#AtoZChallenge: D Is for Death

            Yes, that death. That thing that comes at the end of life. That thing that causes a person to stop breathing, to stop being alive, to end up buried in the ground or turned into ashes. That thing that modern Americans, at least, barely talk about, let alone think about.

            If you’re religious, maybe doesn’t feel quite so final. If you believe your dead loved one is in heaven, still thinking about you and caring for you, in some ethereal way, and that you will see each other again once you die yourself, perhaps death doesn’t feel so final. So like a thick wall banging down between you and the person you loved and lived with for 50+ years.

            My husband, Jack, died last year, on January 5. He had recently been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer. He’d been in the hospital for a month, disabled for the previous two years after a fall, in moderately ill health for the 16 years before that from a clotting disorder and multiple complications. For years, he continued to say, “I can live with this.” On the last day of 2015, he said, “I can’t live with this.” Hospice, then death.

            Those are the facts. But what do they mean? How do they feel? How do I accept the finality of Jack’s being gone, forever? I have no religion, I don’t believe there’s some nonmaterial existence where he might still be. I can only hold onto the Jewish belief that dead people live on in the memories of those still alive. But my memory is weak where my memories of Jack are.

            I feel like I wasn’t paying enough attention. It feels like I need his physical presence to remember. I miss his body, his differentness, his unique thoughts and feelings. I don’t miss the fights we had over my saving things – or maybe I do miss them. In one of my few dreams about him, I was showing off the bookcases I’d emptied, and he laughed because I’d waited until after he died to do that.

            Why haven’t I dreamed of him more? Why is he dying out of my dreams as well as my life? As he lay dying, I told him, “From now on, your story will be my story. Is that okay?” And he nodded. But it’s not okay.

Slice of Life (and Death)

A week ago today, my husband died. We were together for 52 years, married for 51. (That still feels as unbelievable as the fact that he's dead.) We sometimes thought of ourselves as the last married couple in America. The day after he died, I wrote this paragraph, perhaps the beginning of something longer.

I always thought I had to get married until I learned that I didn’t. By then I’d been married for six years. On our first date, he asked me out for a drink. I had a drink while he had a dozen. I looked at the 12 empty glasses of Scotch and water lined up between us on the table and thought, “That’s exciting.” On our second date he recited Dylan Thomas’s “In My Craft and Sullen Art.” I was impressed; reciting poetry meant he wasn’t as cynical as he usually sounded. As he lay dying, I read “In My Craft and Sullen Art” to him. I felt I was going to cry as I read “The lovers lie abed” and I thought, I’m such a cliché. Our third date was a party. He sat in a big armchair, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, and beckoned to me. I sat on the arm of the chair, then on his lap, then we were necking. I said, “At every party, there’s always a couple necking in the corner. Tonight we’re that couple." He was a WASP from Kansas, and I thought he was exotic. I was an East Coast Jew, and he thought I was exotic. As he lay dying, I held his hand and said, “Now your story will become my story. Is that okay?” His eyes closed, he smiled and nodded.