Share this:

In honor and memory of Jeff’s birthday, January 6, I spent a fiddly hour trying to fix the door of the stereo cabinet he built.

My creative furniture-maker husband designed and crafted this gorgeous showpiece circa 1983, long before we had digital anything. He wasn’t involved in the purchase of my 21st century flat screen TV that now fits handily inside the cherry and birdseye maple frame & panel doors with the hand carved ebony pulls. He built this cabinet to house LP albums, and stereo components that no one uses anymore, and he was long gone before any of the shows and movies I watch now were a glimmer in anyone’s eye. He’d be happily geeking out in the present day, amazed at the technology which allows me to cast Netflix via wifi from my smartphone to stream on the smart TV. He loved that ish!

There are shows from those days I still can’t watch, no matter their critical acclaim; I’m reminded too much, too hard, too fast of the Really Bad Old Days. I can’t watch House M.D. – much as I loved it back before Jeff’s diagnosis in 2008, I’m far too bitter now to imagine that Doctors Can Fix It. I can’t watch Breaking Bad – much as I appreciate Walter White’s wish to take care of his family by any means necessary, I just…can’t. The concept of terminal cancer as a dramatic device is a hill I just can’t summit.

The cabinet’s near-microscopic bronze screws and the teensy elegant flush-set bronze pivot hinges were state of the art, back then, but now they are just another reason I’m on my hands and knees on the floor in front of something he should be fixing for me! I’m not weeping, today – at least not yet – over something he should be here for, but it wouldn’t be the first time, and doubtless not the last.

I’m not sure he would approve of my Elmer’s-glue-and-popsicle-stick shim repair, but at least the door doesn’t pop off its hinges now. For the moment. As with so many things…if he wouldn’t like how I’m going to handle any given situation – and believe me, he wouldn’t! – I guess he should have thought of that before he left me here alone to deal.

I mean, thanks for all the one-of-a-kind handcrafted furniture, baby. You know I cherish it.

He is still gone, but his furniture is still here. His books, his tools, the trees he planted – all of that is still here and he remains gone. For nearly fourteen years, it’s been a struggle to wrap my head around that concept. But all these years later, to this day, I remain wrapped up in his love and care. It is not enough. To be sure. But I never had a moment’s doubt: he always, always had my back. That is still the most precious feeling; even though he’s long been physically absent. It’s easier these days than it once was, to realize and appreciate: if you’re lucky enough to have someone who loves you like that once in your life, you are lucky enough.

Fuck cancer.

Anyway, happy birthday Jeff, wherever you are. You’d be 75 today. Not forever 61. I am sure you would be shocked to know how many times a day my thoughts involve you.

James Edward Flanagan Jr.

Always loved, always missed, always remembered.

Way past ’til death do us part.

Share this:

CW addiction

I was looking at my Facebook memories and trying to decipher what the hell I was going on about on this day last year. (Vaguebooking.)

Then I remembered what it is about this date: today, November 2nd, I am one year divorced.

Realizing that made me a little sad. But not as sad as when I think of all the time I wasted trying to be happy with pieced-together scraps of a shared life, all that energy spent trying to ignore the elephant in the room: to an addict, no one and nothing matters as much as that feeling they must seek. Not work, not erstwhile hobbies, not vocation nor avocation, not marriage, lovers, friends, children, not the sweetest grandchildren in the world, not being honest with oneself or others. Nothing else matters.

Addiction steals everything that can make up a good and happy life. Addiction is a destroyer. It takes whatever it wants and it never, ever gives it back. (Cheryl Strayed wrote this about the universe, in Wild.) Some people can pull out of it, but the statistics are not encouraging. And problems that are not admitted nor addressed have very little chance of ever being solved.

“That tequila is not your friend,” I had observed, on some maudlin difficult evening when my new beloved was morose and in his cups. “On the contrary, it is my closest friend,” declared he. So it was all laid right out for me in the beginning. But I did not truly understand how all-encompassing addiction is. And maybe I did not want to see. I morphed our time together into something else that I wanted it to be, instead of what it really was all along.

This morning, thinking back to those days, I drained my coffee mug and happened to look inside to see the dregs forming a tiny faint heart against the white china. It felt like a reminder: there IS love all around us, and a rich and full life. Maybe not where we thought it would be, or what we had so wistfully imagined, but it is here just the same. We can find it and we can build it.

I’ve been using Facebook as my diary, talking about my personal life since way back in 2009, when my world was destroyed, when I was trying to learn how to be a widow, in fits and starts, and learning how to parent a nearly grown grieving fatherless daughter. I was trying to figure out what to do for work now that my 25 year business had been decimated, and wondering how to rebuild a new life in the ruins of the old one. Speaking openly about my brokenness has been a catalyst for making many new friends, but also for losing many old ones. I know it is a lot for some people, and way TMI for many.

Please don’t with the care emojis. K thx.

It does get better. But not all by itself, and not by wishing it so. You have to do the work your own sweet self.

“Do not love half lovers

Do not entertain half friends

Do not indulge in works of the half talented

Do not live half a life

and do not die a half death

If you choose silence, then be silent

When you speak, do so until you are finished

Do not silence yourself to say something

And do not speak to be silent

If you accept, then express it bluntly

Do not mask it

If you refuse then be clear about it

for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance

Do not accept half a solution

Do not believe half truths

Do not dream half a dream

Do not fantasize about half hopes

Half a drink will not quench your thirst

Half a meal will not satiate your hunger

Half the way will get you no where

Half an idea will bear you no results

Your other half is not the one you love

It is you in another time yet in the same space

It is you when you are not

Half a life is a life you didn’t live,

A word you have not said

A smile you postponed

A love you have not had

A friendship you did not know

To reach and not arrive

Work and not work

Attend only to be absent

What makes you a stranger to them closest to you

and they strangers to you

The half is a mere moment of inability

but you are able for you are not half a being

You are a whole that exists to live a life

not half a life.”

– Khalil Gibran

Share this:

The hits, they do keep coming, don’t they?

Along with all the traumatic events happening in the world, my own personal traumas old and new, and regular everyday life, this week I had an extra chore. I had to dismantle my favorite pleasing little “dooryard garden”. A mason came to repoint my chimney, years overdue; I had watched him tramp around in the garden while examining the job, so I knew that taking out all the plants would be best for them (and me), even though they don’t particularly want to be moved in the heat of summer, even in Maine. I dug out all my treasured plants, heeled them into compost in the shade, and hoped for the best.

The day the mason finished, I started to redesign and replant the little bed, but it was glaring hot afternoon sun in the west-facing garden. I was already tired from other necessary chores, and I didn’t feel inspired by the task at hand. Sometimes we must push on through even when inspiration does not strike, but this was not one of those times. So I took a little rest instead. Go me.

In the cool of the evening I felt better able to muster my creativity while also digging holes and pushing wheelbarrows full of soil and plants, so I tackled the job in the sunset glow of a solstice gloaming. The task went easier then, and doubtless better, and I was well pleased with the result. I fed my precious charges and lovingly watered them into place, feeling their rich new organic compost settle in around their roots to assuage the shock.

My neighborhood is quiet and pretty, with lots of people walking by at all times of day: kids riding bikes, dogs, couples, friends and lovers walking around the block or heading for the Portland Trails behind my house. While I was working on the garden, a couple I didn’t know walked by with their two dogs. The woman said to her husband, “Hold on, I need to go talk to this lady.” She said, gesturing, “I live in that house over there, and I’ve been kind of stalking you. I’m a longtime widow too, and I’ve been reading your posts and loving your writing.” We talked for a moment about current events and suddenly I have a new friend in the neighborhood. The world certainly does work in mysterious ways. If I’d pushed through working in the hot afternoon sun, maybe I wouldn’t have met her, or had that conversation and a new friend. What a sad and strange and beautiful world.

I had bought a new little teak patio table and two chairs, real-life tangible symbolism for rest, relaxation, and company in my dooryard glen. I put it into its imagined setting, and placed on the table a pretty pot of bright ‘Black and Blue’ salvia. Before I even turned around, a hummingbird appeared, attracted by the vibrant flowers.

I guess all this is just to say: abhorrent things happen in the world, natural and otherwise. I do find great comfort in the natural world, until I remember floods and hurricanes and wildfires can be just as destructive as malevolent human forces. We must keep up the fight for our values and what is important to us. We must also rest at times; we innately know we cannot pour from an empty vessel. Yet sometimes we do try.

If we water and rest ourselves, sift rich compost about our thirsty roots, we allow ourselves to spring back and continue on with what matters most to us another day. Hopefully.

The very fallible Teddy Kennedy said it best, I think, in 1980 and echoed again at the 2008 convention introducing Barack Obama:

“For all those whose cares have been our concern,

the work goes on,

the cause endures,

the hope still lives,

and the dream shall never die.”

S. ‘Black and Blue’

Share this:

I stopped for an ice cream on the way home from a hard, hot job the other day. The ice cream stand advertised freshly made peppermint stick, so of course I had to have it, for old times’ sake, and to observe Father’s Day a few days early in my own way. I chose peppermint stick as an homage to my dad – a man who had far more children than was strictly necessary. He loved and cared for us very well; despite his high level of nervousness and grudging misanthropy I think we turned out okay.

My grandparents lived on a rocky promontory overlooking the scenic oceanfront path the Marginal Way in the tourist town of Ogunquit, Maine. When we visited, which in the summer was often, my father would take us out of the house each afternoon so Granny and Grampy (and Mom) could have a bit of a respite from our incessant prattling and raucous shrieking fun.

Dad would troop us for a walk (“forced march”) down the Marginal Way, telling stories and jokes the whole time. At the end of the Marginal Way was legendary lobster shack Barnacle Billy’s, which had an ice cream window.

As dictated by the law of the land, each of us, from large to small, would get a scoop of peppermint stick in a sugar cone. Cool and creamy, refreshing with a little candy crunch, we loved peppermint stick. Also, when we were little, we had no idea that other kinds of ice cream existed. Our dad made sure this was so because he did not want to incite the kind of uproar that occurs when there are five kids who want five different flavors of ice cream.

When we were small, all we knew was peppermint stick. As each of us learned to read, we realized to our dismay that the world has a boundless array of ice cream flavors to peruse. Not for us, though. When we each in turn reached the age of literacy, we were sworn to secrecy by Dad about the vast conspiracy to withhold gustatory choice from innocents. Dad let it be known to anyone who was skilled enough to read words like “Raspberry Ripple”, Chocolate Chip”, or “Butter Pecan”, that if we spilled the beans to our younger still-blissfully-illiterate siblings, that would be the end of ice cream cones forever.

(I can’t explain how even the smallest child should be able to observe other people clutching cones of purple Black Raspberry or tan Coffee. I guess we were gullible? Or we just wanted ice cream no matter the strings attached.)

Naturally the minute I got free of parental clutches, I experimented with alllll the other flavors, ice cream and otherwise. I come by my rebel streak honestly, probably from practicing pushback with my dad – thanks for that, Dad. (And I’m sorry.) Although strict and unyielding in the matter of ice cream, he also taught us to Question Authority, and we all knew that we could present and litigate any well-reasoned case to him as long as it didn’t start with the argument “Yeah, but…”.

Our dad had many peccadilloes and silly arbitrary rules of which Peppermint Stick was only one, and not even the most illogical. My brother and I were just howling with laughter and love telling Dad Stories – as we do; most of the five of us us are still raucous, and prattle incessantly when we get together in any formation. I think it would make Dad very happy to know how we still talk of him with such fondness even for the nutty stuff, many years after he left here. I think it would also please him no end that many of us also have arbitrary rules for our own children just because it made our lives easier for a minute.

It had been years since I had had peppermint stick ice cream. It was high time to have some. With a cherry on top just because. Love and miss you, Dad.

Share this:

As a veteran widowed person, for me there are but a few hard days in any given year anymore.

May 12 is one.

May 12 would have been – if, y’know, it were – my 32nd wedding anniversary with what he always called me: “the love of my life”, Jeff (Jimmy) Flanagan.

He also loved to refer to me as his “current wife”, but I digress…
We widowed people sure hate Would-Have-Beens!

Not to be maudlin, and don’t bother feeling sorry for me. I still talk about my long-dead husband/best friend/business partner because every single day I see couples not appreciating what they have, not imagining that one day their love will be gone, and I am here to call people out on that nonsense.

Every day I see couples arguing about stupid stuff, magnifying small faults, ignoring small kindnesses, betraying their beloveds in ways large and small. As an outsider I am witness to that. I call attention to it every chance I get, try to gently encourage, “Maybe DON’T say that snarky hurtful thing to the person you claim to love most in the world.”

I’m highly imperfect at this myself; just ask the people closest to me, but because Jeff is gone, I do know when I’m doing it. I’m all too aware we live a very short life in a notably finite world full of extremely mortal beings, and we do make endless mistakes in our pursuit of happiness. I know I do.

Once I was at a close family gathering. When the husband left the room for a moment, the wife hissed furtively at our remaining relatives, “God, he’s being SUCH AN ASSHOLE!”
I commented, “I remember when I used to call my husband an asshole, too. Man, I miss that!”
Mean, but effective.

I still talk about Jeff after all these years – this is my thirteenth year observing a wedding anniversary alone – because he is still one of the key people in my life. Weird. He is still so fundamental to me, after all these years without him – if for no other reason than he is my baby daddy – and goddammit would he be proud of THIS one! He’s been gone since our daughter was newly 18; she’s 31 now. He has missed so much of her continued growth into a strong, kind, beautiful, smart, hilarious, deeply honorable and hard working woman powerfully coming into her own (not that he had any doubt of that!). It is so bitterly unfair that she lost his wise and gentle counsel just when she needed it most.

Of course our long friendship, courtship, partnership, and marriage were fraught and imperfect, as all things are. Jeff and I were going through what might be kindly referred to as a “rough patch” when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, which expeditiously sent all that extraneous crap out the window, leaving mostly just our strong decades-long foundation of love, respect, and care for each other. True Love, when you get right down to it, is just fervently wanting the best for your person and doing what you can to make that best a reality. Even on our worst days together, neither of us ever failed at that. I never, ever doubted that he had my back. That feeling of utter safety is gone forever. Turns out it is irreplaceable. Believe me, I have tried to find it in other people. I have failed. That ease and comfort of knowing you are in exactly the right place is one of the things I continue to miss the very most. If you have that kind of love in your life, I implore you to cherish it.

I had an evening out recently; I attended a movie screening about the Modern Jazz Quartet, at delightful Portland Conservatory of Music. The whole night, I derived no little pleasure imagining how much Jeff would have enjoyed it were he there with me. How many of our friends might have been there, how he would have enjoyed the music and commentary, and how comfortable he would have been in the roomful of appreciative old hippies listening to jazz. It’s not simply that I miss him; there are also all sorts of lovely things about life that HE has missed. Such reminders always make me a little wistful; there’s no way around that.

After the event I remarked to the friends who invited me, who knew my late husband a little bit, “Jeff’s been gone coming up on 13 years. I do think about him every day, but I have more or less made my peace with his absence. But even so, the whole time, I was thinking how much he would have LOVED this!”
My friend asked, “Did it make you sad?”
and offered, “He was there.“
To which I say no, and no.
Those who live this life which continues to spin out further and further from The Before know it’s a bit more complicated than that. My typical response to that kind of remark is something like: Maybe in your world that is true; “he is always with you”. In my world (the real one), in the last thirteen years he has been no help at all shoveling the driveway, cooking my supper, moving our daughter in and out of her many dorm rooms and apartments, or any other of his myriad husbandly duties. If you know what I mean, and I think you do. I miss all of it, to this day.

He was my life, and he is still my life; he will always be my life, no matter who or what else is in it. In these thirteen long years without him, I have had many fine adventures. I have loved with my whole open heart and been loved in return, built a new life with a whole new kind of work, fought for causes dear to my heart, bought and sold new homes, added new friends and lovers and let others go, all of which would have made him so proud, excited, and happy for me. True love really is: wanting what is best for your person.

On what turned out to be our last wedding anniversary, May 12, 2009, I gave Jeff a card in which I wrote a favorite, deeply truthful Ani DiFranco lyric which sums up so much about who we were together: “I know there is strength in the differences between us, and I know there is comfort where we overlap.”

Later in that same song is the phrase,
“I build each one of my days out of hope
And I give that hope your name…”
I used to silently sing that song to myself when I was driving him to chemo for all those months. Perhaps this is why I no longer have much use for the “cancer community”’s darling notion of “hope”.
Hope. Nope. We knew all along that for us there was no hope to speak of. No hope, just love. And an ever-diminishing number of days to show it. I had no idea then that I’d continue to feel so much love, way past til death do us part.

More from Ani:
“I’m sorry I can’t help you; I cannot keep you safe
I’m sorry I can’t help myself, so don’t look at me that way
We can’t fight gravity on a planet that insists
That love is like falling
And falling is like this…
We’ll say we didn’t know; we didn’t even try
One minute there was road beneath us, and the next just skyyyyyy”

Happy Would-Have-Been anniversary, sweetheart. Love of my life. Way past til death do us part.

Share this:

I read somewhere that pain + wisdom = beauty.

Long ago, in the old bad old days (as compared to the new bad old days), my daughter said, “As Bob Dylan would say, “Life is hard, life is a bust. All you can do is do what you must. You do what you must do, and you do it well. I do it for you, honey-baby, can’t you tell?” You should listen to Buckets of Rain, it’s my favorite missing people song.”

I HATE that my daughter has a Missing People Song. But she does.

There is plenty to be nostalgic about this time of year, plenty to miss. Now more than ever, this year in particular, everyone is missing someone or something, everyone is sad. There is plenty to be wistful about, not all of which we may feel like discussing at the present time, or possibly ever. There are hundreds of ways we miss what was.

We must be deliberate to choose our joy. We mustn’t waste a moment, a scrap of it. We must choose love. We must choose to feel what we feel – even our pain, particularly our pain: we must let it wash over, under, around and through. We must sit with it, let it wash us clean, then we must do the next right thing. (We do what we must do, and we do it well. I do it for you, honey-baby, can’t you tell?) What might that next right thing be? Today it might be pizza.

Ancient history journal entry, December 2011: “Our lovely tree is set up in the family room Jeff built, and sparkling with the colored lights he loved. It’s another Saturday, when we would relax after work with a drink. He would start the pizza dough while I sliced vegetables and grated cheese. So many things have never been the same since then, and the pizza dough, of course, is only one tiny piece of that. I just don’t have the knack like he did. It would make him sad to know that for Anna and me, Saturday is not always homemade pizza night anymore. But still, we try. We live our lives. So tonight, after work, I will proof the yeast and get out the bread flour.

After I wrote that last wistful bit, Anna and I went out into the world. There were signs galore, signs of his continued presence even while absent. Some days there just are. I never know what to think about this – I never gave it a moment’s thought until it started happening to me. But let’s just say I am much more observant of detail, of patterns, than I used to be.

A certain special song was playing in the art supply store – one that I’ve never heard on the radio before, ever. High over my head, a gull was riding the wind, which a medium told me is him watching over us. The day she told me that, a gull had been hanging in the sky over my head just moments before. And the numbers 7.17 (the date he left us) glowed greenly in the digital cash register display – the previous sale at the bakery where we bought bread.

I know: sea gulls are not rare around here.
I KNOW this sounds crazy: to see and feel his presence in random occurrences in any given day. I thought so too, until it happened to me.

At the grocery store a woman came up to me. She is also a widow – some months further out than me – and she told me that my last couple of blog posts, about how hard Christmas is.
Was.
Is.
Have helped her. She has forwarded them on to other people, who then said it helped them understand. She is getting a Christmas tree this year, for the first time Since. She is potting bulbs to give for gifts. First gifts Since. We have talked before about how her children are surviving through the loss of their father. Grieving, yes. They are grieving AND they are trying to live their lives.

When we arrived home in the damp December dusk, there was a tiny black tarpaper heart on the back steps.

The pizza dough is rising in the bowl.”

~

This year, ten long years later, a lifetime after that journal entry, my small sweet fragrant Christmas tree is lit with white pine cone lights, decorated with birds and stars and hearts. Not many people will see it this year. There is a lot of missing, a lot of quiet. A lot of sadness. Life contains much sweetness along with the sadness. It is an effort to notice it, but it is important to do so. I still see signs sometimes; I guess I always will. I don’t wonder about them; I just take them as they come, with deep gratitude for love in all its forms.

I haven’t made homemade pizza in a hundred years. But maybe I will.

“May the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” -Rumi

Share this:

interesting timing

I called Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore to donate some things from my recent house remodel: a perfectly serviceable electric stove, my old front door, some builder-grade kitchen cabinets. I was somewhat annoyed that they couldn’t pick up the donation for a couple of weeks, but the day finally came. A man, tall, dark, and handsome – not to mention bearded and built – came by today with a big truck and a dolly, and while I was admiring his bulky calves, he was admiring my “vintage” hand-carved bakery sign, covered with cobwebs and leaning in a corner of the garage. 

“Vintage!” Man, that cut to the quick. My husband Jeff built the heavy wooden sign for my fledgling bakery micro-business when we were still at then-disreputable Thompson’s Point. (Three thousand square feet for $600 a month! And worth every penny.) We left that shop for Walton Street when Anna was still in diapers, so I guess it IS vintage. Circa so last century! And I guess this personable fellow is probably the age of my grown girlie, and I should avert my eyes and quit flirting with him. He might take pity on the bespectacled gray-haired retired baker lady and flirt back, and THEN where would we be? 

I sketched the design for the bakery sign; my now-long-late husband carved the lettering into glued-up 2″ thick hardwood planks. (I could tell it’s hardwood when I tried to lift it.) He must have just enlarged my sketch because it’s clearly my penmanship writ large. He painstakingly lettered it with gold leaf, built the massive frame, hung out our “shingle”. The gold leaf has long since flaked off. 

I don’t miss the old Handmade Desserts bakery days, most of them, most of the time. But, VINTAGE? Once I started making wedding cakes for the young children who’d accompanied their parents to the bakery, I guess it was only a matter of time. I guess nowadays I am pretty vintage too. 

The guy was right though. Even though I don’t make Thanksgiving pies for the clamoring masses anymore, that handsome solid wood, laboriously hand-carved sign shouldn’t be stuffed in a dusty corner and forgotten. After he left, I hauled it out and hoisted it up where I can see it. Next to it is a maple and cherry frame-and-panel cabinet front with a small carousel horse carved in relief in the center. Jeff never did finish that cabinet. (We had a baby instead.)

So now when I drive into my newly-cleared-out garage I can once again be reminded to be grateful for what we had, and what we lost. What we had, and what we lost. What remains, and what is new, and what is newly recovered.
Interesting timing, that’s all. Just in time for Thanksgiving. 

Share this:

 

Dear diary: So, this happened:
On this day, October 3 (2014), I’m driving along, on the verge of being late for work, as usual. I have a large strong coffee but I haven’t eaten, also as usual. I am hungry, and thinking about whether to find some food or go directly to work, and possibly be on time for once.

At the stoplight, I happen to look down and see the mileage ticker, which of course has been there all along, ticking away as it does.
It reads 7.17.

7.17 is the date my J died, the date I changed from wife to widow.

For me, the number 717 comes up a lot. I see it, randomly, all the time, in all different kinds of circumstances. I have determined, over lo these many years, that when I see it, I’m meant to be paying attention. Paying Attention To Something, often something I haven’t figured out yet. This has happened so often, and at such random-not-random times, that now I know to stop, look around, and observe what in my life could use my soft, tender, unbiased attention. 

When he was here, J was a master of this very thing: soft, tender, unbiased attention. As a wife, a mom, and a busy small business owner, I ran around scrambling all the time. J had an innate ability to gently bring my focus to something that woulda-shoulda-coulda been quite obvious, if a person was paying attention, which I so often was not. Multi-tasking and running myself ragged were my specialties back then. These days I really do try to take better care of myself, and happily, sometimes I succeed, but bad habits and neurological pathways are hard to break, even without major trauma landing in your life.  

Just before I noticed that 7.17 had appeared, I had decided I should just suck it up and go to work hungry, face the fact that my own frantic running-on-empty ways have deprived me of sustenance yet again. 

At that exact moment, I note the number on my dashboard. 

I don’t know how he does it! 
Nudges me, from wherever it is he abides now. But still, he does it, all the same. I don’t believe in ghosts, and neither do you. Believe in this, or don’t, it matters nothing to me. 

This time, to me, 7.17 instantly, clearly, means that I should stop, take a few small minutes, feed myself, then continue on with my day. 

I stop at the next place that has food. I select some local cider, and an organic pear. The almond croissants look delicious, but there is also one darker, bran-type muffin left, so I choose that, as it looks healthier, more sustaining. When I take a bite, the muffin reveals itself to be a “morning glory” muffin – a nutritious blend of carrot, apple, zucchini, nuts, coconut, and lots of other good things. My favorite! And I suddenly remember that I had the idea, months ago, to make a big batch of these exact same muffins, freeze them in small bags, and take out one each day so I can put something wholesome in my stomach on my way to work. 

But then I never did it. Not only did I never follow through with that plan, I never even thought of it again. Can I still blame this on “widow brain”, five years later?

I’ve never been a breakfast person, ever since I was a nervous little kid with an even-more-nervous stomach, and it troubled J. greatly. He couldn’t understand how I could do strenuous physical work and think complicated thoughts all day fueled with nothing but coffee. But that’s what I do, every day.

Even years dead, he’s not letting me get away with it this time. OK, honey. I will feed myself. If you insist.
I mean, thank you.
And love. 
Way past ‘til death do us part. 

Share this:

Once upon a time in a previous life, I owned and operated a little bakery that specialized in fancy wedding cakes and deluxe desserts for important occasions. This isn’t just reminiscing; I have a point, I swear.

It is always an honor to be included in an important event. Those involved do not take their responsibility lightly. Everyone involved in a major event invests so much to be sure everything goes as well as it possibly can. Each person holds a duty to the greater whole. For my part, I prided myself on making sure my little cog in a crucial wheel ran as smoothly as it possibly could; that I did the best work I could and that my work reflected well on everyone else. At the bakery, we went through many trials about which (rightfully) no one was aware. In my business and in my personal life, I held myself to the highest standard. Too high a standard, some might say: those standards took their inevitable toll. To make sure each order was completed, to surpass the client’s expectation, to deliver on time, with each detail accounted for, we often worked too hard, for too little, under conditions I am embarrassed to report I deemed acceptable. But once I signed up for a job, it was not the client’s problem, nor should it be, that I may have worked all night, or that my carpel tunnel syndrome is acting up, or that my car broke down, or that my child is sick. The show must go on, as they say.

The day my father entered home hospice was the same day I had an order no one else on my staff could complete. I had to work. I couldn’t hand off my job to someone else. I worked through the night so I could be at my parents’ to help set up the house, to support my family, and to be there when my father arrived home from the hospital.

The silent, slow ambulance drove up to the house; my father was gray, listless, immobile on the stretcher as they bumped him through the narrow hallway into his study that was to be his resting place as he prepared to die. The hospice workers unloaded him from the stretcher, gently placed him onto the rented hospital bed in his lovingly appointed study, surrounded by his cluttered desk, his beloved artwork, his jammed Chinese-red painted bookshelves. He curled his wasted body into a ball, faced the wall, and closed his eyes.

It was then that I had to leave to assemble and deliver whatever elaborate cake I had agreed to make for that day. I had to drive away, erase that picture of my dying father from my mind – for the moment – and go to work. I have no memory of the remainder of that day, or the days that followed. I may have forgotten what the cake was, who the client was, but I have never forgotten how I felt that day, and I never will.

It was at that juncture that everything I had worked for professionally for all those years up to that moment was suddenly…not worth it.

My father rallied after that day, for a few months. Afterwards, I kept working, as is my wont. In May 2008, I had quite a number of wedding cakes already booked for the season when we got my husband’s diagnosis of stage four cancer. I had been carrying the weight of the bakery alone for quite some time by then. Jeff had been very ill; now we knew why. He was to start treatment in June, three times a week for twelve weeks to start, with no guarantee of how he might respond to treatment, what the side effects might be, whether he might be hospitalized, whether he would even live long enough to complete the first round. But I had learned one last lesson from my father at his deathbed a few years before, and I wasn’t going to waste it.

There is no job in the world that is worth more than my family, or my physical or mental health. Not only that, but it was obvious that I could not give 100% to my work. I could not be sure I could give the work my best effort at the level my customers had a right to expect. So I called each of the clients who had given me deposits in good faith for their wedding cakes throughout the summer and fall. Whatever very apologetic “family emergency here’s your refund” language I used was good enough for most of them. They were disappointed but understanding, and they wished me and my family well.

But my difficult decision to walk away was not acceptable for one person, who took it personally. This person was very upset that she had to start anew the search for a “reliable” baker for her wedding cake. How dare I cancel with only a few months notice! This person berated me on the phone. “We had a deal!” she shrieked. “Very unprofessional!” It was upsetting; I was very sorry to ruin her day, but her response changed nothing about my decision.

I don’t do that kind of work anymore, and I haven’t thought of this in years. Maybe it is foolish to be suddenly thinking of it again now, when the news is full of G.O.A.T. Simone Biles’ decision to step away from her long-sought goal to represent the U.S. in the 2021 Olympics.

I realize that equating myself and my silly little business with an Olympic level gymnast and QUEEN like Simone Biles is the height of arrogance. Young Ms. Biles has been through so much; she has sacrificed more to be where she is than most of can can contemplate in a lifetime. She risks so much each time she steps up to perform! People can die from doing what she does! To ask her to continue when she doubts her own ability is presumptuous at best, dangerous at worst.

How dare we judge her for knowing whether or not she needs to step away, whether or not she can perform to her own standards and those of her team.

My point is this: We must trust people to make the best decisions for themselves and for those around them. We cannot judge when we do not have all the facts. (Perhaps even when we do. )

Suffice to say that when people make a decision to step away, they likely have a very good reason that has nothing to do with you and your expectations.

Yet again, I am reminded: be kinder than necessary….for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle you know nothing about.

Share this:

The weirdest little thing happened a while back. David and I were out for a pleasant Sunday drive. In our ramble, we happened to drive past a brown house with the front door and trim painted a soothing, lovely shade of blue-green. The soft accent color, like copper patina, mellowed the mass of brown in such a beautiful way. As I drove past this house with my new husband, my immediate visceral reaction was “Oh, wow, I can’t wait to show Jeff this color combination! He will love this! We can paint Torrey Street like this!”

Jeff’s childhood home, the Torrey Street house where we lived for most of our many years together, was a cape stained a drab dark brown with boring, oil-based-white-painted door and trim. We always (especially me) hated those colors together – at once stark and dull – but we never did change it. We had a little girl, and a demanding small business, and a live-in Grampy – Jeff’s deaf, disconnected dad, who kept wandering off – so although we lived there for decades, and we eventually painted most of the rooms pretty colors to suit our tastes, we never did take the time to make the exterior more our own.

It took a minute to hit me, there in the car with David by my side. But then it hit me hard. Jeff is long gone. Torrey Street is long gone. Since my husband and I sold the Torrey Street house, I’ve lived in three other houses, with two other men. There will be no painting that trim. Of course not. Worlds collide, again.

Although he knows my history all too well, I couldn’t think how to explain this jarring zigzag sensation to David, or why the color combination was so striking to me, and I didn’t quite understand why tears instantly sprang to my eyes, so I kept quiet about it. I held the strange moment silently inside me, cupped inside my ribcage like a precious talisman, fragile as a tiny egg, irreplaceable as trust once broken.

The moment stayed with me, though, and a few days later I went looking for the house again so I could take a picture of it and continue to think about that weird juxtaposition of my lives old and new. But I couldn’t find the house. I’ve NEVER found it. I keep driving around that neighborhood, but I’ve never again seen the same combination, the brown house with the inspiring, beautiful blue-green trim. It’s as if I imagined it. But I didn’t.

A few weeks or months after driving past this mythical house, my sister and I discovered and bought a lakeside house, as a new gathering place for our large extended family. Since the day I signed the contract to buy that house, it’s been kicking my ass HARD that Jeff isn’t here to enjoy this wonderful relaxing new family home. It has been many years since anything has made me this sad for this long. I have learned to try mightily not to compare my old lives with my new, as in the nearly twelve years since Jeff has been gone I’ve been ensnared in that trap more than enough times to know: that way lies only madness, and unnecessary suffering. Life and loss bring pain – but there is pain, and there is suffering, and they are not the same thing.

Jeff would have so loved working and playing on the lake property! My sister’s excellent husband will be doing all the things that my first husband would have so enjoyed. The only sign of Jeff at this new house is a rickety, rotted Adirondack chair that he built at his old York Street furniture shop several lifetimes ago. The chair is brittle, porous, and lichen-encrusted from many winters in my yard. It is unsafe to sit in, basically now a pile of decorative kindling held together with 3” sheetrock screws, but for some reason it was essential for me to bring to this beautiful new place one tangible thing from those decades I spent with my baby’s papa, the love of my life.

The new lake house is stained brown, and the trim is painted an unfortunate mustard-yellow. It didn’t take me long to decide what color to paint the trim! The funny thing is, the lake house wasn’t yet even a twinkle in my eye when I drove by that other, spectral, brown house with the blue-green trim, the one I’ve never seen again.

Some days the notes of my old life and my new life flow together as in a beautiful symphony, and my heart expands, grows softer, more open, able to hold more and more love, free of the trap of judgment and comparing and what-ifs and better and worse. But sometimes inside my heart it’s a clanging, incongruous cacophony of everyone I’ve ever loved, all concurrently plucking at my heartstrings, and somehow I reside at once in every house in which I’ve ever lived. At times, “I contain multitudes” (Walt Whitman), and it makes me feel quite unhinged. Some of my tribe will understand this, and some will not. That’s okay. I wouldn’t wish figuring out all this on my worst enemy, if I had enemies, which I don’t. Life is too short, it turns out, and painful enough without adding to it on purpose.

I realize, as the years continue to spiral out away from the life we shared, my love, that we made a great team. Love is not mere words; love is not static. Love is action; love is service. “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.” (Ursula K. Le Guin)

I get it now. You gave me a rare, immeasurable gift that I never valued enough when you were here: unlike other lovers before or since, you gave me something so simple and priceless that I never had need to question – you never gave me a reason to doubt trusting you, and you always, ALWAYS had my back.

I was typity-type-typing something else entirely to honor the 31st wedding anniversary of our nineteen year marriage on May 12- the twelfth one without you here, dear. But this little blue-green vignette, which I’ve held safely inside myself, like a robin’s egg safe in a nest, kept getting in the way of what I thought I wanted to say. It won’t be any surprise to anyone when I say I still love you, and you know I always, always will. Happy anniversary anyway, baby, and thank you for loving me so well, my ever-present, green-eyed, ghost-husband, from your loony, blue, overthinking, remarried, long-widowed-wife.