marking firsts

My 14 year old son Cameron had a day off from school Wednesday, so we set out to do some errands. He likes to play loud rock-n-roll in the car and I find that sometimes I can't handle it, and other times I like it. This day I was enjoying bouncing around in my seat and singing along. Cameron sings too and that's 1/2 the fun for me, hearing him sing. We went to Olympia Sport hoping to find basketball shoes, but nothing fit quite right. Then to Aubuchon Hardware for some potting soil. We walked in and spotted a woman who works there who I've spoken to frequently over the past 4 years. I did a lot of renovating when I first purchased City Point house and Aubuchon was my friend. However what came to me this visit was a conversation I had with her at some point when I must have told her about David and she shared that her husband had died of cancer when her son was a teenager. I remember she said it was hard, but ultimately a gift for her son, to know that life does not go on forever, and is indeed a gift that's here right now. I didn't tell her about David's passing. I just smiled and said thank you and left. As I got to the exit door, I remembered another woman who works there, the owner's wife, who told me she had lymphoma, a cancer similar to David's, that had been controlled with medication for more than 5 years. We talked about how horrible it was to have to depend on chemotherapy (poison) drugs to keep away something that would otherwise kill her. She is the mom of a young child and was grateful for every extra month and year that the drugs had bought her. But I could hear the toll the illness had taken on her family and her marriage. I remembered this all in a flash, and as I released the door from my hand, I realized I haven't seen her in a while. I wonder if she is even alive?

The next stop was the credit union, and I walked in aware that this was my fist time in since David's passing. I realize I'm marking firsts. First time since David died that I saw the view of the bay coming into town on Rt 3. First time taking a walk down the railroad tracks. First time seeing our wedding spot. First time talking with our challenging neighbors without him. First time eating dinner with his parents, just the three of us. And first time to the bank.

I went to a cashier I dont' know well, but spotted a woman who knows David, and who set up Cameron's savings account this past year. She didn't look at me, but came out through the door to greet me up on this side of the counter. She came over quietly and slowly with her heart and her eyes wide open. and I started to cry right there in the bank. She said "I'm so sorry, Tara." I've never hugged her before but I was very glad to hug her now. I said "I miss him so much," and the tears rolled down my face. I asked how she knew and she said she saw it on the computer. I didn't know if that meant she's reading the blog, or had seen the obituary, but I didn't care. It was powerful to have it acknowledged, and I cried in her arms, for my husband, for the women at Aubuchon, and for all the people I don't know but who know this pain.

Later I talked with a friend who shared that she had just attended the funeral of a 5 day old baby. The umbilical chord had ruptured during the birth and the baby had lost a lot of blood and been on life support from the start. The parents, my friend said, seemed to be in a place of deep acceptance that this was as long as this child needed to be here. I don't know where that kind of deep acceptance comes from, but I do wonder about it.

I have watched David's mother, Margaret, caring for David, sitting with him, holding his hand, reading to him, doing her best to give her son the gift of self-forgiveness in his last days. I can't imagine what that has been like for her, this boy she's loved for 51 years, plus the time when he was in her belly, and now she's asked to say goodbye.

I had a birthday Thursday, November 11. My son and his schooled friends had the day off and a couple of them and their moms spent the night. Cameron's homeschooled friends joined us as well, and we played outside, worked in the gardens, had a bonfire of old decking, and began to erect a privacy fence on one border of the property. The sun shone brightly all day and I was grateful for that. In the evening I went to dinner with two friends and they sang me "Happy Continuation Day." It's a Buddhist point to not call it birth, because that perpetuates the myth, the lie even, that there is a beginning and an end to life. Instead the Buddhists believe that life did not begin with birth and does not end with death, but continues on from form to formlessness, form to formlessness. There is something entirely peaceful about this for me. I can find where I believe David is ok. And I wonder what to do about the waves of sadness and loneliness that come so frequently. Today I mostly just let them roll. I talked with friends during the day, and tonight I made a few phone calls hoping to connect. No one was available, so I sat in "feeling crappy". For awile. Then I decided to watch a movie, send an email or two, and now I'm here, having made it through another day post David's death, and I'm ok. I do wonder, if we are evolving as beings, then one day perhaps knowing the perfection of things will come naturally instead of being a learned experience requiring concientious effort, as it seems to be for me now.