whimpers and gurgles and sobs

Last week I was rather mindlessly wandering around Safeway when I came upon the adult diapers I had once bought for and put on Tad.  Quite unexpectedly I found myself whimpering in the middle of the brash light and mind-numbing supermarket colors of the personal hygiene aisle. I quickly calmed the tears and went to the check out.

But the next day at home it bubbled up again without warning. It was early in the morning; I was alone. This time I decided to let it flow. I wept for one full hour, howling my pain from the living room floor of my apartment, urging it to come out when it slowed down.

Towards the end I finally called a girlfriend who I knew would listen lovingly and shared my grief with her.

The ironic quality of this gushing moment is that it is both painful and soothing; it opens up something deep inside. In a way I was happy to somehow reconnect with this deep level of crying for the first time in a very long time; I had missed it.

This summer while up in the mountains hiking I found myself napping next to Fall Creek. When I woke up I decided that one of the curves in the river was too steep and that by creating another path I would open up a beautiful new waterfall. So I began industriously pulling out stones and branches, displacing large rocks, shifting handfuls of silt, digging a small trench in the alluvial deposit with my bare hands to create a trickle. Then I pulled out just the right river rock and hit a tipping point. The gushes of water started coming down my side of the little trench creating a second beautiful path for the river and making a sweet gurgle over a pile of rocks.

That moment when the water started coming after all the hard work: that is what this sobbing feels like.

When I ran process groups for nurses and doctors working with mostly terminal patients in the 1990’s I would ask them to classify emotions into families then describe to me how the emotions “behave”. They all agreed that we can accumulate them if we don’t take the time to express them. “Particularly grief,” one older charge nurse said. Everyone nodded.

Unlike the weeks surrounding Tad’s death, today I can overlook the sadness cues my body is sending me. Or if I do hear/feel them they are so much smaller than they used to be that I can ignore them, sort of give them a rain-check.

Indeed from early on in this whole adventure with leukemia I’ve known that part of my work is to stay “in life” – to keep myself from wandering into forms of what I would call non-life. These for me are moments where I would sit around wishing Tad were alive. Wishing he didn’t have leukemia. Time thinking how I could have done things differently. Or even time poring over photos and talking for hours about Tad with friends.

Another form of this would be for me to start comparing my sweet burgeoning relationship, which of course has its flaws, with my old one. In the glowing light of post-mortem love it of course appears perfect.

Cesar always offers me the opportunity when I mention Tad to talk about him opening  with “Do you miss him?”

It’s a funny question for me because I’m not exactly sure what it means. Do I wish he were here still? Of course. Do I find myself yearning for that? No because my mind knows it’s vain: he’s never “coming back”. I watched his body go into a flaming oven.

I think the truth is I cry because I have a clearer sense of life’s tragic side. I cry because Tad and I lost a fight; one that consumed our lives for nearly eighteen months. I cry because beautiful, caring people are here one day and not the next. I cry because life can be painful and most of the time my brain has well-worn strategies that help me keep that out of my awareness. I cry because grief is a lonely process; a necessary solitary path.

I also think –and this is a very distant thought, barely audible - I cry for the little boy who got beat up at school and never quite fit in, I cry for the teenager who could only separate from his family through a move to the other side of the world, I cry for the betrayals from people who said they loved me then did unethical things to me.

I don’t know I’m crying about these things. Tad’s untimely departure is the cover-up for these things. Yet they are there, like one of those scrims barely visibly hanging in front of a scene on a stage.

In my mid-twenties I would regularly get together with a fellow free-lance journalist to kick around new story ideas. She and I would talk about this or that emerging trend in the Paris arts scene, a new interesting building that was breaking ground, an edgy film in post-production. Once we decided for the fun of it to write auto-biographical pieces.

She copy-edited mine with a proper red pen and commented in the margins on the fact that my character cried a lot suggesting he lacked subtlety. I wondered if – despite her Australian birth –her English upbringing had given her that certain un-American composure I found in most of my British friends. I didn’t feel like I cried more than the average person.

But of course this writing wasn’t about me – it was about an idea of me, the me that was finally able to let out all that sorrow and disappointment.

Is Tad’s death finally letting me feel that bitter-sweetness of sorrowful relief as it flows through me like the water down the silt furrow and somehow heals my broken heart just a bit?

I yearn for the day when I can close my eyes and remember the good times Tad and I had, when the pain of his last ten minutes on earth struggling to breathe in my arms doesn’t dominate the tableau. I find myself envious of one of the members of my spouse grief group whose husband rolled over in bed one night and was dead. No months of hospitalization, no screaming matches with medical staff, no mind-reading strategies to figure out what they’re really saying, no painful trips to the ER to save him one last time, no catching him in my arms as he passes out unexpectedly from low blood pressure, no wondering what his insurance won’t cover this time.

Is it possible in the book of “How Emotions Work” that I’ll get to the sweetness by walking through the tears?

God I hope so.

past conditional

Tad's birthday came and went. He would have been 45 years old. I posted to Facebook hoping people would respond with a wave of love but not much happened. Though his FB profile still exists, it doesn't show up when I want to add him to a post - so his circle didn't really see it.

Funny how we do that calculation: imagining what would have been: what if the Eiffel Tower hadn't been built? What if I had fallen for that person instead of this one? What if German had become the official language of the US? 

We humans are no doubt the only species able to do this: use our brains to conjure up an image of the present as if the past hadn't really occurred. This incredible pre-frontal gymnastic no doubt causes us a lot of unnecessary harm as well.

My life today is grounded in the present with almost no more forays into the painful past and not a few into possible futures which I mostly picture as happy and fulfilling.

Buying Tad's house is the first of these projects. I am not always sure what is good for me but I keep noticing that my life is better when I am in his garden, sitting in his living room, petting his cat, chatting with the neighbors in his mobile home park -- all of which have become mine. It seems like a natural next step to offer to buy it. Happily the owners are quite open to the idea and would finance it for me since I have no money per se. Usually my fantasy of a perfect life doesn't include mobile home living but I see now that has changed.

I have also begun considering returning to work. Yesterday I interviewed for a government job. I am not sure I want to work for the government or am ready to work a full time job but the idea is pleasant to ponder.

This government job of course offers the wonderful cushion of generous benefits but appears to take away all the pleasures I enjoy in being a psychotherapist: going deep, working in peaceful settings, choosing one's clients.  The fact that the interview was in a room that was inaccessible to me and no one was able to direct me coupled with the fact that the job itself looks absolutely nothing like the want ad both lead me to believe that I will not work for them. It's a mindset so far from mine.

I was recently invited to become part of an advisory group for a University of California research lab that is being created. While there I discovered that folks with my rather strange health condition tend to die earlier than others. They didn't give age ranges but needless to say it was a quick yank into an uncertain future, a rather unwelcome notion to ponder as I have been drenched in these various projects that have me looking forward - possibly over a few decades.

Hence I find myself wondering the age-old question: follow the material comfort or follow the passion?  And if I am going to live ten more years the answer to this question is much different than if I am going to live thirty-five?

Finally there is the fact that I am in a new, promising relationship with a loving and kind man. Younger than me and full of dreams he exudes hope for the future. He envisions building a career for himself, maybe having a family in Santa Cruz with me. Even though my time with Tad has taught me that people can disappear in an instant - I see myself pulled from the present moment and enjoying the pleasure of imagining a future with him. 

(At times a heightened sense of duty slaps me down - telling me that I am not doing Tad a favor, that I am not respecting him nor his family's grief.)

While hiking down a canyon of the San Lorenzo River yesterday, I stopped on a certain flat boulder squeezed between two rushing rapids. I looked around me and took in the sounds, the smell of the bubbling river, the towering trees and dying logs. Cesar came up behind me and said wisely:  "This is why dying people cry. It's so difficult to say good-bye to this much beauty." Little did he know that I was weeping, remembering the other times I had sat on that very rock speaking to the vastness.

Once --before Tad died-- I sat there squinting my eyes and picturing his soul flying above the river, up through the redwoods and out into the sky. Days before his actual death I wonder if I wasn't hastening his departure somehow.

Now that I think about it -and it's extraordinary that this never occurred to me before - I am so lucky (we are so lucky) that Tad was actually mentally present until the last twenty or so minutes of his life. I am so grateful that the morning of his death he was able to ask for breakfast, to tell me he was going to stay in bed a little longer and to say to me with a loving smile "I don't think I am long for this world - am I?". 

I don't believe in God or spirits or souls. I do believe in these incredible brains --that we are fortunate enough to have running our machinery. In the same way they can imagine realities that might have been I sense that they see things beyond three dimensions in ways that are mysterious. This keeps me ever fascinated by human beings and what incredible things that happen when they come together.

standing at the gate

FreeCell is the most amazing thing in the whole world - bar none!

A pile of cards tossed onto my screen in random order end up slowly but surely in four nice little stacks in the top right hand corner of my computer. I can carefully refresh my browser until I get a pile of chaos that looks not-so-chaotic thus making sure I win. When I'm done I can hit "Play Again" and the near-orgasmic pleasure of doing nothing but stacking cards on a screen starts all over.

This has been my main focal point for the last several weeks.

Of course I do dishes, make the bed, eat good meals. I go for hikes in the hills and walks on the beach. I spend minimal time with friends and continue to explore this new loving relationship. But mostly I play FreeCell. Come to think of it - I think I'll take a little break from writing and play another round.

There

Now I feel better

Actually I don't. The game itself creates a sort of tension in my body - a cheap, low-grade excitement that isn't quite relaxing. It distracts my mind from thinking about....thinking about...actually I don't know what.

I see that I have learned over the many years of mindfulness training to not allow my mind to get lost in clinging to thoughts of life with Tad. Today I have the skills to notice the urge to hang out in the past, to wish the present were not what it is or to yearn for something that can't be. And thankfully I can stop myself. Engaging in those thoughts brings me some joy but mostly it brings me sorrow. Life is so full of good things. Being alive is so full of pleasure that I don't see the use in setting in motion my incredibly well-designed imagination to create worlds that are not real.

When I mention this to folks I imagine them saying to themselves "Aaah denial! Such a great little trick we play on ourselves! Well - we'll see how long it takes for that to bite you in the butt."

This is similar to the thoughts I imagine people having when I mention that I have started seeing a delightful man: "Humpf...well that's not very respectful of Tad, is it? That flight into a new relationship will no doubt catch up with you sooner or later."

(I haven't entirely learned how to manage my imagination - as you can see.)

If I take the time to see the bigger picture - something this blog allows me to do - I see that I am in a liminal phase of this whole grief thing.

I am standing on the top of a hill at a gate. Below me is a big new life; both the continuation of my present life and something new and different. It is stunningly beautiful and calling out to me but behind me is a field, the one where I met Tad. And it too is so gorgeous - so full of life and love, tenderness and tragedy, beauty and respect. So full of fond memories.

I am standing in the gateway, my hand on the old wood post. I feel the urge to take that first step into the new field sweeping out below me but just can't seem to do it. So I stay here trying to keep my focus on my feet on the ground and get the lay of the land.

I have engaged in a lot of homework of what that future life might look like. I've read reams of IRS documents to understand incorporating (and see more clearly how the rich get richer). I've spoken to experts in mortgages, first-time homebuyer programs and looked at places to buy in Santa Cruz. I've explored retirement accounts legislation and done endless calculations and simulations.

But I keep coming back to non-movement for the moment - to this idea that now is not the time to make big change happen.

In all fairness this is actually good news coming from a man for whom "diving in" has always been the antidote to anxiety.

Feeling a little shy at a party?  Go chatter with 12 people back to back!
Feeling unsure about a job? Read 10 books in three hours then start the next day.
Feeling uncertain about how to express affection for someone? Jump in bed!

Here is a glimpse into the thoughts:

I don't want to call Tad's dad because I'm afraid it will hurt too much even though I think about him everyday. I enjoy looking at the many photos of Tad around the house but digging through his stuff is too much for me so I don't. The memory of his precise smell, texture of his skin, or sound of his voice has mostly faded. I could just listen to all the voice mails I've saved but don't. I avoid the Goodwill Store for fear I'll see one of his shirts for sale. I an aware when I do activities I wouldn't have done in his lifetime because he was so shy and think "Ah Tad and I never did this". I don't feel the raw emotions of our fight with cancer or the weeks surrounding his death. I get to have my life focus back on me.

But then there's the emotion. I carry this deep conviction that if I don't express the sorrow it will somehow build up like clutter in a neglected bedroom and haunt me one day.

So I try to let myself feel sadness and cry when the urge comes up without clinging to thoughts. In fact recently in the shower I purposely let myself bring up lots of thoughts of Tad and his illness, the tragedy we crossed through for months on end. And I was able to cry a bit - but it didn't last long.

The spontaneous crying tends to happen at two different moments:

1) when I am hungry and/or tired. Twelve steppers use the acronym HALT - Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired- to recognize when it's time to stop everything and do some self care.

2) When I simply stop my brain and settle into beautiful sweet silence - but this doesn't happen every time. Lying on the ground in a mountain meadow, feeling the gentle silent wave after a climax or sitting in meditation at my local sangha bring me incredible joy. And sometimes these situations bring heaving tears of sorrow (usually mixed with joy).

This is in fact the closest I come to heaven as an atheist; the closest I get to the "place where God lives"; those deep moments of silence that spur the joyful tears.

In those moments I am so alive and yet so aware of death.

wandering in the desert

Tad has stopped talking to me. Worse: he actually sent me hiking.

In reality he was the one hiking. He was wearing his usual baggy shorts and tank top t-shirt, his sturdy hiking shoes and blue backpack and was walking away from me on a mountain path waving good-bye. I was sitting on a sand dune in the Moroccan Sahara watching the sun set for the last time before heading to a hotel the next day where I would marvel at the magic of real running water. The tears were streaming down my face as I kept yelling to him "Turn around! Please turn around please! I'm begging you. Let me see your face one last time!"

But he just kept walking away, saying "No - that won't help. You don't need that right now. This is not life. Go home and live."

He always was stronger than me in that way.

This was the end of a long conversation that had started two weeks previously when we first arrived and my friend and mentor, Maurice, invited us to imagine a guide, a sort of wise being who would accompany us through this difficult hike. He asked us to picture someone walking up behind us, then invited us to turn around in our minds and greet the Guide.

I didn't need to turn around since I could already feel the strong, familiar arms of Tad Crandall around my torso, holding his chest up against my back. My tears knew the arms were his.

To be honest I was actually a little pissed off. I wanted a real Inner Guide, I wanted a Jesus or a Buddha or a Guru. I had been in conversation with a higher form of Tad for months and frankly didn't want it to continue so intensely. During that time he had become less and less the day-to-day Tad and more and more the deeply loving, unconditional Tad who had been brought to his knees by leukemia. He had become an angel - one I was afraid to speak about for fear I start resembling those people who deify their dead relatives, who see none of their flaws once they are dead.

The time between this delicious sensual hug on my first night in the Sahara and his waving good bye to me my last night was incredibly intense. Ironically little happened externally besides walking, eating, packing, unpacking, sleeping, squatting and the occasional chanting. But internally….! I simply can't possibly describe all the deep, invisible movement that happened to me inside. Hints of these changes emerged in the evenings during our Sharing Circles, at night in my star-filled dreams and during the day in my journal just before afternoon naps. The latter are the only concrete traces that remain with me today reminding me the whole experience was not just a dream.

I need to share some things with Tad's and my community. The first is this idea that Tad told me to move on.

(The vulnerable part of me is already afraid you may think me crazy or fanatic. So I need to add that my rational brain of course tells me that this is all my projection and that the only voice I hear is mine disguised as Tad's.)

During many long, tear-filled conversations in the Sahara Tad showed me that by checking in with him, by asking him for advice, by seeing his perfectly wise self as my inner voice I was clinging to the past. Again and again I came back to that moment in our bed about ten days before he died when I shared my uncertainty of how I would get along without him. He spontaneously sat upright, looked at me with a generous smile and held my face in his hands: "Are you kidding me!?" he blurted out, "You've got a WORLD to change. You WILL change the world!"

Ah the wisdom of those staring death in the eyes.

At one point during free time in the desert I spent a long period watching a group of rocks. Normally when I have free time in nature I become a seven-year old with a million things to do:

"Oh my god! I need to go climb that hill!"
"I wonder what's beyond that ravine!"
"Later on I'll get naked and lie in the sun over there!"
"Let's see…where is the best place to write in my journal?"
"Where should I eat my lunch?"
"I wonder how that big slab of rock got there!?"

So at one point I decided to lean into the less comfortable - to sit, find a rock and stay focussed on it for as long as I could.

I sat for seven hours.

A deep, deep sense of quiet came over me - a rare sensation bigger than any pill or post-coitus wave. Every time my mind wandered I came back to my mesmerizing pile of rocks. A couple of times I napped but when I awoke I turned my eyes to my rocks. Finally as the sun began seriously tilting toward the horizon - I got up and started walking, watching my feet on the sand and rocks, one foot in front of the other. I began to wonder about something and as usual asked Tad for guidance. But there was no answer. Or rather there was an answer but it came from someplace inside me that wasn't Tad. It's as if Tad's wise voice and my Stone Silent inner voice had merged.

I was both intrigued and scared. Had I lost Tad? Would I ever get him back?

But I knew his voice was just a form of my voice. It was my loving Grandma's voice - now long dead. I understood -with some sorrow - that when I am completely calm and on my path all the voices of love - including my own - merge into one solid voice. And in essence that voice doesn't have much to say beside "Yes" to each loving step I take. I both wanted to hear Tad's voice and knew that this was part of the "grief work" - part of learning to be present. I know that life is not lived by staring at the past (nor the future for that matter) but simply glimpsing it from time to time.

The end result -one that seems so lackluster on the page- is a deep feeling of confidence that I can trust my inner voice in the present moment; a sense that Tad's voice is just a newer version of the deep healthy voice of love burrowed beneath all my doubts and busy mind.

At one point during this month away I had the privilege of chatting with Catherine a woman who had watched her seventeen year old son die of brain cancer. When I expressed a sense of tragedy she told me serenely that it was clear to her he had lived a full and accomplished life.

There had been a moment during Tad's illness, five or six months into the whole mess, when I stood in my living room sobbing and negotiating aloud with some unknown entity: "Take me!" I kept saying. "Take me instead!" I knew I had lived a good life, a full life. I knew I had been loved and had loved others deeply. I felt I was so much more ready to leave this planet than Tad who for many reasons seemed to just be coming into his personal power. This was of course a very romantic notion - that somehow I could step in for another person's turn in death- but it came from a deep conviction that my life had been good and that if possible I could let it go so Tad wouldn't have to.

So, I wondered as I walked gently in silence behind the padded round feet of the camel, how is it that --unlike Catherine-- I can't see Tad's death as anything but a tragedy? Why does his death seem premature? Unfair? Cruel? Could I ever feel that Tad's life was complete? What exactly is a complete life?

And I thought about my own readiness to die. Sure I regretted not writing a play that would change the world, not having kids, not creating another foundation - but mostly I felt comfortable with the fact that I had loved and been loved deeply, unconditionally.

Tad left behind no major corporation, no manuscript for a heart-wrenching novel, no composition for a gorgeous symphony. His name will not appear on a stone like the multiple war memorials sprinkled all over France nor the new wing of a library in the US. No grandchildren are lining up to take away nicknacks and the hundreds of photos I've inherited nor the boxes of shirts and trousers stacked in the garage.

I see how the absence of all these material traces reinforces my feeling that his life was not significant - that his death was too early - that he hadn't had time to make his mark.

And yet.

And yet.

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Tad Crandall's love transformed this world.

I watched doctors and nurses weep in the face of this man's illness. I saw volunteers come back again and again with pleasure to visit him. I saw how he expressed concern for the hard-working hospital staff and how it touched their hearts. I saw how our own love deepened and thickened as the cancer became more and more tenacious - a notion I struggle to explain since my concept of love had always stayed close to that of the pop songs of the seventies. Who knew love could be so complex? So multi-layered? I have a hunch that like the nucleus of an atom - love is infinitely vast - that I have only begun to scratch the surface of it. And for that I can thank Tad Crandall.

These thoughts moved through me, took shape and transformed throughout this journey, one step at a time mile after mile, every night when I laid down on my mattress under the canopy of a million stars, every time my pelvis rocked forward as the camel moved under my buttocks, every time I hid crouched behind a rock to take a crap or wiped my body down with a stingy wet towelette.

In the end I found myself grateful I am now full of the incredible love and wisdom that Tad Crandall concocted and that Tad and Greg co-concocted.

I see how in the same way a child born today has access to so much more accumulated wisdom than when I was born, I can recognize I am a very lucky man to have spent five and half years with this man.

I swam in the Dead Sea, ate delicacies in the Eiffel Tower, won battles to improve legislation, walked among zebras in the African pamper, carried newborns in my arms and held a beautiful man as he died.

I am a more loving man for it all. And my life continues. My work continues.

What strikes me about the walk I took after the seven hours with Saharan rocks is that I knew what my goal was: that funny acacia tree at the base of the cliff near the path that leads to the well.  But I didn't focus on the goal.

In this extremely calm state I simply stayed focused on the up and down of my feet and the rocky land beneath them. My eyes stayed gently poised on ten square feet. I didn't notice the rather impressive hill I was overtaking, the fact that there was a far less rocky path to my left or another to my right that would have softened the blow of the wind in my face. I didn't wonder seek out a camel or goat path - so surprisingly common in the middle of nowhere - but made my own path.

This notion may seem so inconsequential but is a revelation to me each time I rediscover it. It goes something like this: When I live in my breath, in complete serenity, in one-step-at-a-time I identify my goal then I let it go simply trusting the earth will support me one step at a time.

To phrase it another way I put my focus on my steps and not on the destination; on the present and no longer on the future.

This simple solitary experience frees me of a decades-long search to somehow identify something I can have faith in. My quest becomes moot. I see that all this time it is not faith in the invisible I need but simply confidence in the visible, in the minutes that tick by, in myself, in the world around me.

At one point during this walk I realized I was on top of a towering hill. I lifted my eyes and took in the entire area where we had been camping: the never-ending sweeping cliffs, the million year old river bed, the low-spots where water had once collected (last year? last month? last century?). If I looked behind me I saw boulder where 48 hours earlier I had stood barefoot sobbing and yelling to any wayward Berber who might hear me that I wished Tad Crandall a pleasant journey, one full of things he loves: children, flowers, cats and computers.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

Ironically a few days before I left for the desert I discovered in my absentmindedness I'd failed to find people to help my sweet friend Jim take care of my cat. He adores her (it's reciprocal) and whenever I leave he comes to the house every few days for a visit - a tradition we launched during Tad's many hospitalizations. Our usual plan is to have neighbors come and cuddle with her in between his visits.

So I went to see one of my neighbors, a beautiful woman who works as a nurse doing in-home care for children with cancer. I had promised her I was going to start hosting support groups for nurses again. This idea came to me after she shared that the organization she works for offers no mental or emotional support to its employees.

I went to her house for feedback on my written proposal and to see if by any chance she or someone she knew could care for Astra.

She, her partner and a friend were doing deep spring gardening, tearing out vines and cutting back branches. The friend was a handsome young man who kept blushing each time I addressed him.

Due to a rapid string of incidents he was able to move into the house, do housekeeping and take care of Astra for the last half of my trip. When he came over to the house to talk out the details I was unexpectedly delighted to receive a kiss as we said good-bye.

Now - nearly two months later - we are still spending time together. Astra adores him and he often asks me about Tad. I feel as if I need to take him to distant rural Arizona to get Tad's father's blessing. Ironically Sonny is the one person who told me very early on: "Greg you need to get out and meet someone new."

And so the wheel of life continues to turn. My goal is no longer the prickly acacia tree but rather to spread the incredible love I am honored to hold. I need to simply keep putting one foot in front of the other, trusting Life.

P.S. Below is a quote from George Bernard Shaw that sums up quite beautifully how I feel:

"This is the true joy of life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.

Life is no 'brief candle' to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

love letter(s)

Dear Tad

I miss you. No. Somehow that's not strong enough.

I MISS YOU!!

Of course I don't miss our fights, your stubbornness (not mine of course), our disagreements on what to buy or not to buy, your determination that you couldn't live without a new truck. I miss the loving you. I miss the part of you that is perfect.

I miss the calmness I feel when you are around.

I miss loving myself the way I do when you are around.

Oh Tad - I wish I could love me as much as you loved me.

I am about to leave our house for a month and I am not sure it's the right thing to do.

I have been running around a lot lately - trying to numb the pain I feel from your absence. I know it's not the anti-dote. I've got pretty good evidence that in the long run it just makes things worse. Yet I persist.

In the desert there is no place to run. Picking myself up every morning, rolling up my sleeping bag and walking another 20 kilometers in silence will keep me from escaping. Or so I imagine.

I was going to take your ashes with me. But once I got them to slip into the backpack I realized I was just trying to take them as far away from here as possible. The same way I have put all our pictures in boxes stored deep underneath other boxes.

I don't really need to do that - it's just more escaping. So I left some yesterday on that beautiful beach north of town with the crazy crashing waves and the sheer cliffs. Of course the Pacific breeze blew them all back into my face.

I walked back through the hills my boots and jeans covered in minuscule bits of you my beloved and the cardboard box they burned you in. Tomorrow I will put the rest in our beautiful garden with the dahlias, the fuchsias and the cat poop.

I sent myself two Valentine's Day cards. I tried to trick my brain into forgetting Valentine's Day by being on a trans-Atlantic flight all day but a friend nudged me lovingly.

In them I wrote deep words of encouragement, I thanked me for being such a loving, courageous man walking around with a brilliantly shining broken heart.

Of course when the cards arrived and I read them at breakfast, your cat sitting on my lap, it was your voice; your voice coming back from the dead to thank me for all the ways I showed up for you, for us. Who knew I was still yearning for you to thank me?

Tad - cancer was easier than this. We had a goal, a battle. Mostly we had each other. This part of the battle is a lonely one - and I don't do lonely very well.


One silent step at a time.

With deep gurgling fountains of love,
Greg

PS Thank you for having been such an avid hiker - I found all the equipment I need for my trip tucked away in your shed.

dream number three

I dreamt of Tad this morning.

I was walking up a grass-covered hill with a group of French-speaking friends. The place was a cross between the Marin Headlands (steep hill with a view on the other side) and the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City (wide expanses of grass with a few tourists here and there). Deep green hill on a majestic blue sky.  When we got to the top of the hill (effortlessly!!) a small group of people were sitting around talking and enjoying the view of a huge suspension bridge in the distance and water below.

Suddenly Tad walks up from the other side and speaks to them - he is wearing his usual baggy shorts and a tank top t-shirt with a back pack over one shoulder. He has his beautiful pre-cancer body back: broad masculine stance, thick biceps, perfect baby-skin, massive thighs, dark shock of hair. The only difference is he now has a tatto on his right shoulder - a radiant, sun-like circle with beams coming out.
He looks up at me, makes eye contact and smiles. I feel that immense indescribable warm sensation I get from his gaze, our gaze -- a gaze only he and I can create, so different yet similar to every other gaze in the world.

Then his sweet cat woke me up to tell me it was time for me to fix her breakfast. I tried to go back to the dream but it was gone. Dream chasing at 6:30.

Now - later - I am trying not to cling to it, to replay it all day like a looped video but the temptation is great.

I am preparing my bags for a long hike in a place I don't know, with people I don't know, in conditions I don't know.
For two weeks.
In silence.

The only thing I do know is that the organizer is a man of principles, a man of love; a mentor who has been part of my life for two decades now; who spoke the eulogy in a small village church when my dear friend's cousin was viciously murdered.

At a time when I see clearly that I do not want to make a new life for myself, I do not want to move on to the "next phase" of my life because I do not want to say good bye to the last one -- I am choosing to do something frightening and mysterious. I am choosing to step deeper into the world of the invisible relinquishing a large dose of control (which is of course only my fantasized version of "control").

I see clearly that silence speaks volumes more than all the words and noise, that the invisible is far more sustaining of my essence than the visible, the mystery is immensely more wise than the predictable.

How long will it take me to really understand this? And when will I start living by it?

things that surprise

It has been nearly five months since Tad died. Here are a few of the things that surprise me from where I stand today:

I'm surprised at how much I can enjoy life.

A few days ago I took the neighbor's dog for a long walk on a remote beach (said neighbor is by no means naive: she knows perfectly well that asking me to walk her dog twice a week is incredible therapy for my broken heart).

As we climbed over the beautiful sweeping green downs before hitting the beach I put Strauss's Last Four Songs on my player. Arly was beside herself with excitement. The smell of wild sage filled my nostrils. I peaked the first hill and got a glimpse of the rocky coast and the incredible expanse of blue the music swelled. I stopped and took it all in - weeping with some kind of joy/sorrow.

Words like peace, awe, joy come to mind to describe my inner state.

Now that I recount it I realize that at no point did I feel the cloying yearning to have Tad back here holding my hand or smiling over at me as we communicate silently about the incredible landscape around us.

This leads me to a second surprising notion:

 I am surprised music and nature always come through

In this painful period where my crazy brain has been reminded against its will that we humans are temporary creatures I am amazed to see that some things are permanent.

Music, laughter, the smile of a child, time in nature, a hug, humble honesty…these are some of the things which never fail to deliver on their promise. These things always (okay almost always) manage to touch something deep inside me that is indeed permanent, that I feel goes beyond this fragile life.

I am surprised how I know which things Tad touched

As I go through my days I am aware which household objects were around when he was around. The bottle of ketchup he used to smother his fries is still there. The tube of toothpaste that's reaching the end was the one he bought for his last hospitalization. The ice cream in the freezer was the one I served him the day before he died. My brain is somehow keeping tally of which things in the house were here during his life and which ones are new since then.

As with every object I first feel the strong pull to keep whatever it is; to find a way to never throw it away somehow. I have now learned I can set things aside and give them time. After a few days I realize I don't need to keep certain object anymore - sometimes I realize I don't even like them.
Then I can let them go.

I am surprised I keep two houses

I am surprised by the fact that I still live part-time in Tad's house, still pay rent on a lease in his name, still pick up his mail and scrawl "DECEASED RETURN TO SENDER" on his bills. But more than that I am surprised at my capacity to give myself permission to keep this place. Well actually I haven't quite given myself full permission.

It makes no sense to me how this place fits into my "plan". I don't understand how it makes sense to live part time in one city and part time in another without being fabulously wealthy. Even though I paid an accountant who sat down to look at my financial situation and deemed it perfectly affordable - I still feel deep down that I'm not allowed this frivolous situation.

But here is what really surprises me: I am allowing myself to do something that doesn't make sense long-term but completely makes sense one day to the next. When I chat with my neighbors, play with my cat or walk on the beach -- all in Santa Cruz -- I can't find a reason in the world why I woudn't be there.

I am surprised people don't ask more questions

Having my beloved die in my arms feels like the biggest, most incredible event I have ever lived through. It surpasses all the major events of my life:  exploring wildlife in South Africa, helping push through new legislation to protect patients, being published in fancy magazines, getting a masters in midlife.

Daily I tell people I am in mourning because my husband died of cancer a few months ago. It's the most prominent fact in my mind. I would be an impostor if I didn't say outloud what was filling up so much of my mind and body these days.

And yet I am surprised no one asks questions about it.

If the same thing happened to a close friend I would want to say: "How did it go?" "Was it peaceful or a struggle?" "What were his last words?" "Tell me what it's like because my spouse will die one day and I'd like to be prepared."

Then again - I have never asked this of any of my friends or acquaintances. (Though I did have long loving talks with my grandma in her sweet little house by the lake the year before she died - asking her to share her thoughts and feelings about it all).

I am surprised I have no attachment to Tad's ashes

The crematorium assured me that in exchange for his war-torn corpse which I reluctantly handed over to them - I would get a bag of ashes within 48 hours. It actually took them far longer than that causing me to sputter and blame for a good week. During that time I couldn't wait to get the ashes.

My beloved friend Carl took me to a houseware store to help me find a handsome urn while I awaited the return of what was left of Tad's beautiful body. So it is quite a surprise to me that I have no attachment to these ashes or the urn they sit in.

I keep them in a prominent place, with a few photos of him beside them, a sitting Buddha smiling peacefully, a candle and some incense which I light from time to time. But the truth is I feel no connection to them; they are nothing to me.

They are not Tad. They are not love. They are not a sweet touch on the hand and a murmur in my ear, "Could you bring me some more coffee please?"

I have decided to join some friends for a two week hike in the deserts of Southern Morocco. I will take Tad's ashes with me and leave them there. I will take the urn and break it into pieces to be used for potting in my garden.

I am surprised at how little compassion I have for myself

Yesterday I tried a new strategy during my morning meditation: I imagined a therapy session with myself. I sat down across from myself and lovingly asked: "So tell me: how can I help you?". Then I told my other self about losing my partner, about the pain, the loneliness. What I saw was that when I see myself with my therapist eyes I am amazed at all the good things I've done, all the positive healthy things I do daily to take care of myself. I am deeply moved by the other me's sorrow and the incredible enormity of what the other me has been through and is still here to tell.

Sadly during the day I find myself thinking I should be better at this, thinking I should be doing things differently, thinking I should have my sea-legs by now.

In the same way if I put myself in Tad's shoes, if I imagine for a moment that it is me with the cancer who has died I see how serene I am with that. I feel very fatalistic about the idea that I have lived a good life and that -if it were to come to this - I could say good-bye serenely.

But I can't accord the same serenity to Tad. I see his death as "premature" and "unfair". I see his absence as not part of the normal way things work and I resent it, lament it, blame someone for it.

I am surprised by the insidiousness of numbing behaviors and gratitude

A strange tragic phenomenon occurs with people who have severe depression. They actually attempt (or succeed) suicide when they start to get better. It seems that in the throes of mind-boggling depression they have very little strength to do anything but once they start medication and are on the upward slope they finally have the energy to do what they've been wanting to do for a long time: find a permanent end to their pain.

I am not suicidal. Far from it.

However I see that I am healing, I am getting stronger. And in so doing I see that I have the strength to do things I couldn't before.

For instance I am numbing more. I recently went out with friends and before I knew it I was drinking more alcohol than I ever would in normal times (a very moderate level compared to most people but a lot for me!).

I am purchasing more. I see that if I am not careful I could start spending in ways that are wasteful and unnecessary.

I am staying up more. I tried moving our bed into the office and putting the office in the bedroom. For various logistical reasons mostly having to do with a loud furnace it didn't work. So after repainting the death bed bedroom I put the bed back there. I now stay up late and watch silly drivel on television then find myself clicking it off at some single-digit hour.

In the same way I had my first fender-bender in the weeks soon after Tad died I got my first speeding ticket in my life this week. In all my years of mindlessly driving fast I had never been ticketed for it. Not so anymore.

And I am surprised at how quickly these various numbing strategies slipped into my life while I was looking the other way.

But an important good thing I see sneaking in as I gain strength is a deep undertow of gratitude.

Maybe in my new practice to be more compassionate with myself I should have started with this one.

I find myself wanting to buy cards, flowers and chocolates for the bevy of  caregivers who spent time with Tad and me during the seventeen months of hell. I find myself wanting to stop at the various Oncology Units and give warmth and thanks to all the people who greeted us, hugged us, fed us and loved us day in and day out.

When I think about it I usually cry which could mean I'm not ready yet but I see the day is getting closer.

Ironically this week I crossed paths with Kelly one of the more proactive and loving nurse practitioners working with us locally. I glimpsed her across a busy avenue so I yelled her name and waved. She looked then turned and walked away. Later when I called to tell her it was me she apologized profusely. "I thought it was some straight guy making cat calls and hitting on me!" she said. I forget that women constantly get solicited in unsavory ways by men like me.

I am surprised how much I know what's good for me

I have spent a good chunk of my life not always knowing what is good for me.

Many times I have turned towards the mystery of what is behind door number two all the while seeing that door number one was wide open and behind it were an array of healthy things for me.

I am surprised that despite my sorrow and my fears that many times I do know how to turn to what is good for me.

I know when the clutter in the house is beginning to affect my serenity and I need to stop doing what I'm doing.

I usually know when it's time to pick up my phone and call another person, to let someone else's healthier brain help me pick over the details of the giant museum of memories that is my mind.

I know how to call my doctor when I feel sick, to stop and eat when I feel hungry, to let the tears come out when I feel sad/moved/overwhelmed.

I know I need to keep going to therapy each week.

I know I need to keep letting go of Tad's belongings that don't serve me.

I know I need to keep stepping into the mystery of nature.

I know I need to shut down my brain after a certain time by meditating, watching silly TV or changing the topic to something light and inconsequential.

This inventory may seem frivolous to some but to me this is huge. Self-care has not always come naturally to me. For years it never occurred to me that after a long hike in the rain or in wetlands I could actually take my socks off to dry therefore avoiding a cold.

I am surprised that my broken heart is actually an open invitation 
to something bigger, something more alive
I know this sounds crazy.

When we walk around with a heart this tender, this fragile the first thing we want to do is bolt down a thick protective concrete shield  to keep it from being hurt more.

We want to tell people "I'm fine". We want to wait til we're in the privacy of our own home to blubber til the drool comes out. We want to share few details with strangers because we don't want to burden but mostly because they're not intimate enough and our cave man brain thinks they might use it against us.

Fortunately my level of sorrow - and no doubt years of learning not to apologize for being gay - have made it such that I can't keep the cement cover on any longer.

When people ask me how I am I stop and identify - as well as I can - what's really happening for me. And it is difficult since it changes so quickly and comes so intensely these days.

What I'm seeing is that somehow this open vulnerability is leading me to something bigger. And I must admit I don't want it to go away - or at least not entirely.

I was planning on joining a group of friends on the beach of a small remote island in Southern Thailand. I've been there before and it's quite glorious in its simplicity and beauty. But at the last minute instead of booking that ticket I chose to join a group of 20 or so people who will hike in silence in Southern Morocco for two weeks.

I know this sounds masochistic. Let's call it the "road less traveled". I just have a hunch that - as scary as this is - it is the better place for me to deepen this living with an open heart.

I've already shared that I noticed that complete strangers offered me loving kindness during Tad's hospitalization in Seattle when I tearfully wandered the streets trying to find housing, public transportation vouchers, an open-hearted clergy and goodwill stores to buy clothing.

This experience is teaching that part of my brain which wants to have a Five Year Plan that I can just trust myself and other people each day.

Yesterday for the first time I got out on a sort of surfboard in the Pacific Ocean - a passion shared by a good half of the inhabitants of Santa Cruz it seems.

I am suddenly obsessed by the idea of getting back out in the water and doing it again. I feel like all of a sudden it makes sense to me why I see all those people walk, bike or drive with a surfboard over to the coast day in and day out, sitting for hours in the water waiting for the thrill of a good wave.

My next thought was: Now it all makes sense to me!! This is why I needed to stay in Santa Cruz.

finding the golden thread

I don't know what the hell I am doing.

I keep waking up at night and this is what races through my mind.

I don't know what I'm doing.

The other day I broke one of Tad's rules and took the cat up to the City without putting her in the loathsome cage that makes her yowl non-stop. Surprisingly she rode calmly on the passenger's seat the entire trip.

Quite proud of my success, I went to pick her up for the ride home a few days later and she made it clear she was having none of it. I tried to remember Tad's instructions: "Get a towel - Show her you are the alpha." A chase scene ensued that finished with me on the neighbor's roof, several scratches on my arms and the silver ring Tad gave me for our commitment ceremony lost.

This final mishap literally brought me to my knees. In sobs I cried out to whoever could hear me: "I don't know what I"m doing. Tad tell me how to do this."

Whatever "this" is.

People tell me: It's a process; the "grief process"; like a manufacturing chain where bits are added station by station till a new product emerges.

People ask me, almost daily: So have you decided what you are going to do? Maybe they too see I don't know what the hell I'm doing…

I believe they ask me this because they want me to have some kind of structure in my life; they assume more structure will mean I'm feeling better, I've "moved on" - (another term I hear a lot). They do it because they care about me no doubt.

There's a more rare category of folks who ask me how I'm "holding up". I imagine this is a grammatical formula they use to recognize that this is not normal life but a struggle - an uphill rock of Sisyphus.

The fact is I don't know what people assume. I don't know what these phrases mean. I do know what my inner life feels like today.

1 - I know there is nothing to fix; nothing to troubleshoot. I can't just do something and this state will magically go away; it's here for a while. (Though god knows I keep trying to numb my brain for a brief moment through various compulsive time-wasters that get me nowhere.)

Hence I find myself pulling away from people who "know what's best for me", the bootstrap troubleshooters who have a clear idea about what I should do differently to feel better immediately.

2 - I know it's not yet time for me to start a practice working with people in therapy. In part because of the above: I need to be careful not to rush into some grand project simply to avoid remembering that my heart is tender.

3 - That's something else I know: my heart is tender. Let me repeat that: My heart is very tender.

I cry easily. Events of the day move me incredibly. Aggressive actions or words are unbearable. Majestic moments like a sunset or a field of wildflowers are ecstatic. Both bring me to tears. Simple gestures of kindness: a smile, eye contact from a cashier are like sitting in front of a hot fireplace.

I yearn for (and get) calm, loving exchanges with people. During these exchanges I describe what is happening inside, how I'm feeling, how I'm different from yesterday or not, what thoughts are niggling at me.

4 - I am completely spooked by medical environments. Going to the doctor brings up flashes of painful memories. Just hearing a story about a mammogram recently had my heart racing, my palms sweaty and I needed to get a drink of water. An encounter with a young insensitive doctor-in-training at a recent function had me outraged. She was immature and making light of her patients. I almost left the party because of my rage.

5 - I see the one thing I come back to -- in between hikes, talks, massages, therapy, time-wasting and tears --  is the "getting rid of". The golden thread that runs through all of it is the piles of stuff I feel the need to rummage through and slowly scale back trying as much as I can to give things away or take them to charity.

The last step feels impossible so I often recreate new piles then once in a while actually get the courage to take them away.

(When I read the above I find it curious I see the Golden Thread as the rummaging and throwing away. If I were a monk or a priest focused deeply on the invisible aspects of life I would no doubt see the rummaging as just a pretext and the real Thread as the journey my heart is on. In my material, non-monk world I give "stuff" top billing and only once in a while remember the slow subtle transformation of my heart.)

But I see that in cleaning out I am also creating a new house. In a way I'm nesting. My gestures are telling me what I'm doing with my life right now, my "mission" is preparing Tad's house for some future life for myself.

It surprised me to be back at my own house in San Francisco and doing the same thing: a chair I was saving because I thought it might look good in our future house, old motorcycle helmets from a previous relationship, clothes I haven't worn in years all ready to go to charity.

I'm actually finding great pleasure in transforming my two places into something more comfortable, something that meets the needs of my life as it is today.

At the same time it is a lonely process; all of it.

I yearn to have a loving family of origin or tight circle of friends who live nearby, who are calm and supportive, who drop in with meals and mostly sit silently while we go through things together. We laugh as we look at old photos and sometimes tell stories. When I cry they hug me then simply hand me a kleenex. They notice my lawn needs mowing and they stop by to cut it while I'm at the grocery store.

Alas Tad and I are both exiles - the ones that ran away to live our gay lives serenely. And our families are spread here and there busy with their own work-a-day schedules.

The other day I said to someone "I wish I lived in an African village where we help raise each others' children and carry our dead to the cemetery together". Except I want hot showers and good mattresses.

When I read back on all this I see I am wanting the world to do something counter-intuitive: I am wanting people to be close but not too close, to sit in my discomfort with me, to not try to fix things. This is generally not how the world works.

During the holidays I found myself relishing in holding a newborn baby in my arms. I looked into his eyes and felt so peaceful. I also felt Tad's loving gaze on us. I couldn't wait to hand the baby to him who I knew would be squirming in both excitement and trepidation. But there were no Tad arms reaching out to take him from me. All I had was his loving smile in my mind.

The moment was so simple and tender I began to weep in the midst of dozens of people reconnecting, socializing, eating and drinking. My mind was muddled: I both wanted people to see my tears, to bear witness to my sorrowful, tender heart but didn't want anyone to do anything about it.

One friend saw what was happening from across the room and stopped his conversation. He got up from table, crossed over and simply sat down next to me. Without saying a word he just leaned in and pressed his shoulder against mine. No words were exchanged but I felt his deep love and support.

In that moment that was all I needed - a simple loving acknowledgement of this difficult path I'm on, a lonely path, but one that is not out of sight from the rest of the world.

I am really surprised to see -- when I take the time to put words to all of this -- that I AM preparing a future. This lonely path is taking me somewhere. I'm quite sure of that.

Ironically the future is the one thing I am not uncomfortable about. Even if the present is rocky at times I feel deep down inside everything will be fine. This is the great lesson I received from chemotherapy, from leukemia, from fighting with insurers and doctors, from Tad's death and of course from Tad's and my love.

No matter how uncomfortable the present is I am going to be just fine.

learning to forget

The most painful part of my story with Tad is the part where he dies. The part where he goes somewhere -or nowhere- and I don't. The part where he suddenly starts convulsing and struggling then stops. Dead. And all I can do is hold on for dear life, waiting for his pulse to stop and repeating to him how much I love him.

This may seem like an obvious fact - it's the culminating scene of nearly every Hollywood drama ever made - but it's important for me to note. That moment is so deeply and painfully engraved in my brain I find myself yearning to be free of its pull. And yet I also want to hold tight to it.

Separation has never been easy for me.

In love relationships when the other starts to pull away, I hunker down, I cling; start bargaining. Somehow I get to a point where I click into "need" instead of "want" as in "I can't live without this relationship." Animated in essence by the same drivel that filled the pop songs of my younger years, I forget that I am whole and capable when the other person pulls away, that I have a life and an identity of my own.

Needless to say this uncontrollable strategy of clinging usually serves to push the other person further away,  bolstering my fear-driven pain.

In my friendships - and because of my bi-cultural status - I tend to have short-term but intense moments with loving friends around the world. Then we separate. I have incredibly fond memories of beautiful moments spent with lifelong friends in New York (John!), Paris (Matthieu!) , London (Fiona!), Dublin (Ross!), Bordeaux (Madina!), Bangkok (Geof!) which end with one of us getting on a train and leaving for an airport.

After those separations my mind does something funny: it tries to keep the relationship going despite the thousands of miles that separate us. I usually talk aloud to the absent-friend in my daily tasks. I make concerted efforts to maintain the connection with phone calls. This phase generally lasts a few days until my brain settles into reality and the fact that we are separated by an ocean becomes palpable.

Or maybe I just do it until the pain of their not responding with a presence, a voice, a smirk, a touch becomes too much for me. Maybe I stop talking to them simply because it hurts too much to continue the charade of magical thinking.

Pain. Pleasure. Pain. Pleasure.

This time it was not two weeks I spent with a friend but five and half years. This time it was not a friend but a lover, a life companion, a person who shared the mystery of ecstasy and the quotidian with me.

And this time instead of returning to my own place on the other side of the ocean - surrounded by my other language, my other circle of friends, very different sights, sounds and tastes - I stayed in Tad's world. I choose to stay there to this day despite my urges to bolt. I reach out and pet the cat he petted every day for eight years (who uncannily behaves a lot like he did). I go out in the garden and weed around the flowers he carefully planted. I sleep in the bed we shared for years, the one where he bled out on the sheets, where I changed his diapers, where he took his last breath - also the one where we made tender love, watched silly TV and read books til the wee hours side by side.

"Honey it's time to go to sleep - turn the light off.",
"But I'm reading" (actually asleep)
"No you're not - I just woke up and your book was on your chest. You were snoring.",
"No I"m reading.",
"Here let me just take the book and put it here on the table. Can I please turn the light off so we can sleep?",
"No, leave it -I'm reading."

I can't call or send emails. I can listen to old voice mails or look at photos but I choose not to - at the moment that hurts too much.

I have found myself looking for notes from him to me - as I rummage through the privacy of his office.  I pick up pieces of paper and hope maybe there will be a love note to me, a reminder of his devotion to us. I read all of his diaries hoping I will find declarations of love and pining. But I don't. Alas he mostly used his diaries to write about difficulties he was having, including with me.

A few days ago I found a new diary, just a few pages jotted down on a notebook he'd bought in Paris - narrating parts of our long journey. There on the second page after a long description of the frenetic big city and his overwhelm he wrote: "...but thank God I have my beloved guide, lover, friend Greg."

Thank God.
Guide.
Lover.
Friend.

The truth is we both expected his death and yet we were sideswiped by it so there never was a formal moment of saying good-bye in that tidy way we therapists like to do it.

He was actually quite busy the last few weeks of his life. He worked diligently at finding, printing and piecing into collages photos of the important people in his world. First he glued his family back into the same configuration they were in before the Big Dispersion in 1977 when his mother died.

He pieced together photos of friends from all periods of his life: Arizona, the Navy and San Diego, the SPCA and Santa Cruz. Two days before he died he made a long list  of all the people he wanted to invite to a party - this included people who had never met before, who lived in Europe, the midwest, Arizona, California. People who in all reality would never gather in the same room because of time, financial and social constraints. He grouped them all - he brought them all together before he died.

I can only imagine what a glorious gathering that might have been and what a painful separation would have ensued. I would have been talking to invisible people for days.

Mostly I keep communicating with Tad by talking to him in my head. Sometimes I cry and ask him to hold me in his arms (If I use my imagination can almost feel them around me, warm and strong). Most of the time I ask him for advice - admit to him that I don't really know how to do this grief thing very well.

(Today at the gym with my little brother in Iowa I quickly moved to a private corner, behind a small separation wall and curled up to sob to the thump-thump-thump music pounding in my head. But I didn't communicate with him. I didn't ask him to hold me. I just wept then - a few minutes later - went back to my workout.)

Pretty much all psychologists agree this is me simply projecting the voice of Tad I remember. This is me using memory and imagination to recreate something that is no longer there. Yet why does it feel so much bigger than that?

If I stop and listen, if I close my eyes and breathe, I ask him to just talk. His answers are usually quite prompt, almost immediate. They are incredibly loving and kind. Our conversations go something like this.

"Honey I miss you." (I usually start crying at this point) "It's so hard to not have you here anymore"
"I know baby, everything is going to be okay. I'm right here."
"But I don't know what to do sometimes. This is so painful"
"You're doing everything you need to do. Give yourself a break. You know that everything is going to work out fine - don't you?"
"Yes but I forget - I get scared. Then I miss you."
"I know. I feel it. I can feel everything."
"And I'm pissed off at you. You left left me all this stuff. Every time I pick something up it weights a thousand pounds and I don't know what to do with it."
"That was just me being human. I was scared so I accumulated stuff. Get rid of it. It's nothing. Just be happy. Soon you'll be dead too."
"How can I be happy without you here?" - I know as I say/think this that it is in fact not real, that deep down I know it is just my fear talking - "It's so hard without you."
"Well if you just sit still - you can see that you are not without me.You're not without anyone."

Leukemia and death made Tad so wise.

Just sit still he says: Not so easy - my brain is particularly bad at sitting still.

Lately it has been busy reconfigurng Tad's house so that - whether I have it for one month or one decade - it meets my needs and looks less like the place he died. My brain runs with a million different geometries some of which I actually physically attempt in the place. Move that sofa there, this table here. I've moved the bedroom into the office and the office into the bedroom. I have begun imagining ways in which I can mix and match furniture from my place in San Francisco with furniture from his house adding another layer to keep my brain running more laps.

Now single - my brain begins to weave incredible 100 mph scenarios each time a man begins a kind conversation with me. These scenarios almost always include a version where we become a new couple. The fact that I'm in love with another man and really not available does not enter into the brain's equation. The sweet guy at the coffee shop, the man who chat with me at the dog beach - I find myself wondering if it's the start of a new life, a new Greg. My brain completely disregards my gaydar telling me these men are straight.

In short my brain loves to imagine new possibilities - no doubt driven by that painful but unrealistic part of my soul that aches to go back to the way things once were.

Oddly I actually see my brain doing this. I see it running circles around me - like the ten year old boy with ADHD I once worked with who would literally run back and forth across the school courtyard three times between the moment I picked him up in class and the moment we arrived at my office.

But when I stop and take a breath and pronounce the words, "Tad I miss you" when I sit still as he tells me to do, then I understand.  The sobs come bubbling up and I remember what I don't want to remember. I remember that I have stopped looking at pictures of his last few months on earth, replacing them with photos of earlier, happier, pre-cancer times. I remember that I am consciously pushing away the flashbacks of his last hour - a hauntingly irresistible tape I play on a loop like the plane flying into tower number two over and over and over again.

Ironically I realize part of feeling less pain, part of getting through this process is to remember less. My capacity to no longer remember the more painful parts somehow helps me move forward.

One of the most ground-breaking experiments in twentieth century psychology developed into a theory called "attachment". The experiment was very simple: a young child and mother are placed in a room for twenty minutes, the mother sitting in a chair, the child playing on the floor. At one point the mother is joined by a stranger. Then after a few more minutes the mother gets up and leaves and the unknown woman remains. Finally a few minutes later the woman gets up and leaves to be replaced by the mother.

The observations that psychologist Mary Ainsworth made in the 1960's from this study  have had massive implications on how we see relationships. And as we learn more and more about the brain her discoveries are becoming even more essential.

In short the team of scientists were able to determine several types of reactions in the children - ranging from secure to anxious. These generally reflected the inner state of the mother which would get transferred to the absorbant child.

The ideal outcome for a healthy life is what's known as a "secure" attachment. If the attachment is "secure" - that is it feels safe, predictable, consistent, empathic, connected - the immature parts of the child's brain can actually learn to use the more mature parts of the parent's brain. The more solid person can help the other party learn to modulate their reactions and soothe themselves in times of fear or sorrow.

Long term this kind of positive deep connection can lead to what John Bowlby, the main theorist of attachment theory, called a "secure base" in the world - the recipient of the goodness begins to feel safer in general, more confident, better skilled at going out to confront uncertainty while knowing or remembering there is a safe place to retreat to. This generally results in that person choosing to surround him or herself with more secure, healthy people as well.

I see today that Tad's voice inside my head is that calm secure base. His is the solid "voice of god" the church taught me to listen for as a I child  which always seemed to escape me; the voice of loving god.

It is extraordinary to me that a groundbreaking piece of psychology which continues to affect how we think about human behavior is simply a story about the joy of love and pain of separation. But the outcome is clear. If we love someone deeply and consistently, the beloved party is able to hold that love, to remember it, even after our disappearance.

It does not escape me that the most powerful, nurturing activity I engage in weekly is to sit with dying people in a hospice; to proffer them love. I also remind myself regularly of the uncanny fact that I began doing this volunteer work the very day Tad was diagnosed with the leukemia that was to kill him.

I see now that my biggest obstacle to remembering love, to holding onto the secure attachment is actually the material world. I see how difficult it is for my brain to remain strongly connected to the ephemera of love, serenity, and trusting life when the world surrounds me with solid, material things that seem so much more important. Bills, career, politics, injuries, hunger, war - these all seem to pull me away from remembering love.

Sometimes the most soothing thing I can do is to sit down and make a list. It's a very simple list and it starts with "This is who I am." Then I write.
My name is Gregory Rowe
I am 50 years old.
I love a dead man named Tad Crandall.
I am a psychotherapist.
I am bilingual.
I live in Santa Cruz and San Francisco, CA.

The list is always the same. The important part, the part that keeps me solid is the making of the list. The act of taking my brain out of the news headlines and thoughts of bills, out of the pain of Tad's absence and fearful thoughts of the future and simply remember:
This is who I am.

subsiding pain

Something shifted for me during my trip to France; something profound and healing. As my caring friend John said, "It's like the dove has returned with an olive branch."

It took me a moment to remember the full Noah story since I was focused on the more popular symbol of peace and end of war: After a long time in the dark hull of the ark, being tossed around on waves, Noah sent out a dove that returned with a bough from an olive tree. He and his family knew that land had been found, that they were within bird's flight of a new life.

I spent my last day in France in Paris, an afternoon and evening with good friends from San Francisco, Dublin, and Bordeaux. It was nothing extraordinary: we gathered first in the apartment for drinks and chatter around a wood fire in the  marble fireplace (no other source of heat in the chilly flat!) then went out for dinner in a nearby cozy Moroccan restaurant we had spotted that day.

While eating my yummy tagine of lamb and dried fruit, while bantering back and forth about silly things and our life stories a door opened. I just got a glimpse of life on the other side but it definitely opened. I didn't see where I might be living, with whom or how. But I saw a feeling, an atmosphere. It basically said "You've had a full life. The world is huge and full of possibilities. You can be whomever you want to be. " And scribbled in between those lines was a bigger message: "There is hope for you."

This is curious to me since I feel as if I have never been without hope. I have known ever since Tad's diagnosis that without him I will be okay. I will have a full life, a career one day, friends. Maybe I'll even find someone who will want to have a child with me, the child Tad and I couldn't have but wanted so dearly. But abstract phenomena like hope  -- along with other messy stuff like love, awareness and anxiety -- seem to come and go in multiple layers, "like peeling an onion" as a friend says.

I see now that I probably could not have opened the door that last night in Paris if I had not had the first nearly three weeks in the southern town of Bordeaux where I mostly continued the same pace I had had in Santa Cruz.

I stayed predominantly anchored to my friend Madina's stone house in a residential neighborhood breaking my home-boundedness with short jaunts to the market, to the school to pick up Ella her daughter, to the hardware store. For some reason I found incredible comfort in fixing little things around my dear friend's house - a form of caregiving I suppose.

Breakfasts with fresh bread, salty butter and homemade jam, long hot baths with eucalyptus oil, bicycle rides around the bumpy cobbled streets, short trips to the station to pick up friends, tea with Madina's parents in the big house in St Emilion: this was the busy schedule of my stay in the Southwest.

When I look back I see that as the days went by my tears became less and less abundant.

During the flight over I cried probably a dozen times (I've learned to do it now in a way that looks almost as if I've just gone into a short meditation by placing my hand on my forehead just so).  I so wanted Tad to be on this trip with me. I wanted it to be as beautiful as my last trip to France, the one where I introduced him to my circles there, where I showed him my old house, where we played dodge ball in the pool with my godson and his brothers.

Each time I saw someone new I wept again; something about being held in their arms, about Tad not being there in our arms, something about the physical presence suddenly making concrete the invisible love that binds us.

Around day four or five Madina and I went down to the river on a full moon and said good-bye yet again to Tad as we tossed some of his ashes into the churning muddy Garonne River right in front of his favorite fountain. Like the night he fell in love with that fountain, there were people sitting around talking, drinking, singing, enjoying the last evenings before the arrival of the cold winter temperatures. Like that night with Tad Madina and I got back on our bikes and rode home through the old quarter past the illuminated Gothic churches and the medieval city gates - only this time in silence and with tears in our eyes.

One morning I sat on the sofa in the living room, crying softly, yearning for Tad to be there when little Ella came downstairs. That whole week for reasons no doctor could explain this lively six year old had been having stomach cramps, some strong enough to send her home from school.  She looked up at me and said "Gregory pourquoi tu pleures?" I told her I was crying because I missed Tad. She asked me this with the same tone of voice used two years earlier when she would wake Tad and me each morning by climbing into bed with us and barrage us with "why" questions.

The most memorable morning we awoke with her riding Tad's torso like a pony and him half asleep mumbling to me: "Greg - what's she saying?" As her perky energy  slowly pulled me out of my slumber I looked up at her smiling face and focused on the words coming out of her mouth: "She wants to know why you have such a fat stomach?" ("Tad! Tad! Pourquoi t'as un si gros ventre?"). Needless to say Tad awakened immediately, fighting back with tickles to regain his dignity.

That evening while her mother bathed Ella she shared that she had seen me crying on the sofa. It seems my tears helped her to burst wide open with her own sorrow and tell her mother how much she misses having daddy and her in the same house together. How even though it's been two years she doesn't want to live like this; she wants things to go back to the way they were; back to life before separation.

From the mouths of babes....

Looking back I see another moment that helped push back the sorrow quite unexpectedly was a phrase from Matthieu my host in Paris whom I have known since he was fourteen years old. Now a 43 year old gerontologist he has been around quite a few folks living their last days on earth. His simple idea ran counter to everything I had thought about death: "Sometimes it's just not a good idea for family members to be there when a person dies."

This seemed anathema to my old fighting spirit born from the untimely deaths of so many friends in the 1980's: being with someone dying was ALWAYS better than not. In my volunteer gig at the hospice it seems we all more or less secretly hope we will be present when one of our beloved residents stops breathing. ( The likelihood of being there that one second when everything changes is statistically quite low. There are after all 86,400 seconds in just one given day). Plus I had begun sitting with dying people as a form of service the very day Tad got diagnosed with leukemia. Surely that was some kind of sign? Or was that just a coincidence?

I asked Matthieu what he meant. He explained that even though we all imagine death to be beautiful and serene most people's aren't very pretty. They're messy and painful, especially so for those who love the person. "It's like birth," he said. "We have this idea it's always a great thing but it can actually be really messy and bloody and traumatic."

I am aware now how much those words helped. The last six months of Tad's life were a constant struggle. The last ten minutes watching him fight to breathe were excruciating for me - even though both of our two friends present described it as peaceful moment.

I see today that I have not just been carrying immense sorrow at having lost the person I feel closest to. I am also the bearer of a certain level of post-traumatic stress disorder, what used to be called "shell shock" when soldiers came home from war in a stunned, apathetic state. The flashbacks, the numbness, the tears were all part of the complex package I carried.

Funny...I used the past tense. I think this is indeed the part that lifted. I am aware of it because it's no longer there.

While at Matthieu's the temperature plummeted quite suddenly and I was in the market for a wool cap to cover my ears. I stepped into a local Monoprix only to discover they were selling a knock-off version of a jacket I had lost a good ten years previously. Since buying my first for a reasonable price I discovered the style had become quite trendy and the price had gone up astronomically. Hence after losing it I gave up on ever having one again. In fact when it disappeared my boyfriend at the time seemed to have been the last person wearing it. Although he apologized generously I still held a petty grudge.

I came home from the store without a wool cap but instead with a new quilted jacket, much like the one I had worn so many years ago. When I arrived at the flat I called out to Matthieu to come see my new purchase. I was actually having a playful, retail-therapy moment, my first since Tad's death. Matthieu walked into the living room and immediately said, "Looks great. Oh that reminds me I still have that old blue quilted jacket of yours. It's a bit worn out but I'll bring it back the next time we go to the house in the country."

Not only did it delight me to discover that all these years I had been wrong about the jacket's whereabouts, but it was comforting to know that it had always been in Matthieu's possession. The coat dated back a good twenty years - fourteen more than my time with Tad. Its near re-appearance was a gentle reminder of the continuity of things, the coherence of my world even when it's scattered across two continents and two decades.

Today I am back in Tad's house in Santa Cruz. It feels more and more like my house. I am laying down my arms, resting from the weary battle. I am not pulled into deep sorrow when I see our yard, our bed, our cat, our photos. Instead I find myself smiling more, singing aloud even. And in the smiles I feel Tad's love.

That night in the bathtub when Ella wept and finally blurted out her deep yearning to see her parents back together, her mother had the wisdom to lovingly tell her she and Ella's dad would not get back together. I imagine Madina knew such words would not be easy for little Ella's ears yet in the long run this was the healthy response, one steeped in reality.

I see how --driven by my old childhood desire to protect the ones I love from pain at all cost-- I fought very hard by Tad's side to help him survive leukemia.  I also see how I somehow fantasized I could keep him from suffering if I just fought hard enough. By handily transforming my own neurotic ball-and-chain into a sword and shield I mistakenly believed I could relieve him of any pain. And if he did suffer then it was my fault for not working hard enough.

I also failed to notice that my "weapons" do not entirely protect me from harm either.

I hope one day my beloved -whoever that may be- will hold me in his arms while I breathe my last breath the way I proudly did with the beautiful and valiant Tad Crandall. And already I pray that the inevitable pain he will suffer from this last act of love does not last too long.

the power of imagination

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.