed happy and festive, even the lad in the “Team Krampus” sweater, though a few looked stressed and depressed by the weight of unwanted seasonal expectations. I made sure to chat cheerily with the cashier, as retail workers are the unsung heroes of the holiday season. She wished me an unqualified merry Christmas, heartily, and the bagger, in typical Millennial caution, wished me a good one, with unstated referent but seeming good will. We passed by displays of junk food marketed by figures unknown to me, Captain Snackfoods or what not. Even the woman who cut me off on the road seemed celebratory in her own fashion, and as Pope Francis once said, who am I to judge? We all celebrate in our own way.

Spring 2020: In the midst of a very challenging time in the world, today was a special day that brought a burst of hope in the midst of the coronavirus era. I scrubbed the back porch on my hands and knees, with the close scrutiny of the cat, in preparation for staining it in the near future. Diane made some delicious cupcakes in celebration of our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Despite my Luddite roots, I was able to turn a collection of nearly fifty photos, spanning almost two-thirds of a century, into a slide show and upload it to social media, though I couldn’t get the desired title, “The Natural History of an Academic”, to save properly. A simple day, but a joyous one.

Summer 2020: Diane and I sat outside today watching the birds and squirrels engaging in partisan warfare at the feeder. It was an ordinary day, in the original sense of that word: unexceptional because it was routinized and ordered. After two years of retirement, we have settled into a pleasant though predictable set of secular rituals: coffee with the cat at eight, chores in the morning, sitting outside or baking something in the early afternoon, film noir or reruns of The West Wing as evening nears. While one tends to define one’s life by exceptional days and turning points – graduation, marriage, buying a house, adopting a cat, career changes and promotions, retirement – with increasing age I have come to appreciate the ordinary days more and more. Each day is rich with innumerable graces: the redbird at the feeder, the satisfying sweetness of a homemade cookie, the sardonic wit of John Garfield in Between Two Worlds, the affectionate greeting of a friendly feline, drifting into hypnagogia at the end of a good day. After the crisis experience of last summer, each uneventful day is a treasure beyond compare, and I am grateful.

Autumn 2020: It was a dark and gloomy day today. The winds of November were rustling amidst the tree branches, and blowing the remaining autumn leaves about the yard, piling them up against the fence. A lone squirrel braved the elements, seeking peanuts and corn while there was yet enough light to see them; night comes, when no squirrel can forage. The leaden sky overhead released an unremitting drizzle that threatened to yield to snow. We put up early Christmas decorations the other day, though Diane seems not quite herself, and their lights shine cheerily in the darkness of the evening. I’m mindful of the fate of the Edmund Fitzgerald, though, so am putting off a planned tub bath.

Winter 2020-2021: I am surprised, as a strong introvert, how lonely I can feel just now. My idea of introversion was always that solitude was no problem, and perhaps even desirable, while enforced socialization (especially of the trivial, “hail fellow well met” variety) was a burden to be avoided at all costs. But I apparently underestimated the difference that having Diane in my life has made. I am not a monad, but half of a dyad, and our home has been “one turtle for two”, as Sheldon Vanauken once memorably wrote in his classic book A Severe Mercy. The home is hollow without Diane, as is my heart. We’re one person now, not two, and half of us is 2.4 miles away from the other half of us.

Spring 2021: Of course, unlike Einstein (whose relationship with the faith in which he was raised was complicated), I believe firmly that Diane is in Heaven. The real Diane has not been lost, only the outer shell with which she will one day be reunited, in all the ravishing beauty of her young adulthood. But, just as I can think of the past but can't actually go there (I loved the 1960 George Pal film The Time Machine and tried for years to build one, but never could), I can think of Heaven but can't (yet) go there. So while I am comforted (I do not grieve as one without hope, though I do grieve), I am also lonely. I so miss my forever love. And yet, interestingly, the loneliness I feel is nothing like the loneliness I felt before I met her. Then, I ached for someone to love and to love me. Now, I know that someone did and does. That makes all the difference. Diane will never stop loving me, nor I her, and so I am not really alone.

Summer 2021:  I have taken to walking a different, yet in some ways eerily similar, gravel path, meandering through Fern Island, where Diane and I liked to visit in the early days of our marriage. It is a peaceful spot, with the serenity occasionally shattered by the onrush of a young jogger and her overly large canine companion, but usually tranquil. I feel God’s presence, and Diane’s, very much there. Our song as a couple was “Someone to Watch Over Me”, and I tried to do that for Diane during our years together. She is returning the favor now, one of the great cloud of witnesses that is cheering me on as I limp toward glory.

Autumn 2021:  Contentment in grief isn’t an easy thing to achieve. Six months ago, I was despairing of life. I’m not any more, though I’ll love Diane forever, and I miss her every day. There are good days and bad days. On bad days, we’re allowed to lament. “How long, O Lord?”, or as it’s phrased in some dynamic equivalence translations, “Are we there yet?”, is an allowable question, if asked in humility and not in rebelliousness. The Lord is not slow as some count slowness, but on some days, it can feel like it, and I believe that God understands how difficult it is to be caught in between the now and the not yet.  So, today, I am content. Tomorrow, I may not be. I’m human, and while God is constant, I’m not (yet).

Winter 2021-2022:  When I was in early grief, there were many days when I really wasn’t sure I wanted to go on living. One isn’t supposed to say that, but I’m saying it, now that I don’t feel that way any more. Life without my beautiful Diane was simply unendurable, and in my very worst moments, I honestly didn’t think I’d be able to continue going on. Mercifully, those very dark moments were few in number. Most of the time, I wanted to survive (though my life consisted of nothing other than misery), but I didn’t know how I was going to manage that. And I certainly had no idea what my life was about, and no sense of any definable reason why I was still here.  So I have a lot of empathy and compassion for those who are in that dark place, and if you are reading this and are in that condition right now, please hear me when I say that it won’t last forever.

Spring 2022:  Grief, I believe, is not a problem to be solved;  it can only be endured, since it has no human solution.  God alone can reverse death; and, I believe, for those who will, he will one day do just that.  But not yet;  and from where I am now, caught in between the now and the not yet, I grieve.  It is necessarily so;  one learns to make something of value out of the fragments that remain, the fragments that survived the shipwreck, and little by little, I am doing that.

Summer 2022:  Sixteen and a half months after her death, I am now increasingly confident that our love is forever; it can’t fade, and it is lasting, safely stored in a place where moth and rust can’t consume, like a digitized photo. But while the love is forever, it’s being necessarily transmuted; I am growing and changing, however fitfully, and while she’s with me in my heart, my memories of her are unchanging, though she herself may well be changing (C. S. Lewis thought that Heaven was eternal, but not unchanging; I’ll find out soon). I think of Diane now as Dante may have thought of Beatrice: gloriously beautiful, yet having slipped the surly bonds of earth, she is no longer heir to all the things that plague me, insecurity and indecision and confusion and a remarkably questionable hair style.  

Autumn 2022:  I saw a beautiful leaf on the sidewalk; could it have landed anywhere except where it did, when it did? It’s best not to overthink it — assuming that you can choose not to overthink it.  Well, Diane’s death was neither an accident or a mistake, though from the standpoint of my own day-to-day experience, it was a trauma and a tragedy. Yet God can weave severed threads back together; chords that were broken can vibrate once more. It hasn’t happened yet. But the stage is perhaps being set; any day now, it may be time for a dress rehearsal, though I don’t own a dress. “That kilts me,” my Scottish friends retort. I trust God’s heart, whether or not I understand the details of his purposes; and, through thorny ways, he leads to a joyful end.

Winter 2022-2023:  For months after Diane died, the last verse of Psalm 88 was my constant refrain: "You have taken from me my lover and my friend; darkness is my only companion." We're allowed to say this when it's true -- it's in the inspired text for a reason.  But, of course, God was always with me. And he "devises means by which his banished one might be restored to him". I have friends now; because God is gracious, and kinder than we know. This High Priest meets our need; and through thorny ways, he leads to a joyful end, in this life sometimes (perhaps often), in the next assuredly.  But we're allowed to have bad days.

Spring 2023:  In most contexts, I think that solutions have to emerge out of (or be embraced from within the framework of) a person’s own life context. A theological way of saying this is that “no one can deliver their brother [or sister] unto God”, meaning not that there are multiple paths to him but that there is no such thing as cookie-cutter discipleship. Some four decades ago, the pastor of the church I was attending made the remark, “Christ is the only way to the Father, but there are as many ways to Christ as there are people,” and I liked that. He meant that the gospel itself is fixed and unchanging, but the life context of each person before (and after) entering the narrow gate is unique to them. Psychologically, all counselors know that people tend to resist unwanted advice — we call this “reactance” — and are most open to ideas that they come up with on their own (or think they do).

Summer 2023:  One of the things I miss the most about having lost Diane is my “exile from the community of touch”. Looking back on the hundreds of photos I have of us as a couple, I am struck now by two things: how often we are looking into one another’s eyes (which connotes neural mirroring), and how often we are holding hands. I usually don’t let myself think of this, because it’s a grief trigger, but last night I let myself experience the memory of walking hand in hand with her, of putting my arm around her. It’s one of the massive secondary losses of grief, and the body’s tactile system can slowly starve without it. Because I have cats, I’m aware of how a creature without words communicates, and the tactile modality looms large.

Autumn 2023:  Diane can no longer walk with me. But my memories of her do; and she will never be forgotten. In the early days of my grief and loss, two and a half years ago, I swore that I could never love anyone else again; but it turns out that this was not true. It was true then; and many (though not all) things are true while they are true. “It is 1968” was true throughout 1968, but not after that. Some truths are eternal and unchangeable, a hapax (Jude 1:3); but others represent the way things are in the now, and have to be for a time. And then the truth of life’s morning is transmuted into the truth of life’s evening; and both have their place, since to everything there is a season, which is nutmeg.