I reach my leg under the little formica table and say his name to nudge Tad awake. Outside in the drizzle is a stunning 17th century farmhouse on a hill surrounded by handsome Cypress pines. He wakes from his slumber, turns his head and looks up at me from under the rim of his red baseball cap with those big green eyes of his. (I told him not to wear baseball caps in France because he looks like a tourist). He's smirking because he knows I've woken him up to show him yet another pretty house. He often gets tired of my distractability and shows his need to pull away and recharge his batteries by nodding off. This time he reaches his hand across and touches mine, with just a smile, he rubs his ankle up against mine out of the view of the other passengers as a way to say, "Yes dear. I love you. Now let me sleep." Then he lies his head back down. A big smile comes to my face followed seconds later by a slow gentle cry that brings fat tears tumbling down my face which I cover with my hand so other passengers won't notice.
The reality is: Tad is not here; he is not on this trip with me. The reality is: Tad is dead. And the power of my imagination is both the incredible joy it brings me by creating pleasurable images and the terrible sorrow it unearths when it reminds me that it is -in and of itself- just a mental image setting off bodily sensations.
(If I use my imagination just right I can even feel the particular texture of Tad's hands.)
As I rush across the French countryside in a long metal train I find myself wondering if those seventeen months of cancer even existed. Maybe I just dreamt them too. The long nights in hospitals, waking every time the nurse walks in to check his vitals, the constant struggle to to see if I can understand what the doctors "really" mean behind their multiple masks. Did I just make up that fight, those phone calls, the hollering matches, the tearful nights holding each other?
Was this too just my imagination?
What's clear is that I did not dream the part of the story where the leukemia finally killed Tad. I did not dream the day he stopped breathing in my arms after suffocating on his own fluids. I did not dream the view of his cardboard box coffin sliding into the square chamber of the cremation furnace. That I know is not my imagination.
He is dead and I am not. Can someone please give me the instruction manual for loving a dead man? Because I don't know how to do this.
I find myself wondering when it will stop. When will I get back to wanting to be in love with a live person? I guess I am already there - I want to be in love with a live Tad. He's the one who is unavailable - so to speak.
If I were to give a name to this state it would be "bittersweet" - every memory is like a sweet dark chocolate that I get to relish in then suddenly I hit the bitter, hard center of reality and it becomes unpleasant.
* * * * * * * * * * *
This is not my first dance with death; far from it.
I saw my first cadaver at age 12 when I went to see my cousin lying in a casket; shot dead during a hunting accident. I saw my grandfather's corpse before I turned 18.
But the long, ongoing dance with death similar to Tad's was when I was in my early thirties and was told I had a medical condition that could be controlled temporarily but never healed. It would only get worse and for years smart doctors told me I needed to prepare for my imminent death.
Then some brilliant team of scientists came along and discovered a drug that saved my life. It's pretty clear to me that none of the men in white saw it coming given the seriousness with which they conveyed their concern that I prepare my family and friends for my death.
Now that I am back in France I see how being here helped me deal with the reality of death.
When I lived here in Bordeaux I was restoring a 17th century farm house. One of my pleasures as a cerebral break from the exhausting physical work was to come into the city and do research on the history of the house and the families who had lived there.
The notion that this place had been there hundreds of years before me and the thick stone walls would probably be there many years after me somehow made my loss and fear of loss much more bearable. The old house with its multiple owners whose names populated the "cadastre" at the local archives put me and my own life in perspective. History is just a long story about dead people.
I grew attached to that house and had romantic images of being buried in the park out near the tiny 18th century chapel.
During this visit my sweet friend John and I went back to that house - now a bed and breakfast slash winery. I walked from room to room noticing the floor slats I had replaced, the sink I had installed, the paint I had slathered on the walls. I walked around remembering names and faces of people who had come and gone in those rooms.
At one point John intimated that this visit might make me uncomfortable (it is indeed a rather enviable place to have lived).
But the truth is I didn't feel any painful urges tugging at my heart as I walked through this old rambling place. It was a big part of my life. I shared it with someone dear to me and now neither is a part of my life and I feel quite at peace with that. It's that simple.
I wonder what it will take for me to get to a phase in my life when I can say to myself "Tad Crandall you were a big part of my life but you are no longer and I feel at peace with that. It's that simple."
* * * * * * * * * * *
While here a young Frenchman appeared to flirt with me in a way that stirred something. He was sweet and sexy and seemed smart (one or the other alone would be insufficient to prick my ears). As we began to get to know one another I suddenly began to feel nauseous. Without notice I became aware I needed to get to a toilet quickly. I proceeded to vomit profusely.
If I am to believe many Hollywood movies this vomiting was caused by severe emotion but according to my GP I simply developed a stomach flu, what the French call "une gastro". Needless to say it brought an end to any flirting. I took the prescribed medication, went to bed (alone) and slept for a long time.
When I woke up this morning I found myself thinking: "Tad knew every one of my physical and psychological quirks. How will I ever be able to meet someone who will accept me for who I am? There's no possible way I'll ever be able to invite someone new into my life."
Then I began to say aloud to the stone walls words that surprised even me: "Tad I can't believe you left me alone? Why did you have to go and leave me here? I'm really pissed off at you for dying!"
I had never felt anger about Tad's death before and I immediately thought of Kubler-Ross and her silly stages and how I was actually having one of them; finally an experience that someone had documented as normal.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Driving back from the airport where I've just dropped off Madina it occurs to me that most of life is about memory.
My capacity to drive a manual car after ten years of driving an automatic, to find my way around the unmarked Bordeaux suburbs, to remember how to negotiate a round-about at high speeds during rush hour - these are all based on memory.
How is it that some memories are so painful and others so warm?
The Nobel-prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman says that one of the reasons it is hard for us to measure happiness is that we confuse our feelings about our life with our feelings about our memories of our life.
And what worse his work has shown how something that has the potential to be a really good memory turns into a bad one when it has a less-than-happy ending such as a peaceful vacation that finishes with a harsh dispute over the hotel bill.
If this is true then we might surmise that most relationships will become a painful memory - because they will end in unwanted separation. It's a wonder we allow ourselves to have children, to open up to other humans, to find a mate!
It would no doubt make my memories happier if I believed that Tad's departure from this earth was the immediate delivery of his soul into the arms of a loving god. It would allow me to walk around saying how happy I am for him; how lucky he is to be with god. But I can't. I simply don't know that to be true.
What I do know (or at least feel very strongly) is that this painful sorrow, this revisiting of memories, this conjuring of loving images, this talking aloud to a dead man is all part of our love story. It is all part and parcel of the beautiful encounter between Tad Crandall and Greg Rowe.
I can't have the beauty and love without the pain.
* * * * * * * * * * *
PS When I put the new SIM card in my French phone I was served up a series of beautiful text messages from Tad so excited to be sharing his arrival first in Florence, then Rome, and finally Venice where he compared the throngs of tourists to locusts. These were from 2009 where we split paths so I could go back to the US. With the magic of telecommunication competition, the new company kicked in and all the messages disappeared. I stood in the phone store smiling even though it stung. "The temporary nature of life," I thought.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
recalculating
The gut-wrenching, painful memories are slowly letting go of me, no doubt tired of gripping my brain for so long. I no longer lie down in my bed and immediately think of Tad's corpse that was there less than two months ago. I no longer wander the aisles of Trader Joe's my eyes wet with sorrow my heart yearning to prepare him dishes he enjoys.
I vaguely remember the seizures that took him to the floor, the spontaneous bleeding here and there, the moments of exhaustion when I would struggle to move his 195 pound body from the bed to the toilet on his office chair with five little wheels as support.
I've been called "resilient" by many of my friends. I find myself wondering if this is simply a well-developed capacity to forget pain.
More and more what I do remember - actually it's not a memory, it's a new original thought each time. So let me start again: More and more what I hear in my head is Tad's loving voice encouraging me.
This pisses me off somewhat.
I always swore I would not turn someone into a demi-god just because they're dead. Death does not make us perfect; Tad was by no means perfect.
And yet what remains in my head is Tad's perfection. The voice that appears when I stop and listen is that of Tad so full of love that every word he utters is supportive and kind; reminding me not to "sweat the small stuff", to dive in face first, to relish it all.
This voice also delights me beyond belief.
It seems I have always only had one voice inside me: a strident, rather demanding, easily distractable voice. Tad's departure has left me with a new voice. A loving voice. Not permanently - I have to lean into it to really hear it. But it's there.
I can think of other departure's in my life where people left a negative voice in my head. These departures were mostly painful ones: separations, divorce. Then there are the many departures which have left no voice in my head at all.
Couples specialist Jonathon Gottman tells us it takes five positive bits of feedback from our beloved to balance out the damage done by one single negative message. Imagine the power our loved ones hold over us!
So perhaps it's possible that in the face of an incredible 18-month long human tragedy during which I received thousands of loving messages from my beloved that somehow I have been able to replace the harping voice from my childhood with a caring voice for my adulthood.
It's possible when we walk someone to the edge of the precipice with complete love that the gift we get in return is a loving voice whispering in our ear. I find myself wondering what I can do to maintain it - to keep it whispering til my own body stops functioning.
What if Tad and I had had a fight the day before? Would this all look different today? Is it possible that his last words sealed the deal somehow? When he looked at our friend Carl and slurred through the fog of what was probably a brain hemmorhage: "I am okay to die, where is Greg?" was he setting our love in stone?
It's almost as if I can finally hear the "loving voice of God" promised to me time and again by the elders of my childhood church. Only now God sounds vaguely like Tad on a good day.
I maintain a family plan with the atrocious AT&T until I can find a way to record Tad's voice mails for eternity (funny choice of words, right?). But ironically when I listen to them they don't really deliver on my hopes of rekindling something with him. They're rather disappointing.
The ashes don't really work for me either. I just assumed when the crematorium gave them back to me that I'd feel some kind of satisfaction like people on TV. After all I did give them a body - you'd think I could fetishize what is left of that body. But I can't seem to relate to these ashes in any way despite my efforts to keep them in a central place on my altar.
It seems the only thing that evokes Tad in me is a photo. I find I prefer the ones of him hiking in nature. I tend to reach out, to caress the surface of the photo when I walk by as if I were caressing his cheek and I say aloud, "Tad, I love you." In that moment he is there.
But finding Tadness is a tricky thing. I have been giving away a lot of his belongings, to his family, to neighbors, to Goodwill. I keep wondering at one point will I go over the edge and suddenly his world will disappear forever. Why is that sofa an important part of maintaining Tadness but not that chair? How is it I can't find anyone who wears size nine and half shoes - is this Tad telling me not to get rid of his abundant collection of sports shoes?
This kind of superstitious thinking can take me to strange uncomfortable places. A few days ago I was so altered by my thoughts and emotions that I ran into the car in front of me at a stop light. Fortunately the other driver was extremely compassionate. I felt a strong need to explain to her the reasons I couldn't stop crying had little to do with the fender bender- yet the words wouldn't come out; just sobbing. "My", "husband", "just", "died", "of", "cancer" got slowly pieced together and she put her arm around me lovingly. The strident voice immediately corrected in my head reminding me it had been five weeks and I should be more 'together' than this.
Ironically we had pulled over to exchange numbers onto the parking lot of the clinic where Tad once got his blood drawn. She had actually slammed on the brakes to avoid an emerging ambulance. I remember those.
After Tad died I thought my "job" was to:
1 - keep his belongings that are meaningful to me
2 - get rid of his belongings that aren't and
3 - start a private practice either in San Francisco, Santa Cruz or both.
I see now that this is far more complicated than I had ever imagined. Any task I engage in is potentially overwhelming if it happens to bring up emotional material. Needless to say just about everything in the above list brings up deeply emotional material. Some things I trudge through nonetheless but most of the time I simply stop and do something else, something not on my list.
Turning off Tad's telephone line, sorting through his office, redecorating his living room, repainting parts of the bathroom have all taken weeks. I went to see a clairvoyant who told me to let go of my goals for now so instead I decided to go get coddled in Bordeaux by my sweet friend Madina. Suddenly buying a plane ticket to take a break from my emotions was too emotional. It took me three weeks to decide on a date, an airlines and an itinerary!
I've begun attending a "grief group" (on top of grief counseling and therapy). One of the facilitators shared with me her impression that people grieving are doing an incredible amount of work, even when they are not working. This notion resonated strongly with me even though it was not clear what this "work" is.
Last weekend I attended a men's gathering - a gathering held in the very place Tad and I met and where this summer we had a beautiful commitment ceremony. While there I understood what this "work" is. It became clear while listening to a friend tell a story about getting lost with a GPS.
Imagine you've decided to take a month-long trip across country. Let's say you're driving from New York to Los Angeles. You don't have an exact itinerary but you have a pretty clear idea where you'll be each day for the next thirty days. But then, when you get to Missouri you suddenly discover for reasons beyond your control that you can't go any further. No matter how convincing you are, no matter who you know, no matter how smart you are - you are stuck all alone in Missouri. This notion in and of itself is overwhelming. Your whole relationship to Missouri begins to transform. But the more time you spend there the more the two end points take on a different meaning as well. New York becomes this place of memories; the sacred land of life events both happy and sad. And LA becomes the unattainable land of unrealized dreams.
Then the space between the two changes in significance. That nap in the rest stop in Ohio suddenly takes on new value as does that sweet Bed and Breakfast in Amish country.
The entire time your GPS keeps muttering "Recalculating", "recalculating". The poor one-chip computer keeps trying to figure out what the hell happened. Its sole purpose is to get you to LA.
And that is the "work" I'm doing even when I'm not doing any work: Recalculating.
The bunk bed in room one of cabin two at Saratoga Springs Retreat Center is no longer just a bunk bed - it has become a sacred temple built solely to celebrate the first time Tad and I made love. A ticket to Bordeaux isn't just a visit to my family on that side of the world - it's a bittersweet pilgrimage to what Tad called his "favorite memory ever". The garden he carefully constructed over six years now full of historical significance merits national park status - worthy of millions of visitors.
As I do all this recalculating work I wonder how long I need to stay in Missouri. At what point am I doing damage to myself just sitting and reminiscing on my years with Tad? How long should I stand staring at a photo of him? Was the timing right for me to have that sweet tryst over the weekend or was it too soon? Do I really love living in Santa Cruz or is it just a way for me to keep Tad's home intact a bit longer? Am I rushing back into the real world or am I lingering too long in the world of the dead?
I don't have answers to any of these questions. Actually I do have answers in my head but they keep changing. They are the subject of a gentle disagreement between the strident voice and Tad's voice. "Stay", "Go", "Linger", "Work".
But there is one thing I am dead certain of (another great choice of words): connecting with loving people always feels right, even if they can't talk about Tad or the events of the last year. The handsome guy at my favorite coffee shop, the gentle hug with my sweet neighbor who just got a cancer diagnosis - the same woman who told me I could call her day or night if I needed help moving Tad, lunch al fresco with my dear friend Carl, a support group of broken hearted widows...At times I find myself wishing it were the 1950's again so people could drop by unexpectedly with tuna casseroles or to refresh the water in the living room bouquet.
These encounters are the crumbs showing me the path out of Missouri and on to the next voyage. Actually let me recalculate: they are the bountiful, nutritious picnics laid out beautifully in pastures along the winding road that might take me back to my next departure point.
My "job" today is to feast and wander. And if I stop and listen to Tad-God Voice while I'm there, it's saying to me: "YES! Keep loving! Keep crying! Keep laughing!"
PS Apologies to my loving cousins in Missouri - it's not personal!
I vaguely remember the seizures that took him to the floor, the spontaneous bleeding here and there, the moments of exhaustion when I would struggle to move his 195 pound body from the bed to the toilet on his office chair with five little wheels as support.
I've been called "resilient" by many of my friends. I find myself wondering if this is simply a well-developed capacity to forget pain.
More and more what I do remember - actually it's not a memory, it's a new original thought each time. So let me start again: More and more what I hear in my head is Tad's loving voice encouraging me.
This pisses me off somewhat.
I always swore I would not turn someone into a demi-god just because they're dead. Death does not make us perfect; Tad was by no means perfect.
And yet what remains in my head is Tad's perfection. The voice that appears when I stop and listen is that of Tad so full of love that every word he utters is supportive and kind; reminding me not to "sweat the small stuff", to dive in face first, to relish it all.
This voice also delights me beyond belief.
It seems I have always only had one voice inside me: a strident, rather demanding, easily distractable voice. Tad's departure has left me with a new voice. A loving voice. Not permanently - I have to lean into it to really hear it. But it's there.
I can think of other departure's in my life where people left a negative voice in my head. These departures were mostly painful ones: separations, divorce. Then there are the many departures which have left no voice in my head at all.
Couples specialist Jonathon Gottman tells us it takes five positive bits of feedback from our beloved to balance out the damage done by one single negative message. Imagine the power our loved ones hold over us!
So perhaps it's possible that in the face of an incredible 18-month long human tragedy during which I received thousands of loving messages from my beloved that somehow I have been able to replace the harping voice from my childhood with a caring voice for my adulthood.
It's possible when we walk someone to the edge of the precipice with complete love that the gift we get in return is a loving voice whispering in our ear. I find myself wondering what I can do to maintain it - to keep it whispering til my own body stops functioning.
What if Tad and I had had a fight the day before? Would this all look different today? Is it possible that his last words sealed the deal somehow? When he looked at our friend Carl and slurred through the fog of what was probably a brain hemmorhage: "I am okay to die, where is Greg?" was he setting our love in stone?
It's almost as if I can finally hear the "loving voice of God" promised to me time and again by the elders of my childhood church. Only now God sounds vaguely like Tad on a good day.
I maintain a family plan with the atrocious AT&T until I can find a way to record Tad's voice mails for eternity (funny choice of words, right?). But ironically when I listen to them they don't really deliver on my hopes of rekindling something with him. They're rather disappointing.
The ashes don't really work for me either. I just assumed when the crematorium gave them back to me that I'd feel some kind of satisfaction like people on TV. After all I did give them a body - you'd think I could fetishize what is left of that body. But I can't seem to relate to these ashes in any way despite my efforts to keep them in a central place on my altar.
It seems the only thing that evokes Tad in me is a photo. I find I prefer the ones of him hiking in nature. I tend to reach out, to caress the surface of the photo when I walk by as if I were caressing his cheek and I say aloud, "Tad, I love you." In that moment he is there.
But finding Tadness is a tricky thing. I have been giving away a lot of his belongings, to his family, to neighbors, to Goodwill. I keep wondering at one point will I go over the edge and suddenly his world will disappear forever. Why is that sofa an important part of maintaining Tadness but not that chair? How is it I can't find anyone who wears size nine and half shoes - is this Tad telling me not to get rid of his abundant collection of sports shoes?
This kind of superstitious thinking can take me to strange uncomfortable places. A few days ago I was so altered by my thoughts and emotions that I ran into the car in front of me at a stop light. Fortunately the other driver was extremely compassionate. I felt a strong need to explain to her the reasons I couldn't stop crying had little to do with the fender bender- yet the words wouldn't come out; just sobbing. "My", "husband", "just", "died", "of", "cancer" got slowly pieced together and she put her arm around me lovingly. The strident voice immediately corrected in my head reminding me it had been five weeks and I should be more 'together' than this.
Ironically we had pulled over to exchange numbers onto the parking lot of the clinic where Tad once got his blood drawn. She had actually slammed on the brakes to avoid an emerging ambulance. I remember those.
After Tad died I thought my "job" was to:
1 - keep his belongings that are meaningful to me
2 - get rid of his belongings that aren't and
3 - start a private practice either in San Francisco, Santa Cruz or both.
I see now that this is far more complicated than I had ever imagined. Any task I engage in is potentially overwhelming if it happens to bring up emotional material. Needless to say just about everything in the above list brings up deeply emotional material. Some things I trudge through nonetheless but most of the time I simply stop and do something else, something not on my list.
Turning off Tad's telephone line, sorting through his office, redecorating his living room, repainting parts of the bathroom have all taken weeks. I went to see a clairvoyant who told me to let go of my goals for now so instead I decided to go get coddled in Bordeaux by my sweet friend Madina. Suddenly buying a plane ticket to take a break from my emotions was too emotional. It took me three weeks to decide on a date, an airlines and an itinerary!
I've begun attending a "grief group" (on top of grief counseling and therapy). One of the facilitators shared with me her impression that people grieving are doing an incredible amount of work, even when they are not working. This notion resonated strongly with me even though it was not clear what this "work" is.
Last weekend I attended a men's gathering - a gathering held in the very place Tad and I met and where this summer we had a beautiful commitment ceremony. While there I understood what this "work" is. It became clear while listening to a friend tell a story about getting lost with a GPS.
Imagine you've decided to take a month-long trip across country. Let's say you're driving from New York to Los Angeles. You don't have an exact itinerary but you have a pretty clear idea where you'll be each day for the next thirty days. But then, when you get to Missouri you suddenly discover for reasons beyond your control that you can't go any further. No matter how convincing you are, no matter who you know, no matter how smart you are - you are stuck all alone in Missouri. This notion in and of itself is overwhelming. Your whole relationship to Missouri begins to transform. But the more time you spend there the more the two end points take on a different meaning as well. New York becomes this place of memories; the sacred land of life events both happy and sad. And LA becomes the unattainable land of unrealized dreams.
Then the space between the two changes in significance. That nap in the rest stop in Ohio suddenly takes on new value as does that sweet Bed and Breakfast in Amish country.
The entire time your GPS keeps muttering "Recalculating", "recalculating". The poor one-chip computer keeps trying to figure out what the hell happened. Its sole purpose is to get you to LA.
And that is the "work" I'm doing even when I'm not doing any work: Recalculating.
The bunk bed in room one of cabin two at Saratoga Springs Retreat Center is no longer just a bunk bed - it has become a sacred temple built solely to celebrate the first time Tad and I made love. A ticket to Bordeaux isn't just a visit to my family on that side of the world - it's a bittersweet pilgrimage to what Tad called his "favorite memory ever". The garden he carefully constructed over six years now full of historical significance merits national park status - worthy of millions of visitors.
As I do all this recalculating work I wonder how long I need to stay in Missouri. At what point am I doing damage to myself just sitting and reminiscing on my years with Tad? How long should I stand staring at a photo of him? Was the timing right for me to have that sweet tryst over the weekend or was it too soon? Do I really love living in Santa Cruz or is it just a way for me to keep Tad's home intact a bit longer? Am I rushing back into the real world or am I lingering too long in the world of the dead?
I don't have answers to any of these questions. Actually I do have answers in my head but they keep changing. They are the subject of a gentle disagreement between the strident voice and Tad's voice. "Stay", "Go", "Linger", "Work".
But there is one thing I am dead certain of (another great choice of words): connecting with loving people always feels right, even if they can't talk about Tad or the events of the last year. The handsome guy at my favorite coffee shop, the gentle hug with my sweet neighbor who just got a cancer diagnosis - the same woman who told me I could call her day or night if I needed help moving Tad, lunch al fresco with my dear friend Carl, a support group of broken hearted widows...At times I find myself wishing it were the 1950's again so people could drop by unexpectedly with tuna casseroles or to refresh the water in the living room bouquet.
These encounters are the crumbs showing me the path out of Missouri and on to the next voyage. Actually let me recalculate: they are the bountiful, nutritious picnics laid out beautifully in pastures along the winding road that might take me back to my next departure point.
My "job" today is to feast and wander. And if I stop and listen to Tad-God Voice while I'm there, it's saying to me: "YES! Keep loving! Keep crying! Keep laughing!"
PS Apologies to my loving cousins in Missouri - it's not personal!
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