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.