Tag Archives: memoirs

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A Day With My Friend

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“There’s a giant millipede in your apartment.  And one of the rooms is filled with water.”

Those were the first words out of Steve’s sleepy mouth this morning.  “Say, what?!”  He usually says whatever thing left over from his dreaming thoughts is still floating in his brain when he first wakes up.  He rolled over and closed his eyes again.  I thought about how every day with him is surprising and interesting and genuine.  I told him that I feel very fortunate to have had such a good friend during the past tumultuous 3 years.  I wonder how my grief and recovery would have been different without him.  Would I still be drinking tumblers of gin after work and crying myself to sleep in an empty house?  Would I be knocking on the doors of half-interested acquaintances looking for more attention, more love, more support, parading my needs pathetically about?  I don’t know.  I believe that I wouldn’t have tried half the things I did without Steve or gotten through the necessary bits quite so well.  Steve then asked me what I thought was our best “best friends” photo.  We agreed on these:

The first best friend "self-portrait" I shot of us, holding the camera at arm's length, like a teenager would do

One I took by accident while my camera dangled in my hand during a spontaneous kiss

Today, we’re heading over to Kettle Moraine State Forest where Old World Wisconsin, the living history museum, is located for our back-to-back job interviews.  Ever gone job hunting with your best friend?  I did once before, in college.  My friend had a summer job as a camp counselor, which I thought would be perfect for me.  I went up to interview there and didn’t get offered a job, but I did find a camp closer to home which hired me.  I love the feeling of adventure, the unknown, the “let’s just try this; I will if you will!” daring.   With a friend beside you, it’s a win-win situation no matter what happens.

So anyway, as my mother would say, “Enuff zis luff-making!”  Time to shower and be off!  Life is rich; friends are golden!

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Four Years Ago Today

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I’m feeling rather gray and gloomy today, like the motionless monochrome sky.  I went out with wet hair, first to breakfast with Steve’s mom, then to do laundry at the laundromat, then to the grocery store.  I feel thoroughly chilled.  I think my hair is still wet.  Yet, there’s no snow on the ground, so I can’t really blame the weather.  It’s still far from wintry…not like it was, say, four years ago…

Four years ago, there was a snow storm.  Four years ago, the Super Bowl was on.  Four years ago, my husband was in the hospital.

I could give you the whole background history on his medical odyssey, but it would come out dry and clinical.  What I’m feeling now is more surreal.  Let’s just say that he was in the cardiac wing, waiting to be stabilized enough for surgery.  Waiting.  Like waiting for Godot.   There was no sense of time after a few days.  Doctors would come and go and offer conjectures and imagine scenarios.  I got the feeling that I should simply camp out with him and see what happened.  So I did.

My husband was a sports fan, and the Super Bowl game was a big party occasion on our calendar most years.   During the regular football season, we’d watch games together on Sunday afternoons and nap through a good chunk of them.  I can enjoy the game and root for the underdog or a sentimental favorite, and usually Jim would fill me in on some of the finer points of strategy or history.   I guess you could say we were companionable about it.  Jim watched a lot of TV in his later years, and in the hospital, there’s not much else to do.  “Camped out in the cardiac wing” meant that during visiting hours, you could find me squeezed in next to him on the bed, cranked up in sitting position, watching whatever was on the box suspended from the ceiling.   But I thought the Big Game should be more festive.  So I asked the nurses if we could watch it from the visitor’s lounge on the floor, on the big screen, and invite a friend or two.  They gave their permission.

It wasn’t a party.  It was just me, Jim and one of our church friends who stopped by for a while.  I brought a couple of coolers with snacks and drinks.  I got in trouble for bringing beer.  Not that Jim was drinking it, but I guess it was against some rule, because a nurse came by and told me I couldn’t have it there.  Jim was comfortably situated in one of the lounge chairs with his IV pole and beepy-thing beside him.  We were in clear view of the nurses’ station the whole time.  A few other hospital visitors peeked in periodically, but mostly, we were alone.  Our friend Dave told us that there was a huge snowstorm outside.  Toward the end of the game, we actually lost power for a while.  When it was over, it was past visiting hours, and I was concerned about digging my car out of the parking lot and driving home, so I packed up my coolers and kissed Jim good-bye pretty quickly.   Three days later, he had his surgery.  Ten days after that, he was dead.

I found out today that the two teams that are in the Super Bowl this year are the same two teams that played four years ago today.  They will play on Sunday.  And I won’t be watching.  I haven’t watched a football game in a long time.  We don’t even have a TV.

Life changes.  Waiting only lasts a while.  Those days, suspended in gray like a snowflake, drift down slowly, but eventually, they evaporate, and something else takes their place.

I’m okay with that…I think…  Yeah.  I’m okay.

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Homework

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So here’s my assignment for the week: write a description of one of the characters who will be in your memoir.  Here’s what I have written.

“When I met Jim, he was a warm, charismatic 17-year old. Everything about him was golden and good. He was an A student parented by professional educators, a member of the Mormon Church who spent an hour in seminary every day before school, an athlete competitive in tennis, a baritone soloist with the school choir, a blue-eyed blonde with thick, curly surfer locks and a regular California dream. And the crowning touch? His grandfather was an Italian immigrant. I was introduced to him at our high school’s International Talk-In, where locals were given the opportunity to mingle with exchange students. I was then the Vice President of the Italian Club, a thorough Anglo hopelessly enamored of all things italiano. My best friend at the time, the President of the Club, Lynn Panighetti, introduced us. Jim enclosed my right hand in a bear paw and then wouldn’t let go. His long lashes fluttered in befuddlement as he pretended our hands were magically glued together. He was a flirt, a funny one, and I was instantly flattered and powerfully attracted.

His right hand was broad with short, stubby fingers. He would later lament how often he “fat fingered” the keys of his computer. He had a scar on his fourth finger from a machine accident he had while working in a cannery at age 15. He told me after we’d been dating for a few years that I could have all of him except the thumb and two middle fingers of his right hand – he needed them for bowling. Eventually, he qualified for PBA membership; he always pushed himself to achieve the highest level possible in any of his pursuits. His hands matched the rest of his mesomorphic frame. At 5 feet 8 inches tall, with a massive barrel chest, he resembled a friendly teddy bear, especially to my 15-year old eyes. I nicknamed him Winnie the Pooh.

Thirty years later, that stocky body was swollen with toxins and dialysis solution as a result of his failing kidneys. His barrel chest sported a 6-inch scar where they had split his sternum to perform double bypass surgery on his 31-year old heart. A longer scar down his right calf marked the place where they had harvested a vein for the graft. The kids called his lower legs “cankles” because they looked like calves and ankles combined after neuropathy and edema developed. His polar bear feet with the sideways little toes were in pretty good shape for a diabetic. He had lost only one toenail to ulcerating infection. His hair was still thick, too short to be very curly, and just barely graying at the temples. His beautiful Italian mouth fringed by the ginger mustache looked about to smile, but it wouldn’t. His ears were blue with what our daughter identified as ‘circumaural cyanosis’. (“See, Daddy, I’m really smart,” she sobbed.) He was dead.”

I have become rather moody while taking this course.  Finished Joan Didion’s memoir about her husband’s death (The Year of Magical Thinking) last night and did a little research.  Her only child died at the age of 39 just a month before it was published.  Recent images of her are gaunt and haunted.  Interesting that she was an Episcopalian, like me.  Her New York life reminds me a little of Madeleine L’Engle’s (another Episcopalian), but she is more neurotic, less serenely spiritual.   L’Engle’s memoir of her marriage to actor Hugh Franklin was a favorite of mine about 20 years ago.  (Two-Part Invention)  I feel rather like I’m swimming in the shallow end of their private pool.

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Affairs of the Heart

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“Sudden massive coronary events” are dominating my thinking lately.  I am reading Joan Didion’s account of her husband’s death in The Year of Magical Thinking and recently browsed the pertinent pages of Ekaterina Gordeeva’s book My Sergei while waiting for Steve to glean salable items from Good Will on Tuesday.   I am also writing my own memoirs of my husband Jim in a Continuing Ed course.  What struck me this morning was the role of the grieving person’s best friend as hero.  Not the knight-in-shining-armor type hero, but the simple, calming presence modelling a way to be.  In a moment when shock obscures all notions of how to act, having a trusted person exhibit some caring, helpful behavior is a distinct grace.

My mother was that hero to me when my sister was killed in a car crash.  She and I were traveling across country together, enjoying the freedom of being 20 and (almost) 17 when it happened.  My mother cobbled together connecting flights to reach me in Nebraska the next morning.   She got me discharged from the hospital and set up in a hotel with her while she went through all the details of bringing Alice’s ashes back to California.  We went to the mortuary the next day.  I was still rather zombie-like while my mother handled the business.  Then the director asked us if we would like to see the body.  “Absolutely,” was my mother’s reply.  For some reason, I hadn’t realized that was why we were there.  I hesitated.  Mom led me into the room while the director closed the door.  “Oh, honey,” she sighed as she approached the table.  “No, she’s not there.  She’s gone.  Look here…” she began to comment on Alice’s wounds, on her swollen face and how old she looked, as if she were a battered wife decades in the future.  My mom said something about all the suffering her daughter had been spared.  Then she tenderly bend down and kissed that pale, waxy forehead.  My mother has never looked more beautiful to me in all my life than she did at that moment.  Strong, compassionate, wise and incredibly beautiful.  I wanted to be like her, so I kissed my sister’s forehead, too.

My mom (photo credit DKK)

Gordeeva writes about her coach, Marina, prompting her to go into the ICU room where her husband lay.  “Don’t be afraid.  Go talk to him.  He can still hear you.”  She goes in and begins to unlace his skates, a normal gesture that helps loosen her words, her tears, her emotions.  I remember our priest asking me and two of my daughters if we’d like to anoint Jim with some olive oil, bathe his face, and prepare his body to be taken away.  It was a relief to excuse ourselves from the people downstairs in the living room and go up to him together, to say our goodbyes together, to touch him one more time.  I am so grateful someone thought of allowing us that right then.  We had another opportunity to say goodbye to his body at the funeral home later when my two other children came home.  By then, I could take the lead with them and encourage them to approach.  I can’t remember who started humming “Amazing Grace”, but we all joined in, musical family that we are, and swayed together, arms and bodies entwined.

In the aftermath of Jim’s death, my youngest daughter and I fought frequently.  I didn’t know how to talk to her, to listen to her anger directed at me and recognize that she wasn’t hateful, only grieving.  Steve was the one who suggested that she was hurt, not hurtful and agreed to sit by me while we attempted an honest conversation.  My instinct was to run away.  I was grateful to observe someone who could be calm and present, reasonable and compassionate in the face of powerful emotions that frightened me.  He is adamant about not rescuing me, but equally determined to be the best friend he can be.

I hope that I will have opportunities to be a great friend to someone in grief.  I would like to be a conduit of such grace.