Without Ed

Fear of Fate

My father has a theory: every man should marry once, but should he ever leave his first wife, he should be locked up in jail for five years before marrying another. When I asked dad his reasoning, he replied, "Either way he's going to be in prison."

Ironically enough, given his perspective, my father has been married to his first wife, my mom, for over 35 years. I’m not sure how either of my parents would describe their relationship, but at sixteen I’d already determined they were not the models I was looking for.

I hate admitting to having such feelings about my parent’s marriage. I want to believe they love each other deeply and I would not ever say that they don’t care for one another. But from an (adult) child’s perspective, either love translates differently from person to person (couple to couple) or people have different expectations of relationships.

Ed and I discussed our perspectives of love based upon our parents’ examples and our own random experiences. I cannot say that we reached any definitive conclusions. Quite frankly, we were both terrified of finding love in each other. Ed, bless his heart, always put up the strongest resistance just before toppling off emotional ledges (and taking me with him.) But, to his credit, he somehow managed to set things aright just before we landed in deeper territory.

For my part, I always played it safe--said much less than I felt (though that’s more of a life pattern, rather than an adjustment made for Ed’s sake.) Ed always encouraged me to share anything with him, and he never once rejected any part of me or us, but I suspect now that at different times in our courtship we both alluded to the unknown quotient--fear-- hiding in the corner waiting to thwart all of our efforts.

Summer before last, on a drive to Estes Park (where I was to meet Ed’s brother Mark and his family for the first time) Ed, while holding my hand, said, “Drena, one day you’re going to break up with me, but after you do you’re going to say, ‘But that Ed, he was a really good cook.’ And you’re going to miss me.”

I wrenched my hand away, upset, and he teased me about the way my bottom lip poked out when I pouted. But when I finally asked him, “Why do you say these things? Why do you push me away when I’m right here,” he answered, “I’m just protecting myself from disappointment.”

My feelings were hurt, but I understood exactly what he was doing--I distinctly remember protecting myself too at times, in my own way.

In the hours before that drive, Ed and I had just resolved our second serious relationship challenge (a conflict Ed blamed himself for) and we were both still tender from exposing our vulnerabilities to one another. But Ed healed quickly.

In the following weeks, Ed began trusting us more--trusting me more. But the more he yielded, the more frightened I became of losing him--because I felt like I had already lost myself. I was lost in Ed’s love and what on earth would ever become of me if Ed returned to the wilderness alone or decided I was too inconvenient after all? Though it may sound as though I had a fear of abandonment, being left by love would have been infinitely easier than it was being cornered by it, exposed to it, and knowing that, regardless of the outcome, there was no other place on earth I could be.

In many of my other posts, I have written about the miracle of Ed and of how wonderful the experience of Love was with him. But what of our trepidation, our concerns--the shadows of that same wonder? Our love story would be incomplete if I didn't acknowledge our fear of fate.

"So Close"

They met on the dance floor in the old high school gym
He fell like a rock
She kinda liked him
And his heart beat like thunder as they moved across the floor
But when the music was over she slipped out of his arms and out the door

Yeah a man loves a woman but he can't understand
Why she's sad when she stares at the ring on her hand
Or she sits in some club where the long shadows fall
Drops a coin in the jukebox not the phone on the wall

So close
Yet so far away
We believe in tomorrow maybe more than today
We're so close
Yet so far away

Some people think if you really believe
That's what you need to solve all the mysteries
Yeah I know someone who just heads for the sun
She says "I don't wanna be wise, I just wanna stay young"

So close
Yet so far away
We believe in tomorrow but we're stuck in today
We're so close
So far away

There's a restless look in your eye tonight
There's a secret hurt in my heart
And the dream that pulls us together girl is a dream
That's gonna tear us apart

There's a restless look in your eye tonight
Are you looking for some way out of here
We've gotta fight to keep it together
For the dream that keeps us

So close
Yet so far away
Yeah who would’ve thought that we'd end up this way
Living so close so far way

(We're living in a dream world
But we're living today girl
Just you and me, baby
Living side by side...)

("So Close" appeared on Hall & Oates Change of Seasons album released in 1990.)

The Mystery of Fate

My customer, Shira, and I began a discussion of love and fate a day ago that seemed particularly relevant to me considering the streams of thought my mind currently is floating upon. Transcendance, the relevance of love, the significance of fate in finding love...these are only a few of the themes I find myself considering.

Truth be told, I've always had a view of love and its possibilities deemed fantastic by others. I remember being assigned a marriage project my sophomore year of high school. My religion teacher, Mr. France, asked us to write our marriage vows and also to choose a song and symbol that represented our understanding of love. Per my usual form, I wrote a treatise, compiled an entire audio cassette of music and (because I could not draw) I had my close friend and classmate Pamela  sketch a drawing of a wedding band with a detailed array of symbols whose particular means I explained in great detail on a separate sheet.

Though I vaguely remember some of the music and symbols (I have no recollection of the actual vows I wrote) I distinctly recall Mr. France commenting that I had unrealistic expectations of love. In contrast, Pam selected the song "So Close" by Hall & Oates and her vows seemed much more conservative than mine. Though I surmised that, in my teacher's eyes, Pamela's views were more on target than mine, I couldn't, at that time, understand why. Now, though I have an inkling of understanding, I still see other, truer possibilities. But I suspect Shira could use her own experience of love as justification of Pam (and Mr. France's) take.

Shira, an outspoken, gregarious Jewish woman, married her "bashert" after deciding in her late twenties that she wanted children and was ready to start her family. Unabashedly, she explains that she approached her pursuit of a partner in much the same way she approached her graduate studies. "I worked hard for my two master's degrees," she explained, "but isn't a choice of a marriage partner even more important? It shouldn't be left to chance."

Living in an area that, in her eyes, didn't yield a high enough percentage of agreeable possibilities for wedded bliss, she relocated to New York under the guise of working through yet a third master's course of study--though when asked she explained that she was really pursing her MRS. degree. And pursue she did.

After determining her four basic requirements--an attractive, Jewish man with similar values who wanted a family--she went to work narrowing the list of seemingly eligible bachelors (many of whom she sent to therapy after assessing their qualifications and scoring them poorly on their readiness to be healthy marriage partners.)

Deep into her interview process, she found two guys who passed the first screening. Ironically enough, the first man was, in fact, Buddhist--though from Israel. He was incredibly attractive, Shira accepted, but she wouldn't allow herself to be seduced by his physical form (since the surface decays.) Instead, on their second date she argued with him about their incompatibility. He was Jewish by birth, drawn to her because they had similar backgrounds; yet her culture was American, not Middle Eastern, she declared. And why didn't he want a wife with the same spiritual beliefs anyway?....

Around this time, she met another man; he was Jewish, a divorcee but for "acceptable" reasons (he wanted a family; his wife, of quite a few years, did not) and on their second date he declared that she was his "bashert." She confessed to me that she'd already come to the same conclusion, but wasn't going to be the one to say it first. Nine months later, they married--and it's been spiritual counseling, toil, and the path of tough love ever since.

"The main problem people experience in love is that they project onto their partner unrealistic expectations," Shira said. "Young girls watch Twilight and then think that a man's going to worship them--that isn't the way love works. Or couples get together and start trying to recreate their families of origin."

Shira, aware of these tendencies even as she chose her spouse, still ran into battles with her intended one who, for the first seven years, threatened to divorce her everytime she exhibited a behavior he did not like. Finally she sat him down and told him the good news and the bad news. The good news--he was stuck with her because neither of them was going anywhere. Their marriage was a done deal. The bad news--see the good news in reverse. 

So, things went from better to worse to better while their children grew towards adulthood. Then, an accident left her husband with a brain injury he has yet to recover from. Shira struggles to accept him unconditionally while detaching herself from his despondency and inability to adjust to his current situation. She determines to make her own happiness without him which frees her (though it feels more to him like emotional abandonment). On some level Shira mourns the life she chose. Yet she refuses to divorce her "bashert"--if she can't learn to love the man she chose, then why on earth would she want to start this crazy ride all over again with somebody else. It wouldn't be worth it, Shira said.

I discovered the Yiddish word "bashert" after a friend shared it with me several years ago. In the context of relationships, it can be translated as "destiny", "soul mate" or "intended one." Yet it's rich meaning also yields to fickle fate or "God" because one cannot marry someone not intended for him or her. Regardless of how easily or poorly the arrangement fits, the chosen one will always be one's "bashert."

Shira's story is a rather humbling one. She believes she's setting a positive example for her children by standing her ground and enduring her pain, though she strives to thrive in a healthy love story. It makes me sad to see love playing a game of masquerade in an empty mausoleum. What is it about the human psyche that confirms the truth of my high school classmate's understanding: why do we linger "so close, yet so far away" from the very thing we all know we really want?

Infinite Meadow

Richard Dyer, reviewing a 2005 concert of Neruda Songs and other works sung by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, wrote in the Boston Globe of Peter Lieberson's chosen love sonnets:

"Each of the poems, in the composer's words, 'reflects a different face in love's mirror.' They are passionate, mysterious, painful, joyous, piercingly sad, and, ultimately, accepting in an all- encompassing way. Love is connected to life, life to nature; love is the most intimate thing we know, and the most infinite."

New Yorker music critic Alex Ross said that the same song cycle was "about the love between two people and about the impermanence of love." Though I understand that Ross alludes to the last poem in the set ("My love, if I die, and you don't...") I take issue with his choice of the word "impermanence" to describe love. Intimate, yes. Infinite, oh definitely. But impermanent?

I adore Stephen Tapscott's translation of that beloved 92 sonnet:

My love, if I die and you don't--
my love, if you die and I don't--
let's not give grief an even greater field.
No expanse is greater than where we live.
Dust in the wheat, sand in the deserts,
time, wandering water, the vague wind
swept us on like sailing seeds.
We might not have found one another in time.
This meadow where we find ourselves,
O little infinity! we give it back.
But Love, this love has not ended:
just as it never had a birth, it has
no death: it is like a long river,
only changing lands, and changing lips.

Impermanence, though deeply embedded into the fabric of life and thus connected to both nature and love, does not, to my mind, capture the truest meaning of Neruda's sonnet or Peter's interpretation in song.

Whenever I read this particular translation, I am always deeply moved by the line, "We might not have found one another in time." Prior to discovering this sonnet through Peter Lieberson's songs, in my darkest hours of grief I often consoled myself with this sentiment.

Six months was not the nine years of love that Peter and Lorraine enjoyed, which seemed so incredibly short to Peter after her passing. Nine years was not the eighteen years of love which bound Pablo and Matilde together before Pablo returned to the long river, and I'm certain that Matilde felt the same longing, the same pangs of grief, the same abandonment that the lover encourages the beloved to not give ground to. 

Six months was too little time to share with Ed, yet I think of how close we came to missing each other entirely. We'd danced in each other's peripheral vision at least two year's prior to that fateful morning when kindness and openness exchanged names. Six months hardly seems enough time to learn a person's name, much less kindle a flame of devotion. But I wouldn't trade my season of love for any earthly treasure. Forever would never have been long enough to know and to love Ed.

It wasn't that Ed was perfect, of course he had flaws. But he was perfect for me. And through the utter kindness of his love into the "awful grace" of our final parting, he was the messenger of the truest wisdom I have received. It doesn't lend itself easily to words, but roughly translated: Love transcends time.

Songs are composed, stories penned, lovers found and cast aside like pennies face-down on the curb all in pursuit of the intangible, illusive, unknown factor in that geometrical question: what is the shape of love? Whom does it choose to inhabit? What are its properties? How do we prove its essence? 

Many pursue it, compromise to keep on agreeable terms with their understanding of it or justify their right to risk security, reputations, livelihoods to pursue it. Some avoid it, compromise to keep a healthy distance from anything that might inspire change by forcing them to see their true selves.  Yet honest, true love is alchemical, unconditional acceptance. It is also risk (and it usually requires us to give up the aspect of ourselves we are most resistant to part with.)

I've sewn seeds on both sides of that equation and reaped the difficult lessons. I've continuously repented and begged the heavens (for decades) for a true experience of love, and I had absolutely no idea what I was asking for. I might have been asleep when Ed walked up to me that spring morning, looking for a newspaper I didn't have that particular day, but I wasn't--though I had no idea that walking my own pathway, taking a few extra minutes to locate a periodical for a customer would inspire Ed to reappear the following morning to initiate a conversation with the "kind" lady who worked in the newsstand of the local bookstore and, a month or so later, to take her on a date to "thank" her for her thoughtfulness. I wasn't being especially thoughtful in my own estimation. I was doing what I always did, showing up to work, to life in my usual way. 

At the corner of usual, on a seemingly idle Tuesday morning, I found Neruda's infinite...meadow. (It's surprising how easily it fits the soul.) Now I must give it back, as the poet also discovered. But, having found it once, I know what Love is capable of fostering, of caring for, of accepting. I know that infinite meadow, illusive, rare,  is capable of finding me whenever, wherever it wishes to share more of its secrets. Having slaked a lifetime of thirst from the tiniest sip of pure River water, I have taken into myself the understanding that Richard Dyer articulated with supple elegance:

Love is connected to life, life to nature; love is the most intimate thing we know, and the most infinite.

Transcendance

Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets, translated by Stephen Tapscott (the edition that inspired Peter Lieberson's musical love letters to Lorraine) were written for Matilde, his beloved third wife. Interestingly enough, Pablo, like Peter, divorced his (second) wife before marrying muse Matilde.

In his dedication to Matilda, Pablo writes:

My beloved wife, I suffered while I was writing these misnamed "sonnets": they hurt me and caused me grief, but the happiness I feel in offering them to you is cast as a savanna. When I set this task for myself, I kenw very well that down the right sides of sonnets, with elegant discriminating taste, poets of all times have arranged rhymes that sound like silver, or crystal, or cannonfire. But--with great humility--I made these sonnets out of wood; I gave them the sound of that opaque pure substance, and that is how they should reach your ears. Walking in forests or on beaches, along hidden lakes, in latitudes sprinlked with ashes, you and I have picked up pieces of pure bark, pieces of wood subject to the comings and goings of water and the weather. Out of such sofetened relics, then with hatchet and machete and pocketknife, I built up these lumber piles of love, and with fourteen boards each I built little houses, so that your eyes, which I adore and sing to, might live in them. Now that I have declared the foundations of my love, I surrender this century to you: wooden sonnets that rise only because you gave them life.

Pablo divided his love sonnets into four quadrants: morning, noon, evening and night. It is, of course, to the night that I am most drawn, as there, in the darkness of love lost,  I find solace for my own heart's longing.

I had an interesting chat with a customer earlier today. We began discussing author Stephanie Meyer, the maddening popularity of her teen novels and my customer's concerns that the story gave young girls unrealistic expectations of love. The conversation evolved into a treatise on the trials and tribulations of love and of the real meaning and value of the wedding vow with my customer using her own difficult journey through marriage as her chief example. 

Losing Ed so early in our life together often seems to disqualify me from offering my own understanding of love as an example. Words cannot express my gratitude to Ed's family because they never once slighted me or made me feel insignificant because Ed and I were together only a short time. Quite the contrary, they embraced me and welcomed the opportunity to know me as Ed's chosen life partner, even though time was not allotted to us to "go the distance."

In contrast, strangers and even a few of my acquaintances and friends, when they hear that Ed and I only had six precious and short months together, offer vague condolences, emphasizing the "honeymoon" phase of love--as if Love wouldn't rather walk through hell with her lover than heaven without him. But facing eternal loss--watching the truest love one has ever known cross the abyss of death offers its own uncanny perspective about what love and fidelity are and are not. 

 I wonder if other's hear the story of Peter and Lorraine or Pablo and Matilde, and question their devotion because they left other spouses to claim one another. There's no way to know the intimate details left out of biographies and obituaries, but I cannot help being reminded of a friend's story of discovering her true love.

Rose was married when she met the man she believes she was meant for. Her husband began vacillating and carried on an outstanding affair (that Rose learned about and made no attempts to hide her knowledge of) prior to deciding that he wanted a divorce prior to taking a business trip.

Rose, a sensible, independent woman, prepared herself for her marriage to end, yet when her husband came home from that trip, he told her that he didn't want a divorce after all. Rose believed his decision was financial, rather than emotional, but she chose not to make any waves. Regardless, he resumed playing house with his wife when, one uncanny night, after arriving early at a dinner party that seemed almost orchestrated to keep her out, she met the man she knew she would leave her husband for.

It was an easy choice to make, Rose told me, as she explained the connection she shared with Robert. For years she'd had recurring dreams of being trapped in a Victorian house that burned down to the ground. After chatting with Robert a few minutes, he looked at her and said, as easily as hello, "I was in the house that burned." (She had not mentioned anything about her dream at all.) He had recently returned from a trip to Britain and had actually walked in the house from her dream.

Then Robert said, "I have something for you." He had purchased a duty-free bottle of liqueur that he had no desire to drink. When he saw Rose at this party, he knew it was meant for her. (It was, in fact, one of her favorites.) 

After that singular night of conversation and a few clandestine trysts, Rose walked into her living room one evening and told her husband that she, in fact, was leaving him. Her husband, as she'd suspected, was more dismayed by the idea of losing her income rather than the marriage itself, but Rose, with dignity and grace, told her husband that she would continue taking care of certain financial responsibilities. She never apologized for walking away.

Rose and Robert's relationship was full of syncronicities and adventures that push the bounds of even the most foolhardy of lovers. Yet their crazy courtship illustrates what I believe most people want from love and what so few are fortunate enough to find: transcendance.

A Universal Theme

Last summer, while sorting through a pile of music discs, I discovered a classical CD (an in-store play that I had "won" at work at least a year prior) I had not actually listened to before. The recording was of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, mezzo-soprano, singing five Pablo Neruda love sonnets set to music. The translated title of the last song immediately caught my eye: "My love, if I die, and you don't...." Immediately I played the song and let its sentiments wash me, again and again, with haunting perspective:

Amor mío, si muero y tú no mueres,
no demos al dolor más territorio:
amor mío, si mueres y no muero,
no hay extensión como la que vivimos.
Polvo en el trigo, arena en las arenas
el tiempo, el agua errante, el viento vago
nos llevó como grano navegante.
Pudimos no encontrarnos en el tiempo.
Esta pradera en que nos encontramos,
oh pequeño infinito! devolvemos.
Pero este amor, amor, no ha terminado,
y así como no tuvo nacimiento
no tiene muerte, es como un largo río,
sólo cambia de tierras y de labios.

My love, should I die and you don’t,
let us give grief no more ground:
my love, should you die and I don’t,
there is no piece of land like this on which we've lived.
Dust in the wheat, sand in the desert sands,
time, errant water, the wandering wind
carried us away like a navigator seed.
In such times, we may well not have met.
The meadow in which we did meet,
oh tiny infinity, we give back.
But this love, Love, has had no end,
and so, as it had no birth,
it has no death. It is like a long river
that changes only its shores and its banks.

Gratefully, after listening to the recording, I searched on-line and found the above translation (by Terence Clarke) of Neruda's 92 Love Sonnet. One of the things I'd already previously noted was how music, particularly contemporary love songs, all somehow spoke to me of Ed, of our life together, and of loss (even though, prior to Ed's death, I would have interpreted them differently.) Yet here sitting in a stack on my bedroom floor was the exact medicine my soul needed, music set and directly attuned to grief. As I explored the story behind the music, I discovered another love and loss deeply intertwined.

Peter Lieberson composed the song cycle Neruda Songs as a gift for his wife, Lorraine. When they met in 1997 while working together on Ashoka's Dream (an opera by Peter), a deep,albeit inconvenient, connection developed immediately between them. (Peter was married at the time.) Yet the bond between composer and (mezzo) soprano was not to be denied.

In 1999, after Peter divorced his first wife, he and Lorraine married and enjoyed about nine years together as husband and wife. On July 3, 2006, Lorraine died of cancer. When they first fell in love, Peter discovered a collection of Pablo Neruda's poems while in an airport. The poet's verse so enthralled him and spoke to him of his beloved that he decided to arrange them for Lorraine to one day sing. They became his love letters to her, and Lorraine's emotional depth as an artist allowed her to draw the listener into their love story that, ironically wove through all of the seasons of love illustrated by the chosen poems: from the initial attraction drawing the couple together to the beloved's dying wish/parting gift.

Learning the story behind the songs only deepened my love for them and the message behind them. It also allowed me to detach the tiniest bit from my own grief, as the overaching tale of attraction,connection, loss and grief is a universal theme.

Exploration of a Love Theme

"So, why do you believe that Ed is the only person who ever has, or could love you?" Beth, a pastor and spiritual counselor posed this question to me several months ago, after I'd invited her to read my blog to learn more about Ed and my life since his death.

(I met Beth several years ago after visiting the church she pastored with my friend Ruth. We'd always intended to connect concerning our common spiritual inclinations, but life--and love--intervened. After Ed's death, I could not separate any aspect of my life, particularly not spirituality, from my loss. So when we finally were able to meet, Beth asked if she could share her observations with me.)

Beth's question prompted a wave of images from ages past; I offered a few highlights as justification, but found myself stunned by the implications of her probing. Was I building a monument out of Ed and his love for me because I honestly believed that no one else really loved me at all? 

When I recollect the experiences that most shaped my perspective of love, one person in particular almost always resurfaces: my first close male friend, Lee Allan,whom I met my junior year of high school. Weeks before, I'd transferred out of the Catholic school I'd attended since kindergarten to the local public high school and I was completely overwhelmed and incredibly lonely (though not lonely enough to return to the familiar ache I'd left behind.) Lee had also transferred from his small Mississippi hometown and somehow we befriended each other.

It wouldn't be true to say that he was a boyfriend, since our relationship was platonic. (Lee was gay.) However, I very much loved him for many years. Lee was the first boy to ever tell me he loved me and in retrospect I did erect a monumental tribute to the soulful exchanges of affection that solidly stood for years after we'd outgrown each other. 

We exchanged many cards and letters, photographs and small tokens. One summer afternoon in 1992, a "Thinking of You Today" card arrived for me, with the following message written inside:

I wanted to let you know that I'm thinking about you. Always keep near to your heart and mind that there is someone somewhere who's thinking about you! Take care of yourself. Go to the beach one afternoon and just let nature teach you the value of love and strength. In this crazy world it's hard to be yourself, but first you have to find yourself. That takes strength. Maybe the fact that someone loves you will add some extra strength. Always, always remember that I love you!!

In retrospect, I recall my reaction to this card being somewhat similar to my response to former best friend D. when she first expressed such affection towards me. But secretly I basked in its tenderness. Over seventeen years later I still keep this card in a special place and consider it one of my life's treasures. The ink hasn't yet faded, though I haven't called on Lee's love for strength in quite some time. 

As a teenager and younger adult, I believed Love to be some grand design--ornate and stately, yet also subtle. So it was always either above or behind me, something I had to strain and stress to grab hold of, or something that danced in my peripheral vision only to disappear every time I turned around.

For all his meaningful gifts to me, Lee in his own way perpetuated this illusive understanding. He had two best friends, Nicole and Jason, and he seduced me with tales of their friendship, the dissolution of all walls and borders between them. I longed to feel part of a unit, longed to be able to share all of myself with friends I could trust. But though I tried, it never felt real with Lee, nor with D. and the others I called by friendship's name.

On some level I held my inability to connect against those closest to me; Lee and I eventually called its quits in part because I could never sync my feelings with our reality. The last time we spoke though, about ten years ago, I was dismayed to learn that he had lost touch with both Nicole and Jason; there are walls and borders that are impenetrable after all.

Were there walls between Ed and me? At thirty-three I was a far cry from the solitary, frightened girl that first loved Lee; Ed, for his part, had his own life fears and reluctances. I don't think we expected love to be like we imagined it (or avoided it) at seventeen. On some level I still saw love as a star in the heavens. But, though it may sound overly sentimental, Ed and our relationship,for the first time in my life, offered me wings.

From grief's perspective, I can accept that losing Ed so uniquely early in our courtship may prompt me to adorn his every action with a veneer more appropriate for angels than mortal men. I would not be as inclined to trust my own understanding had Ed and I not, both privately and as a couple, explored these feelings and meanings while he was yet alive. 

When I survey the landscape of my life, I note that it exhibits a very singular, atypical design. The pattern of Ed's life was even more distinctive because his uncanny contours were intentional. At seventeen, Ed first ran away from home via the Appalachian trail; though he didn't have a real plan, his short-lived (at that time) bid for freedom ignited a desire that lingered from that day entirely through his last afternoon on earth.

By nineteen, Ed was deliberately homeless--a short-order chef by day, a connoiseur of human experience the rest of the time. At thirty, he was a trucker, living dot to dot. By random design, after pulling his last haul, Ed wandered from Alaska to Denver, via advertisements in a Boulder newspaper. (When I first learned the formula Ed used to make those particular decisions, I pretty much knew I'd found my man.) 

In contrast, my idiosyncrasies were neither purposeful nor pursued. I told Ed once that I considered myself a reluctant nonconformist. I never wanted to be different, really--I just couldn't work out the laws of normalcy. Though I entered my wandering phase quite a bit later than Ed, when I did break out of my shell, I scuttled about 900 miles away from home (to Fayetteville, North Carolina) in my first adventure, then two years later leapt about 7000 miles (to Fukui, Japan) where I taught for several satisfying years.

Regardless of how we came to know ourselves though, both Ed and I developed unusual ways of shaping and understanding of the world around us. As well, we lived that understanding out of the the usual order.

So, at thirty-three and forty-seven, after years left to our own unique devices (most likely alone), we both had the perspective to appreciate the gift of love as we stumbled over it while, ironically, doing very typical, ordinary things. Once our discovery became obvious, we couldn't help savoring our good fortune.

Often I said to Ed, "What do you do when you find the thing you always knew you'd been looking for?" What do you do when you wake up to find the dream true and alive, everything you'd always hoped for within your grasp without straining? In my case, the answer came back that I should honor and bless it, then let it go when it's time comes. But there is no denying that what Ed and I discovered in each other was as real and unique as the innerworkings of our individual lives. 

But what was so significant about Ed's love that it prompted my spiritual advisor to remark that my writings read like I'd never known any love at all before finding him?

Abuse of Sacredness

I remember the moment I first wrapped my mind around the limits of love.

It was after dark--I was about six years old, sitting on the edge of the ugly brown sofa in our cramped living room, and I was depressed. I cannot say why exactly, though, in retrospect, on that same mud colored sofa not too many days before I’d stood and watched my parents fight in the kitchen--shoving and screaming and whacking. (It was the first and to my knowledge the only time they ever physically fought each other, but in childhood every experience seems timeless.)

Maybe I was frightened by their unhappiness. Or perhaps I was envious of my  little brother, who never seemed to do any wrong.

Regardless, in my little girl heart, I’d decided that my parents couldn’t possible love me.

Mom entered the room to fold laundry; she always used the sofa--thus, I was in the way. Always in the way. So I dragged myself over to the stool nearby.

“What’s the matter,” she grumbled.

“Nothing,” I mumbled.

“You tell me what’s wrong--or else!”

So I crumbled. Weeping, I cried out, “Nobody loves me!”

“Oh, girl, please,” she muttered and dismissed me to my room. My mother had little patience for emotional displays.

So I went to bed and cried myself a river to float upon. A few minutes later, though, my dad walked in,sat down on the edge of the bed, and assured me that he loved me. His words brought a measure of comfort, but in the morning’s light I remained unconvinced.

So I dared broach the subject tearlessly with him later that day; however, even dad made it clear that sensitive little girls only get one free pass at emotional instability. He’d told me he loved me the previous night--as far as he was concerned, daylight changed nothing. It seemed to me, though, that ultimately it didn’t really matter how I felt.

So I began burying my emotions; still, I never stopped turning over rocks and peering around corners, searching for a love that didn’t fit like a cage.

*

I remember the first time I heard the words “I love you” from a friend. It was, in fact, my former best friend D. We were sixteen and it was during one of those late evening phone sessions teenager girls are infamous for. Somehow the topic turned to our personal connections and in a moment, D. confessed that I was one of two people (outside of her family) that she loved.

I was shocked--stunned into speechlessness. I took a moment, then a deep breath, and asked her never to say those words to me again.

Years later, after many changes to our friendship, I asked if she remembered that piercing moment. In fact, she didn’t. But it left such a scar on me that I would always be able to retrieve it from the annuals of stark remembrances.

Had anyone asked me at the time what I was so frightened of, I don’t think I would have been able to answer them. I had conflicting views about love, certainly--but even more so about the sacredness of the words themselves.

*

Recently I sat down beside my distant friend, took a deep breath and finally, after almost eight months of silence, confessed my feelings and the true reason that I had been avoiding her.


I wasn’t sure what I expected or wanted from the conversation. It was a struggle to bear my feelings because I didn’t want to hurt her. But I didn’t want to ignore her anymore either and I couldn't just pretend that nothing had gone sour between us.

She was a relatively newer addition to my friendship collection; though I'd known her longer than Ed, she and I didn't bond until after Ed and I were deep in love. As has sometimes been the case in my past, our connection centered  on her emotional needs. I truly worried and cared about her, and made time for her--until Ed's fall.

Those long months after Ed’s death,though, I was unable to be present to  anything except my own grief. After initial days and weeks of sleeplessness, my body began requiring over ten (sometimes twelve) hours of rest each night. It took so much energy to survive the work day that I struggled at times to pay bills, answer phone calls,e-mails.... To keep myself going, I assigned a single task to myself each day, apart from showing up at my place of employment.

(Some days that single task was little more than putting dirty clothes inside a hamper.)

I didn’t realize that my emotional state threatened my friend's own struggles and depression, at least not until she invited me out for dinner then after practically begging me to confess the depth of my grief, she immediately changed the subject back to her own issues; then later in the conversation, attacked me again for not being open. Chidingly she offered, “I’m much healthier than you are right now.”

My first thought, I didn’t know we were in a competition. Months later, as I opened myself again to this woman, I realized we still were.

 Simultaneously (and somewhat awkwardly, I see now),  I tried to thank her for all of the ways she had shown up and offered some tangible support after Ed’s death. But she dismissed her own efforts as paltry compared to what she'd taken away. She didn't attempt to deny my experience or my feelings. But even though I didn’t want (or need) her to feel badly about the past, she still felt the need to defend herself with the only weapons she had--words as rocks.

Once, in a random moment, this friend told me that she thought I was ashamed to be who I really was, racially. Stunned by her seemingly unfounded criticism (my friend and I had hardly ever discussed my views on race or my multifaceted history) I said nothing--to her. Ed was still alive at this time and I remember crying to him, pouring out my hurt feelings. He held me tenderly, listened thoughtfully. His advice: “You’re a good friend. She’s having a rough time and she needs you right now. Let it go for now.” Letting go felt much easier in Ed’s arms.

Revisiting the memory, I asked rhetorically, “Why can’t people understand without judgment?” to which she replied, “Isn’t judgment part of understanding?” Then, justifying her belief, she resumed her criticism; having already reached my limit, immediately--finally-- I drew a clear line. She threw bricks at my glass house while standing to walk away, forcing distance between us, crushing the shards of her own shattered façade in her retreat.

“I love you, I’m sorry I hurt you, but I need to go…” she cried out while running away. I love you, her sentence began, but the tone reminded me of the god bless you any way’s often hurled at the backsides of passersby by homeless men. I couldn't help cringing at such sacredness abused.

“Is that what love does?” I called out across the distance. “Walk away when it hears something it doesn’t like.”

“You come here if you have something to say,” she yelled back.

“You’re the one who walked away.”

“You’re the one who drew the line between us.... I don’t have time for this right now. I have to go!”

And I couldn’t help feeling the air as cold and desolate. I took the risk of bearing my true feelings and also drawing a border to protect myself from my friend's idea of understanding, of love.

I used to believe that we had to learn to express our real selves in order to teach the people closest to us exactly how to love us. Perhaps my excavation was ill-timed or perhaps the truth is that we must learn to be our real selves whether the people closest to us love us or not. 

I'm not angry with my friend anymore, if I ever was angry. I expressed a need. She couldn't accommodate it. It's better, I believe, to clearly see the truth than to keep relating to a lie.... 

Sacred Words

“So, Drena,” Eddie said to me one summer morning, “Are we going to be like couples that say ‘I love you’ at the end of every phone conversation?”

I asked his preference. “It cheapens the meaning to say it all of the time. I don’t think we should overuse it.”

I found his question soul-provoking--but intrinsically, I could understand his intent. So I agreed with a subtle caveat-- recounting a newspaper cartoon I’d seen once with a couple on a therapist’s couch. While the wife cried, the husband explained, “Look, I told you I loved you when I married you. If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.”

He laughed. But more importantly, he got the message.

*

“Well, do you love this guy,” my best friend Patty asked me one late summer afternoon. In truth, Ed and I had professed our love quite a while before she asked. But I found myself stumbling over admitting the depth of my feelings to my friend. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t understand, or be excited for me. It was my own heart, jealously guarding her secret. For the first time, it had a love worth cherishing, worth protecting.

Also, love with Ed was unlike any other experience of so-called love I’d previously encountered.

“…Yes,” I said. Then, pausing a moment, I added, “It isn’t like I thought it would be.”

“What do you mean?” she inquired.

“Well, it’s hard to describe, but it’s not--”

“Grand passion.”

“Well, yeah,” I accepted, though, in my mind burning and suffocation accompanied grand passion. I’d fallen very deeply once before into someone, and at the time it seemed the entire universe conspired to bring us together--and we ripped our hearts to pieces. No, no--love with Ed wasn’t violent. It was gentle and kind--it was clear.

“It’s a quiet love,” Patty tried again. “Yes,” I said. She approved. “Quiet love is good.”

*

I remember that Ed liked to say I love you at night, under tent of darkness. Cuddled together, he’d murmur the words gently, like confiding a secret or a cherished story.  Whereas, I preferred to say I love you in the morning. Love always seemed more real to me in the morning with Ed--standing in the kitchen, perusing the newspaper, the remnants of night freshly swept from our breaths.

But regardless of the hour, love with Ed always filled the quiet space. He took seriously his oath--to him loving meant cherishing, never intentionally harming, and, even sacrificing.

*

On our second date, Ed and I talked about our past relationships (which collectively, left us plenty of time to discuss other things.) He told me about his first and only other "girlfriend", Jade. I asked him if he’d loved her. His response, “Not so much.” Now that I’ve inherited his journals, I see that he vacillated quite a bit between love and fear. I think maybe love with Jade was more fire and fury than gentleness.

Of course he never said anything negative about her as a person, only that they had nothing in common and that he regretted having hurt her by running away. He never regretted running, though. “A man should not be where he does not belong,” he wrote. He tried, though. In the name of love, but for Ed there were deeper loyalties. . ..

*

I cannot remember exactly when I first knew I loved Ed. Love with Ed was unlike any other experience I’d ever had, or even imagined. I'd expressed and felt love prior to Ed, but those experiences were emotional mazes full of u-turns and poorly-lit alleys reeking of stale and mysterious odors and energies. I spent more time lost in my feelings than actively expressing them.

In contrast, the first time Ed took my hand, our pathway became sheer and clear, uncomplicated and undiluted by the intrigues that so often characterized relational patterns as I'd seen them played out. I intuited one quality about Ed right away--he was a man for whom yes meant yes, and no meant no. So when he told me he loved me that first time, he knew what those words meant. They meant surrender....

What We Remember (Of Ourselves and Our Loved Ones)

During my freshman year of high school, as one of my classmates battled cancer, our religion teacher (I attended a Catholic school) challenged us to reflect upon our ideas of life and death and asked us to imagine our own funerals. I wrote:

“If I were to die sometime in the near future…I don’t think I really want a funeral or a wake in my honor…and the day I die I’d want all of my private papers and belongings to be given to specific people--or burned. Everything else of value (appliances and items more tangible, less personal) I want to be given to charity.

"The next day or when I’m buried I’d want for the people closest to me to sit alone quietly that night under the starlight and play a song that to them expresses who I was or what I meant to them; just to think of the good times and the bad, remember my idiosyncrasies, my laughter my dreams, my fears...just to, for one night, remember me.”


At sixteen I knew--or thought I knew--that death was a solitary journey and that memorial ceremonies and observances honor the living more so than the dead. Such a view went unchecked until Ed’s death. 

On October 19, my perspective broadened. When the most important person to me on this earth tumbled from his favorite mountain, suddenly it mattered what happened to his body and his possessions.  It mattered, my saying goodbye to his shell, my returning, again and again, to the place he died. His memorial services needed to honor the beauty and relevance of his life which continues to hold its significance.  Everything about this person--past, present, and unwritten future--mattered. Even though his body is gone, to me the memory of his presence remains palpable, even cognizant.

Is this voice one of grief, the lament of the one left behind to make sense of the loss? Does it matter to Ed who inherited his bike and his climbing gear, that his brother and I viewed his body and touched his face, forever still, prior to its cremation? Did Ed see us scatter part of his ashes in his place of death and bury part in his hometown next to his grandparents? 

Perhaps it doesn't matter how we honor our departed loved ones--only that we remember and what we remember (and carry forward with us) once the ceremonies and observances have run their course.

At sixteen my views, guarded and selfish, were more influenced by fear I believe than genuine understanding. At sixteen I didn’t want people clinging to me, seeing into me--I wanted them to let me go, let me die as I had lived--under starlight with my written dreams clutched to my chest, close and private. Even from the grave, I assumed I’d need to protect myself.

Ed was a different sort of spirit entirely, though I’m sure he would have understood my teenage self very well. Though private, one of his laments was that his twenty-year old self experienced that same desire for self protection, though for different reasons. As a hobo, often homeless, Ed felt forced to lie to coworkers who offered him rides home after work or at times when the weather was disagreeable.

His honest and genuine nature misliked the deception, but in these instances the truth felt more of a threat to his intention to live on his own terms. Still, at forty-seven, Ed told me several times that though he often saw himself as the perennial wanderer, he never again wanted to have to hide who he was from those around him. 

It was this memory of Ed that guided me through the days of grief that asked questions of me concerning the varied patterns of his life, his wishes and dreams as my heart recorded them, and the most significant remainders, his personal writings, that were entrusted to me. In honor of Ed, I erred on the side of honesty, of openess.

I never wanted Ed to be mocked, ridiculed or judged from the grave. (I still grimace when I recall web comments posted by callous strangers when reports of his accident were first reported or when some people first learned of his more unsettling habits.) Still, every part of Ed's world was, is and continues to be precious to me, even its shadows. In retrospect, I was much kinder to Ed than, at sixteen, I expected life to be to me. But Ed, in death, offers me the opportunity to open as he did and accept myself as he accepted me.