Freedom and Loneliness

When nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. what do you call it, freedom or loneliness? ~ Milan Kundera

The Passing of Time

Growing, ripening, aging, dying — the passing of time is predestined, inevitable. There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning — devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work. In old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves. One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion. ~Simone de Beauvoir (Book: The Coming of Age.)

I no longer know what I was doing before Rob died. Since his death - 1 year, 3 months, 15 days - I walk around in a daze, lightly drugged with nerve medicine to still the shingles that refuse to leave me in peace. I am trying to find value in my life and like a woman in her forties who hears her biological clock ticking, I hear mine. I figure that I have five to eight good years left and I don't want to waste them. And yet what to do? I have always found solutions about where to take my life in books but one hasn't fallen into my lap lately. I don't know if I'm still grieving or if I'm becoming senile. I am scared. I have always been prone to melodrama so I hope that's what I am doing now.

First Son's Birthday

Happy Birthday, Brendan! I didn't know that Rob and I could make a human being until you were born. Rob used to say "the pleasure was all mine." The joy you felt holding your newborn son in your arms was ours when we held you. You grew. You tested us. (As Seb will do for you.) When you were a teenager, you said, "I don't appreciate your feeble attempts to make me happy." ( A sign that you were developing your father's sense of humour.) You grew older. You were unique. You were creative. Oh so smart and yet so self-contained. And then you met wild and wonderful Jane. To put it mildly, you both flourished and continue to flourish under each other's care. As you now know, a parent learns from a child as much as the child learns from the parent. Thank you, my beautiful son. You make me proud!

More "Glimpses of Beauty"

I have just reread a script by Jonas Mekas about "brief glimpses of beauty" that has saved me from out and utter despair this past year and a half. I had dinner with friends on a level of grass beyond their house last night. The air was warm, the mood was light, the wine and food more than satisfactory. "To have a glass of wine with friends, old friends and new friends, is beauty... we all look for something more important... But, as life goes on... we realise that one day follows another, and things that we felt were so important yesterday we feel we have forgotten them already today." In my mind, Mekas point is that some of the most beautiful times are those spent with family and friends. (I am posting some of my Facebook entries as some of my friends are not on social media.)

Scattering Susan's Ashes

Susan called cremation "the burning". She wanted the scattering of her ashes to happen after a picnic on an elevated plain near her village. She wanted the occasion to be joyful. Is that asking too much? she asked. No Susan, I think you would have loved the event which took place two nights ago. Your granddaughter performed a flower ballet. Your grand-niece recited poetry. A university friend spoke of feminism and friendship two subjects close to your heart. Another grandson mimiced a wild animal, while anotther did a magic trick. Your eldest grandson played the guitar accompanied by your granddaughter on the oboe. Your new daughter sang. You would have had the biggest smile on your face. I spoke of your love of the body and sex. (You, my darling Susan opened my world and gave me permission to say what I hadn't dared.) After the expressions of love and devotion, David had each member of the family, beginning with himself, followed by the eldest son all the wy down to the youngest grandchild, scatter Susan's ashes. It was beyond beautiful.

Life Mimics Art

Outside Edinburgh lies Jupiter Artland. It was so beautiful, walking through miles of woodland, listening to birdsong, and studying modern sculptures, and every so often mimicing them. "Weeping Girls"

"Over Here"

"I Lay Here for You"

Our Anniversary #39

I'm not sure why I'm adding this. Perhaps to give an overview of our marriage. On the one hand, I'm still not sure I loved Rob enough. On the other hand, I think I gave him some pretty magnificent moments. And he did the same for me. What's the use of whining and complaining about the times when life was hellish? When we were out of sync? When we challenged the other? In the end, now that I have a real overview of our marriage, I'd say that we never ever fell out of love. We never doubted the other's goodness. We trusted each other with our lives.

Our Anniversary

 

Lace

 

It's been nearly a year since Rob died (how it pains me to write this.) I find myself obsessing once again about his stupid tragic fall. How he suffered and how we, his family suffered for him and for ourselves. 

Without language, we didn't know what he knew but there were signs that he was still in there somewhere - when his fingers tapped on his chest to his favourite music, when his nose went up and he scowled at the nurse spraying ammonia on his sheet (he hated the smell of cleaning products).  He also expressed his awareness by squeezing our hands, pulling at Gill's hair, and that one precious moment when he pulled me down and kissed me on the lips. 

What hell he lived through. He hated the needles and tubes and especially the catheter. The doctor agreed to take everything out for our anniversary. He died two days before it. 

This has been a long, cumbersome, painful year although there were brief glimpses of beauty. My children, siblings, and friends have been loving and forgiving of my inability to communicate well. Lately, I have been antsy and unsettled as I go through Rob's stuff, saving the important things for our children and giving to friends and charity the inconsequential - most of the clothes that covered him - and his office supplies. (I took his old office chair, stained and taped and covered in cat hair to the dump.) I felt it a betrayal. 

This reminds me of how separate the two of us were. We not only kept individual offices but we had separate interests and often travelled alone. It's only now that I realize how much we shared. - dinners every evening, Rob's wonderful jazz music seranading us, market and restaurant outings, and never-ending discussions about politics, the weather, and health issues. I now recognize, as I must do all to keep house and self together, our unspoken division of necessary chores. 

The other day, I was reading old emails from Rob and in one, he was trying to rationalize travelling business class. I responded, "Go for it!  He responded, "I love you." (We often had to give the other "permission" to be extravagant.) 

In practically every birthday and anniversay card Rob gave me, he'd write "I really do love you." This always made me smile. For years, I'd pressured him to talk to me, to express his love or his hatred and forever and a day, he told me that he couldn't. He could not. I only accepted this is the last few years. When he'd surprise me with a kiss or hug, I'd find myself warmed and happy. I realized how I missed his touch. 

When he was helpless in his hospital bed, I did everything I could think to do to make him feel more comfortable, and it hit me that he had been so self-sufficient, so capable that there was little I had to do for him. I wondered sometimes, if he needed me at all. When I offered to be his sous-chef, he said I was too slow but the times, we did work together in the kitchen - he making one dish, I another, I liked it. 

I don't know how I feel as this anniversary approaches. Part of me is missing. I no longer receive a  news report about all the horrible things happening in the world. Nor do I know if the sun will shine. I no longer have a sound man, a confidant, a companion. I see older couples holding hands or chatting away and I am angry. Rob and I thought we'd have more time - at least until we were eighty. He wanted to return to Japan with me and now I must go alone and I am a little scared. 

I trusted him, even when he infuriated me. He spent so many hours, worrying about his ailments. He  could have been loving me. His death has brought home that one day I will die and leave a pile of stuff. I would like to leave as little as possible for my children to dispose of. In turn, this makes me question what is important, what do I need, what do I love.

When I was in London recently, I went to the Royal Academy to see the work of Angelica Kaufmann, a Swiss Neoclassical painter and what I loved most was the fashion - rich fabrics on the men and delicate flowing dresses on the women. Both sexes' garments were trimmed with gorgeous intricately-pattered lace. After, I went shopping and found a net crinoline  (like a long ballet tutu) and bought it. The other night, when I was going out to dinner, I felt drab and listless, I decided to wear my crinoline skirt under a long linen coat and walk the several kilometers to the location. The evening turned out to be a great escape - more than one glimpse of beauty. 

I am beginning to accept that Rob is no longer - not that I find it easy or like it. I don't but now I have to discover how to live alone and find pleasure.  

 

My Susan

Susan was a rare and beautiful woman. I met her around 35 years ago when I first arrived in the village. From the moment we met and she handed me a key to her house, she overwhelmed me with her trust and kindness. Soon after, she left, on my doorstep, a book and note describing a recent dream that troubled her. "Do you read?" she wrote. "I need help." 

Once when she came to visit, she found me weeping. Without questioning my tears, she took my arm and led me to her garden where she fed me figs and told me stories about her life. She was forthright and open - no dramatization, just simple facts. Noting my discomfort, she told me that she did not believe in euphemisms.

Over that first year, she took me and my children on picnics beside riverbanks and amid fields of poppies, She led us to art exhibits in nearby towns, and on nature walks through forests in search of wild orchids. On one such walk, my 4 year old daughter proclaimed, "Oh you are so clever, Susan". Watching their relationship blossom, I thanked the heavens that Gill had someone who could teach her what I could not. 

During this time, Susan was painting delicate exacting pictures of wild flowers and had begun her autobiography. I shared her love of writing and would bring my meagre offerings to her. She would applaud or criticize. I grew to trust her completely. She was the smartest woman I've ever met: I thought her an encyclopaedia of English literature. 

She was also a gourmand who loved to cook. Her onion tart is still a celebratory dish in my home. She told me once that the two best things in life are food and sex, and people didn't enjoy them enough or talk about them enough.

How could I not love her?

During our years together, she wrote and rewrote and rewrote longhand her three volume autobiography that her beloved David typed and published for her. 

As she grew old and fragile, she did so with such grace, never losing her passion for birds and wildflowers, oysters and champagne, poetry and books, and her family and friends. To my mind, she was especially  enchanted by her grandchildren.

Recently, Susan told me that some people treat her as ancient - a body without a mind, without desires and dreams. "Do you ever dream of sex?" she continued."Do you?" I asked. She smiled, her beautiful mischievous child-like smile and said, "yes!"

I feel privileged to have had Susan as a friend. I shall love her forever more.

My Christmas Card

 

It's been Six Months

 Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   

And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   

But last year’s bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   

There are a hundred places where I fear   

To go,—so with his memory they brim.   

And entering with relief some quiet place   

Where never fell his foot or shone his face   

I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Grief"

"Grief’s a bastard. 

Turns up no notice on the doorstep whenever 

moves in doesn’t shower doesn’t shave 

won’t do dishes 

dirty laundry 

eats badly spends hours in the bathroom 

keeps you awake half the night 

shows no consideration 

puts a filter on all the views 

no matter how sunny it gets 

the place still looks like shit. 

Grief’s a bastard. 

Talks long distance drinks too much overmedicates can’t finish a book 

keeps flipping channels mutes the sound 

turns down the colour 

’til it’s all washed out 

faded away. 

Grief will travel anywhere in the world to be with you 

nothing too extravagant for Grief 

can take the whole sky 

paint it bloodred demolish cities 

call down storms 

turn forests to sawdust 

punch holes in mountain ranges 

bedroom doors. 

Speaks for you 

whether you like it or not 

even though there’s nothing left to say 

and no words left to say it with 

roars furious flails around 

when you ask him how things are the fucker tells you 

trails along behind on walks 

dead-eyed pathetic shuffles 

’til you wait up and turn 

taking a deep breath 

knowing what’s coming. 

Gets old acts distant suddenly doesn’t call for weeks 

then comes over with too much whiskey and a bag of crappy 

skunkweed just to keep you on your toes. 

Jumps you in an alley after a movie 

and while he’s beating you says 

we must keep working on this relationship."

by Geoff Inverarity 

"Death, be not proud"

 A few nights ago I had a dream. Rob wanted to watch a film and I was running around the house like a madwoman. The toilet was leaking. There were all kinds of things falling apart. Why wasn’t he helping me? I woke suddenly and saw the bathroom light was on and the door was slightly ajar and my first thought was that Rob was in the bathroom and I called out to him and then realized it couldn’t be Rob. What do I do with all the questions I want to ask him? 

I am obsessed with death but I am not frozen. I did go to Paris - the second show. I saw a couple of my favourite designers and I was able to focus and send good notes and pictures to the store. I made a quick trip to Vancouver and saw the lawyer working on Rob’s estate and the bank who are dragging their heels and not transferring money from Rob’s retirement fund to me because of my name. I signed Barbara Yvonne Young and they asked me to change it to Barbara Y Young and still they stumbled. Finally a few weeks ago, they asked me to take out the Y… and still they haven't transferred the funds. This is my life right now - erasing Rob’s name from all our joint possessions. How I hate it. 

I didn’t expect to be in such pain over the grouchy old man with whom I’ve lived with since I was 19 years old. I didn’t expect the hell I’d experience in a Casablanca hospital and then in Albi. Brendan flew over and then Michael and finally Gilly so I was never alone. We were with Rob every day, holding his hands, exercising his arms and legs, hoping for a miracle. We didn’t get one. In the end, he died alone at 10:30 at night. I sent a message to the hospital doctor last week, asking how he died. He responded almost immediately: 

"I don't have precise information about his last hours but on the last nurse's visit, he was breathing the same way as in the afternoon (without warning signs). His death was very sudden, maybe by the way of a cardiac trouble or a pulmonary embolism but we can't be sure. The night nurse found him already dead. I'm pretty sure he didn't suffer at least."

Gill and I heard that he had died the next morning. We dressed quickly and went to the hospital. I went in first and touched his cold body - I was shocked at how icy cold it was in the warm room.  I kissed his cheek. I talked a little and said good-bye. My only thought was that Rob wasn’t there. 

On a happier note, I am flying to San Francisco and then catching a shuttle to Carmel on the first of December for a month to be with Gill and family. Brendan with his family will join us on December 22nd. I might go to Mexico in February for a birthday party for the friend whom I’ve known the longest and then I must spend a little time with my family in Ontario. I can only plan one trip at a time as my thoughts are foggy and come out in bursts, staccato, and not always coherently. I am scared, sometimes, that I’ve lost my ability to think clearly, to write, to live my final act with grace. In the lawyer’s office, she asked me what I was going to do now and, from somewhere deep inside me, I said “I want to do something extraordinary”. I have no idea what that is.

Tragic Head

I have washed two jackets of Rob’s and the murdering shoes he wore when he fell. I’m putting them in the charity bin. (I am moving very slowly even though I feel the need to get everything in order.) I have also decided to do the last Paris market at the end of the month but with a much reduced load. I am taking along a younger friend. She will hopefully stop me from doing something stupid. I am doing stupid things all the time and, according to Didion,  that’s normal during this year of magical thinking. Still I don’t like it. 

Oh a happier note, for the past few weeks I’ve been doing Tai Chi on the Esplanade at 7:30 every morning. This is a discipline or rather martial art that I’ve always wanted to learn. Some kindly spirit must have decided that I've suffered enough and so sent an American artist teaching at a school in the village who is also an advanced student of Tai Chi. He kindly allowed me to join a number of his art students. The damn shingles refuse to vacate my head so I am struggling to keep up and balance on one leg but still I persevere. At the very least, it gets me up and dressed in the morning. (The art teacher is taking a week off between classes and so I am trying to memorize the moves with the help of a YouTube video.)

Everyone seems to be dying or complaining about the ailments of old age. How I hate it but am I any better? I went for a picnic and to an art gallery last Sunday with Susan (who just turned 95) and David (13 years younger) and the picnic in the rose garden was pleasant enough but after, wandering through the halls and rooms of the old abby (Beaulieu-en-Rouergue), the only painting I noticed was one nicknamed by the artist’s wife “Tragic Head”, a watercolour executed with long quick brushstrokes with, what appears to me, hollow eye sockets and a dissolving mouth. Death, fucking death, takes whoever it damn well pleases.

Literally Crazy

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death.... We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes.” ― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

I have had a couple of bad days. No, I have had a lot of bad days. I cannot write. I cannot sort myself out. Today, Fauci caught a little bird and put her under the dining room table. At first, I thought the bird was dead and then it flew to the window and Fauci flew after it. I screamed at the damn cat to leave the bird alone. I ran to the window and opened it and the little bird flew away. A sigh of relief. I usually yell for Rob to come to the rescue but he is not at home. If he were, he'd be proud of me. 

"Brief Glimpses of Beauty"

Brendan gave me the article below to read when we were in Casablanca. At first I found it annoying because of the constant repetition and then I fell into it and began to like it as it forced me to slow down and absorb the writer's "masterpiece of nothing". And yet this "nothing" essay allows me to catch "brief glimpses of beauty" in the horrible images that plaque me from the past few months. For instance, I untied Rob's left wrist, tied so tightly it left red welts, and he slowly raised his arm to his forehead, palm upward - a true Rob gesture - his release was a glimpse of beauty. And when I untied his other arm and he raised it and placed his hand over his heart  - another Rob gesture - especially when his fingers started moving to the beat of the music that Brendan or Michael or I played near his ear. - that was another brief but exquisite glimpse of beauty. 

I have been alone in our house for a week. I listen for Rob to awake in the morning. My head pounds. (The shingles are still playing havoc with the nerve endings in my head.) I know he is not coming back but I cannot touch his stuff. His shoes still sit by the door. His clothes sit on shelves and hang in his closet. All his electronic gear rests in his office. His ashes sit on my bookshelf in my office. 

As I was moving ahead... (magazine article by Jonas Mekas)

If this link doesn't work, please copy and paste: http://www.ocec.eu/cinemacomparativecinema/pdf/ccc03/ccc03_documentos_mekas_eng.pdf

Grief

 

I wake up every morning with a headache and I am incapable of doing anything until I take a pain killer. My brother-in-law Bill says that it's the shingles working their way out of my system and not to worry if my head feels as if it is exploding. 

Yesterday, Brendan, Jane and Seb flew home and left me all alone. I wrote the above thank-you and then ate cold sausage and cheese. Food does not inspire me. Nothing inspires me. I keep seeing images of Rob in a hospital bed and try to think what I could have done differently. If I'd known that he would die no matter what I/we did, could I have made his passage less painful? 

At the Love Fest or what I call his wake, I spoke of our meeting and early days and there was much laughter. This surprised me. I didn't think I was funny.

Toronto with Rob

Rob and I met, in 1968, at Ryerson in the Radio and Television Arts program. There were 27 guys in our class. 2 girls.  It was not love at first sight.

Between classes, six or seven of us would hang out in the cafeteria, often joined by Scott MacDonald a journalism student who must have found us RTA students more fun than his fellow journalists.

Rob was just one of the guys - fun to banter with, good for a laugh, and always easy to be around. But I did not recognize him as the one with whom I would share my life.

And then one day, I spied him on the subway. He was half way down the car, standing, shirt sleeves rolled up and one hand gripping an upper bar to steady himself. I found myself staring at his naked forearm, softly furred, and a shiver ran through my body. I was too naive to recognize that shiver for what it was.

Rob, a number of years later, wrote a story about our first days. At first, he called me "a pretty girl without attitude".  When he asked if I wanted to hang out at the cafeteria, I often responded,:"sorry I have to go home and wash my hair" or "I have a dance class to teach". He thought that I was way too speedy for him; and yet, he wrote: "Think I'm falling for her."

When I told him one day that I had to go and practice my typing. He said he would come with me as he had to practice his. I didn't know that he took typing in high school and technical school and worked for six months as a typist.

When finally I agreed to go on a date with him, he wrote:

Honest Ed's. I need a shirt. This is a decent one and it's only 99 cents. Getting ready for the play. Christ, it has no buttons on the cuffs. It's a fucking cuff link shirt. Almost time to leave, I'll just roll up the sleeves. A play and then a meal. More money that I've spent in six weeks! But it's worth it. Can't believe she is going out with me!!!

At the end of the evening, he kissed me and I was hooked. A few months later, Rob wrote: She has sort of moved in with me on Sudan St. A commune that doesn't really work. Do any of them? 

Finally our own place on Earle St. We are reading Leonard Cohen and one thing led to another. Sue has come to pick her up but we're making love. We can't stop. Sue keeps knocking but we don't care.

Maitland Street is more like a home. When I ask her to marry me, she breaks out laughing. But she does say yes. Yeah!!!!!

Rob didn't know that for three days after his proposal, I agonized. Having read Simone de Beauvoirs "Memoire of a Dutiful Daughter, I had sworn that I would never marry. And then something curious happened - something that has only happened a few times in my life - on the third day, I was overcome with such calm, such peace that I knew marrying this man was good. 

We married in my parents' back garden. My mother planned the wedding as neither Rob nor I cared about the ceremony itself. He was still a struggling student at Ryerson so he borrowed a suit and bought an orange shirt. By that time, I had switched to York University into their new theatre and dance program, and my mother insisted on making me a dress - she was afraid that I'd go to the church in my usual attire - leotards and jeans. At my mother's insistence, we had three bridesmaids -  my sister in law, my third sister and a university friend.  Bev, at six years old, was our flower girl. In the evening, Rob and I caught an overnight train to Montreal, a gift from Rob's boss.

Rob was working part-time at Spence Thomas Productions. Patrick, not only gifted him with a solid knowledge of sound, he taught Rob how to handle the most difficult situations with grace. He was a gentleman. Every night when Rob left work, Patick would thank him. Later Rob credited him with his success although he noted that the Welshman was not a good business man: he often forgot to bill his poorer clients. 

When Rob began working as a  location sound mixer for W5, we moved to Garnock Street. Rob was worried that he travelled too much and so we got a dog called Manny to keep me company.

A year or so later we moved to Bonfield Street in the Beaches - our last home in Toronto. The day after our move, Rob took off to Chile for three weeks. We were both lonely.

Financially we were doing well. We bought a new Toyota Corolla but when, we asked a salesman to come to the house to demonstrate a [countertop] dishwasher, we looked at each other appalled. Even though we both hated doing dishes - we had sworn that we would not tie ourselves down with stuff, not become too materialistic.   

The lease was up on our apartment and we were planning to drive across Canada and visit Rob's sister. Three weeks before our holiday to Vancouver, I said "Let's just quit our jobs and move there?" Rob agreed. So we left our well-paid jobs, crammed our Toyota with our personal stuff, a tent and camping gear, and drove across the country. 

… like a bird on the wire

Like a drunk in a midnight choir

[We] have tried in [our] way to be free

Today, my sister Maggie arrives and we will hopefully be able to reach the right person and unravel more of our financial affairs. 

How am I?

 I still feel unreal as if this is a bad dream, a preparation for the future but not now. Thoughts of Rob keep invading my head. Good ones and not so good ones… and I will not deify him. Most of the time but not all the time, he was easy to live with. I’m sure he’d say the same of me. Once upon a time, I asked him why he loved me and he said because you are never boring. I took that as a great compliment. 

Recently, we were on a plane together and we both liked aisle seats so we sat across from each other. I was watching some stupid comedy and laughed outloud and then realized where I was and covered my mouth. Rob looked over at me. Later, he told me that, when I laughed, he was overcome with love for me. He thought that’s my wife. I loved him for telling me. So many memories. We had a good life together on the whole. And now his ashes are in a cylinder and I hate it… fuck, fuck, fuck… There is a line in a poem by Irish writer, Paula Meehan - “I’d like to leave you in love’s blindness… never mentions how I stumble into the day,/ fucked up, penniless, on the verge of whining/ at my lot.” 

I feel fragile. Of course, I do. I am managing to clean up papers, sort through his pills and ointments - he had a remedy for every small and large ailment - and take care of legalities. The car is now just my car. I hate that I am erasing him, tidying up his space… 

I cannot bear the pain...

 

As Rob lay in his hospital bed, he gave many signs that he knew his family were standing guard. He squeezed his sons' hands, he pulled at his daughter's hair, and one morning when he arrived in Albi, free of needles and tubes, he reached his arm up, drew Yvonne's face to his and kissed her on the lips. 

This poem is by the Canadian poet, Alden Nolan, from a small town in New Brunswick, like Rob:

This is What I Wanted to Sign Off With

You know what I’m
like when I`m sick: I’d sooner
curse than cry. And people don’t often
know what they’re saying in the end.
Or I could die in my sleep.

So I’ll say it now. Here it is.
Don’t pay any attention
if I don’t get it right
when it is for real. Blame that
on terror and pain
or the stuff they’re shooting
into my veins. This is what I wanted to
sign off with. Bend
closer, listen, I love you.

Au revoir, my love

Brendan will read this for me at the Crematorium. I want to go but I cannot. The last month and a half have worn me down. I would dissolve and I selfishly do not want to share my grief for this man with whom I've shared around 55 years, a man who drove me round the bend and yet is the love of my life, a sound man. 

https://vimeo.com/836608420/69bdf09120