It has been a lovely Christmas here in many ways, filled with good memories. For me, at least, continuing our Christmas traditions has been mainly comforting. A few moments stand out
-- going caroling in the neighborhood during our party, with perfect weather -- just below freezing, with snow on the ground, but no precipitation, neither too cold nor too warm -- and many appreciative and receptive folks to carol too -- finishing up with the local grocery store, where shoppers got out their i-phones and filmed us, and asked what organization we were from... I told them we were just a group of friends.
-- wrapping presents using the cloth bags Angela made for present-wrapping many years ago, which we have used ever since -- in all kinds of Christmassy fabrics -- a way to avoid throwing out all that wrapping paper -- and finding a label from last year on one of the bags -- "to my Michael, love, Angela" -- this was both a kind of gift and a painful moment of realization that she wasn't there -- and of realization that although last Christmas was truly beautiful I can't for the life of me remember what my gifts from her were -- I suppose the greatest gift was just that she was with me. This has stuck with me for the last several days.
-- having the girls make me a truly elegant birthday brunch for Christmas Eve morning.
-- almost all the presents arriving on time in spite of a lot of last minute gift-ordering
-- visiting Angela's grave on Christmas afternoon and seeing her freshly-laid tombstone for the first time.
-- many dreams about Angela during the last month or so, which have been a great comfort to me, and thinking over and over again how present she is in everything we are doing as a family during this season.
And, of course, a lot of good food, without too much terribly demanding cooking. So, here are our menus from the last three days...
Our Christmas menus
Dec. 23rd: Caroling party at our apartment.
Salsa
Guacamole
Tortilla chips
Chili
Mulled apple cider
Beer
Hard Cider
Assorted Christmas cookies
Dec 24th: Birthday Brunch for me, prepared by the girls
Omelettes
Home-made muesli with macerated berries (blueberries, strawberries and raspberries) and Greek yogurt
Blueberry scones
Mimosas
Coffee
Christmas eve dinner at Gloria’s apartment
Squid-ink pasta with squid sauce
Fried shrimp
Salad
Water
Pears cooked in wine
Dec 25th: Brunch before gift-opening
Tourtiere
Pomegranate seeds
Fruit from “edible arrangements”
Spiced coffee
Christmas dinner
Raclette
(with Raclette cheese, ham, prosciutto, French bread, baby potatoes, pickled onions, gherkins, pickled asparagus, and blue-cheese stuffed olives)
Riesling
Lemon tart with freshly whipped cream
This morning I think I am going to have oatmeal and fruit.
(cross-posted from Facebook notes)
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Long silence
I realize I have not posted anything here in a long time. I have been very busy, with holiday preparations and with work -- too busy, without enough time for contemplation and meditation on my life.
Some time ago I wrote up something I meant to post here which came out in the form of (very poor) verse:
Do not think I am not missing her now
Because I have been silent.
The longing is greater now than it has been
Though the tears are less frequent.
But I was not pleased with these lines and so did not post them -- I am certainly no poet. Still, they are true, and so I post them here.
I will put up a separate post about Christmas so far... The holidays over all, from Thanksgiving on, have been pretty good, in spite of warnings about how difficult they should be. I found a book on our shelves that Angela had read a few years ago and which I am working through during Advent and Christmas, Living with Hope: A Scientist Looks at Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. This contains daily reflections, and during Advent his focus was on the four last things, death, judgment, heaven and hell. His reflections have been very helpful to me in thinking about death and what the Christian hope in the resurrection means. Reading this book knowing that a few years ago Angela had read it both connects me to her and helps me to remember how she lived with hope, and faith, and love.
But I have been too busy, as I have said, and I hope to find some quieter time during the rest of this holiday, amidst all the visiting and family and friends.
Some time ago I wrote up something I meant to post here which came out in the form of (very poor) verse:
Do not think I am not missing her now
Because I have been silent.
The longing is greater now than it has been
Though the tears are less frequent.
But I was not pleased with these lines and so did not post them -- I am certainly no poet. Still, they are true, and so I post them here.
I will put up a separate post about Christmas so far... The holidays over all, from Thanksgiving on, have been pretty good, in spite of warnings about how difficult they should be. I found a book on our shelves that Angela had read a few years ago and which I am working through during Advent and Christmas, Living with Hope: A Scientist Looks at Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. This contains daily reflections, and during Advent his focus was on the four last things, death, judgment, heaven and hell. His reflections have been very helpful to me in thinking about death and what the Christian hope in the resurrection means. Reading this book knowing that a few years ago Angela had read it both connects me to her and helps me to remember how she lived with hope, and faith, and love.
But I have been too busy, as I have said, and I hope to find some quieter time during the rest of this holiday, amidst all the visiting and family and friends.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
a poem for All Souls and a reflection by Madeleine L'Engle
I was led to this bittersweet poem by Madeleine L'Engle, writing about the death of her husband Hugh.
1. Music I Heard
By Conrad Aiken
MUSIC I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
Now that I am without you, all is desolate,
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved:
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes.
And in my heart they will remember always:
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise!
L'Engle just quotes the first two lines, and then writes "Yes. And always will be." This is at the very end of her book Two-Part Invention about her life with her husband Hugh, his illness, and his death. A little before this she writes;
"One evening I sit in my quiet place in my room, to read the evening prayer, write in my journal, have some quiet being time. The sky over the Hudson is heavy with snow. I write in my journal that the more people I love, the more vulnerable I am.
Vulnerable -- the moment we are born we are vulnerable, and a human infant is the most vulnerable of all creatures. The very nature of our being leads us to risk. When I married, I opened myself to the possibility of great joy and great pain, and I have known both. Hugh's death is like an amputation. But would I be willing to protect myself by having rejected marriage? By having rejected love? No. I wouldn't have missed a minute of it, not any of it.
The girls and I have acquired two kittens. They are vying for my attention. One of them starts diligently grooming me. The other bats at my pen. This is less an invitation to play than an announcement that it is time for bed. Even with the kittens I am vulnerable as they curl up trustingly beside me and hum their contented purrs."
There is a lot of wisdom in these few lines.
1. Music I Heard
By Conrad Aiken
MUSIC I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
Now that I am without you, all is desolate,
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved:
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes.
And in my heart they will remember always:
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise!
L'Engle just quotes the first two lines, and then writes "Yes. And always will be." This is at the very end of her book Two-Part Invention about her life with her husband Hugh, his illness, and his death. A little before this she writes;
"One evening I sit in my quiet place in my room, to read the evening prayer, write in my journal, have some quiet being time. The sky over the Hudson is heavy with snow. I write in my journal that the more people I love, the more vulnerable I am.
Vulnerable -- the moment we are born we are vulnerable, and a human infant is the most vulnerable of all creatures. The very nature of our being leads us to risk. When I married, I opened myself to the possibility of great joy and great pain, and I have known both. Hugh's death is like an amputation. But would I be willing to protect myself by having rejected marriage? By having rejected love? No. I wouldn't have missed a minute of it, not any of it.
The girls and I have acquired two kittens. They are vying for my attention. One of them starts diligently grooming me. The other bats at my pen. This is less an invitation to play than an announcement that it is time for bed. Even with the kittens I am vulnerable as they curl up trustingly beside me and hum their contented purrs."
There is a lot of wisdom in these few lines.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Jesus Lives
I learned this at the Notre Dame Folk Choir reunion last weekend. The composer was the director of music for Gethsemani Abbey (Merton's monastery) and wrote this just before he died in Nov. 2008.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA2HqlMHmvU
Text:
Jesus Lives
Jesus lives; thy terrors now
Can, O death, no more appall us;
Jesus lives: by this we know
Thou, O grave, cannot enthrall us.
Alleluia!
Jesus lives: henceforth is death
But the gate to life immortal;
This shall calm our trembling breath
When we pass its gloomy portal.
Alleluia!
Jesus lives: our hearts know well
Nought from us his life shall sever
Life nor death nor powers of hell
Tear us from his keeping ever.
Alleluia!
Jesus lives: to him the throne
Over all the world is given:
May we go where he is gone,
Rest and reign with him in heaven.
Alleluia!
It gives me a chill and brings a lump to my throat every time I hear it or read these words.
I post it now for Angela, and for Judith Ann Holm, mother of my friend Suzanne, and for all the others I know who have died recently or have lost a loved one, especially in these days of remembrance, All Saints Day and All Souls Day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA2HqlMHmvU
Text:
Jesus Lives
Jesus lives; thy terrors now
Can, O death, no more appall us;
Jesus lives: by this we know
Thou, O grave, cannot enthrall us.
Alleluia!
Jesus lives: henceforth is death
But the gate to life immortal;
This shall calm our trembling breath
When we pass its gloomy portal.
Alleluia!
Jesus lives: our hearts know well
Nought from us his life shall sever
Life nor death nor powers of hell
Tear us from his keeping ever.
Alleluia!
Jesus lives: to him the throne
Over all the world is given:
May we go where he is gone,
Rest and reign with him in heaven.
Alleluia!
It gives me a chill and brings a lump to my throat every time I hear it or read these words.
I post it now for Angela, and for Judith Ann Holm, mother of my friend Suzanne, and for all the others I know who have died recently or have lost a loved one, especially in these days of remembrance, All Saints Day and All Souls Day.
many emotions
This weekend I returned to Notre Dame for the 30th anniversary reunion of the Notre Dame Folk Choir, of which I was a member from 1986 to 1992. (I initially thought I had left the choir in 1991, but my memory is that I stopped singing in the choir when Angela was trying to take care of two children in the pews, and that would make it 1992; also the choir’s history indicates that the choir moved into the choir loft at the church in 1991 and I distinctly remember singing in the choir loft in my last year.)
The trip was very mixed emotionally. The music was beautiful and often comforting -- much of it written after I left the choir and so new to me. But at the same time I saw many people I hadn't seen in 15 years or more, and had to tell them about Angela. These were people who sang at our wedding, and at Lucia’s baptism. Angela went into labor with Lucia at a St. Patrick’s Day party at the home of the director of the choir, Steve Warner. We went with the choir to Gethsemani Abbey (Thomas Merton’s monastery), and on a tour to Detroit, Toronto and Pittsburgh, both with baby Lucia. Even after I left the choir we returned to special Masses and events where the choir sang, such as Advent Lessons and Carols services, and Masses for the feasts of St. Patrick and Our Lady of Guadalupe. It was strange singing with them in a concert on Saturday night and at Mass on Sunday morning, and not having Angela and the girls there to meet me at the end, or to go home with, strange parking in the same lot behind the Basilica we would park in for special events, walking up to the church without any family to accompany me. I kept wanting to tell Angela about the music I was learning. After the concert, I noticed all the young families from later generations of the choir -- and some very pregnant women -- and thought of my own young family. Seeing two little girls in matching outfits after the concert, I thought about how we would dress our girls up in "flamenco dresses" that Gloria had brought back from Spain, and bring them to the Guadalupe mass (which we had adopted as Rosie's feast day since Roswitha is not a saint) and then to the following festivities. My friend Libby Gray mentioned Angela’s death at the banquet on Friday night, when she reminisced (as a presenter) about her years in the choir, which was nice. After the banquet there was an "open mic" and I sang a song about loss ("Tomorrow is a Long Time" by Bob Dylan) -- I was trembling and my voice shook and I mixed up a few of the words but it felt good to sing it. I was staying with my friends Gretchen and Luc and I sang that song for them too, and when I finished I saw that Gretchen had her face in her hands – I know she misses Angela almost as much as I do. I sang more songs for them and maybe some of them were happier songs. At the open mic a young engaged couple in the choir sang a song that he had written for her based on the Song of Songs, and I remembered how Angela and I read the Song of Songs together at a crucial point in our marriage -- we were so close then, the song brought me to tears. Yet at the open mic I was also able to laugh at some silly skits and appreciate some beautiful singing. It was good to meet some new people as well, such as a man who knows my Aunt Michi (the organist at Angela's funeral), and sang in the choir when he was in a summer MA program here and now has a child in the choir. The whole weekend was full of memories and a lot of new things too. There was an admixture of a strong sense of loss with beauty.
After the weekend, it was also difficult to drive home to Chicago, knowing that Angela was not there to meet me and hear the stories of my experience. (She would have been amused by this: when I arrived I found an e-mail instructing me to wear jacket and tie to the banquet and the concert -- I didn’t have those with me, and ended up buying a suit at the local mall.) I came home on Hallowe’en, and for the first time in at least 15 years, no one was in costume – Rosie had dressed up with some friends as the Spice Girls on Friday, but they all had too much homework to repeat this performance on Sunday. Rosie’s friend Elise came over and we had pizza and ice cream, and I did carve a pumpkin and toast the seeds, and put out the decorations Angela had collected over the years for this time of the year – some sugar skulls from Pilsen and a children’s book, Maria Molina and the Days of the Dead, about Mexican traditions surrounding Hallowe’en, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day, which I think she must have bought in about 1995 (it came out in 1994).
Today, I decided with Rosie to read that book, and when I opened it I discovered to my surprise that Angela had collected inside the front cover prayer and remembrance cards for various people who have died over the years – her babysitter Rita, Rita’s husband William (“Honey” to me), her cousin Carolyn’s husband Gino, our house-cleaner’s sister-in-law, my great-uncle Fr. Alcuin Deck, the still-born baby of some friends in South Bend, the wife of a colleague in South Bend who died of an aneurysm at 44, and Fr. Giussani, the founder of Communion and Liberation. After we read the book, I added a copy of the card from Angela’s funeral to this collection. At the back of the book was a recipe for “Pan de los Muertos” – bread of the dead – I have no idea how authentic this is (note to my Mexican friends) but I decided to make it in honor of and remembrance of Angela. The book itself, and making this bread, were so typical of her.
Earlier today I went to Mass for All Saints Day at the University Catholic Center, Calvert House. The priest, a younger Italian-American from New Jersey whose name I can’t remember right now, preached about his grandfather, an illegal immigrant who came to this county and made good, and then helped others in his neighborhood during the Depression by giving out “loans” that he never expected to be paid back. The priest used his grandfather as an example of the saintliness of those all around us, which is often not recognized until later, as his grandfather’s acts of benevolence were not known to his grandchildren until after his death. He preached on the Gospel reading of the day, the Beatitudes, and honored his grandfather as one who was truly blessed for the life he had lived. And I thought of Angela, and all the love her students manifested for her after she died, and how much she had helped so many of them, and I wanted to honor her on All Saints Day as well, as a saint in her own right – not a perfect human being, a sinner like all of us, but also like all the saints – but a wonderful example in many ways of a human life lived for others and meriting the blessing of God. Then this afternoon I learned of the death of the mother of one of Angela’s dear friends, and learned too of the wonderful life she had led through her daughter’s tribute to her, and saw how much Angela had in common with this other woman, another victim of cancer, whom I don’t think I have ever met. And I hoped that she and Angela were now together in the loving arms of the Father who welcomes into his house all those who put their trust in him.
So the last days have been full of a lot of emotions for me, some pulling me down and others lifting me up. Tomorrow, All Souls Day, is also election day – I will honor Angela’s memory at a service at our church in the evening, but I will also honor her memory by voting in the morning, as she would always make sure that we both did, ever since I knew her.
The trip was very mixed emotionally. The music was beautiful and often comforting -- much of it written after I left the choir and so new to me. But at the same time I saw many people I hadn't seen in 15 years or more, and had to tell them about Angela. These were people who sang at our wedding, and at Lucia’s baptism. Angela went into labor with Lucia at a St. Patrick’s Day party at the home of the director of the choir, Steve Warner. We went with the choir to Gethsemani Abbey (Thomas Merton’s monastery), and on a tour to Detroit, Toronto and Pittsburgh, both with baby Lucia. Even after I left the choir we returned to special Masses and events where the choir sang, such as Advent Lessons and Carols services, and Masses for the feasts of St. Patrick and Our Lady of Guadalupe. It was strange singing with them in a concert on Saturday night and at Mass on Sunday morning, and not having Angela and the girls there to meet me at the end, or to go home with, strange parking in the same lot behind the Basilica we would park in for special events, walking up to the church without any family to accompany me. I kept wanting to tell Angela about the music I was learning. After the concert, I noticed all the young families from later generations of the choir -- and some very pregnant women -- and thought of my own young family. Seeing two little girls in matching outfits after the concert, I thought about how we would dress our girls up in "flamenco dresses" that Gloria had brought back from Spain, and bring them to the Guadalupe mass (which we had adopted as Rosie's feast day since Roswitha is not a saint) and then to the following festivities. My friend Libby Gray mentioned Angela’s death at the banquet on Friday night, when she reminisced (as a presenter) about her years in the choir, which was nice. After the banquet there was an "open mic" and I sang a song about loss ("Tomorrow is a Long Time" by Bob Dylan) -- I was trembling and my voice shook and I mixed up a few of the words but it felt good to sing it. I was staying with my friends Gretchen and Luc and I sang that song for them too, and when I finished I saw that Gretchen had her face in her hands – I know she misses Angela almost as much as I do. I sang more songs for them and maybe some of them were happier songs. At the open mic a young engaged couple in the choir sang a song that he had written for her based on the Song of Songs, and I remembered how Angela and I read the Song of Songs together at a crucial point in our marriage -- we were so close then, the song brought me to tears. Yet at the open mic I was also able to laugh at some silly skits and appreciate some beautiful singing. It was good to meet some new people as well, such as a man who knows my Aunt Michi (the organist at Angela's funeral), and sang in the choir when he was in a summer MA program here and now has a child in the choir. The whole weekend was full of memories and a lot of new things too. There was an admixture of a strong sense of loss with beauty.
After the weekend, it was also difficult to drive home to Chicago, knowing that Angela was not there to meet me and hear the stories of my experience. (She would have been amused by this: when I arrived I found an e-mail instructing me to wear jacket and tie to the banquet and the concert -- I didn’t have those with me, and ended up buying a suit at the local mall.) I came home on Hallowe’en, and for the first time in at least 15 years, no one was in costume – Rosie had dressed up with some friends as the Spice Girls on Friday, but they all had too much homework to repeat this performance on Sunday. Rosie’s friend Elise came over and we had pizza and ice cream, and I did carve a pumpkin and toast the seeds, and put out the decorations Angela had collected over the years for this time of the year – some sugar skulls from Pilsen and a children’s book, Maria Molina and the Days of the Dead, about Mexican traditions surrounding Hallowe’en, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day, which I think she must have bought in about 1995 (it came out in 1994).
Today, I decided with Rosie to read that book, and when I opened it I discovered to my surprise that Angela had collected inside the front cover prayer and remembrance cards for various people who have died over the years – her babysitter Rita, Rita’s husband William (“Honey” to me), her cousin Carolyn’s husband Gino, our house-cleaner’s sister-in-law, my great-uncle Fr. Alcuin Deck, the still-born baby of some friends in South Bend, the wife of a colleague in South Bend who died of an aneurysm at 44, and Fr. Giussani, the founder of Communion and Liberation. After we read the book, I added a copy of the card from Angela’s funeral to this collection. At the back of the book was a recipe for “Pan de los Muertos” – bread of the dead – I have no idea how authentic this is (note to my Mexican friends) but I decided to make it in honor of and remembrance of Angela. The book itself, and making this bread, were so typical of her.
Earlier today I went to Mass for All Saints Day at the University Catholic Center, Calvert House. The priest, a younger Italian-American from New Jersey whose name I can’t remember right now, preached about his grandfather, an illegal immigrant who came to this county and made good, and then helped others in his neighborhood during the Depression by giving out “loans” that he never expected to be paid back. The priest used his grandfather as an example of the saintliness of those all around us, which is often not recognized until later, as his grandfather’s acts of benevolence were not known to his grandchildren until after his death. He preached on the Gospel reading of the day, the Beatitudes, and honored his grandfather as one who was truly blessed for the life he had lived. And I thought of Angela, and all the love her students manifested for her after she died, and how much she had helped so many of them, and I wanted to honor her on All Saints Day as well, as a saint in her own right – not a perfect human being, a sinner like all of us, but also like all the saints – but a wonderful example in many ways of a human life lived for others and meriting the blessing of God. Then this afternoon I learned of the death of the mother of one of Angela’s dear friends, and learned too of the wonderful life she had led through her daughter’s tribute to her, and saw how much Angela had in common with this other woman, another victim of cancer, whom I don’t think I have ever met. And I hoped that she and Angela were now together in the loving arms of the Father who welcomes into his house all those who put their trust in him.
So the last days have been full of a lot of emotions for me, some pulling me down and others lifting me up. Tomorrow, All Souls Day, is also election day – I will honor Angela’s memory at a service at our church in the evening, but I will also honor her memory by voting in the morning, as she would always make sure that we both did, ever since I knew her.
Monday, October 25, 2010
a rambling collection of snippets
It's been a while since I posted anything, and lots has happened... But I don't feel like recounting it all. I seem to be doing about as well as I can hope to. I am very busy at work with letters of recommendation and a dozen or so graduate students with each of whom I have about a year's worth of work to catch up on. This can keep me distracted at times but my thoughts inevitably come back to Angela. I have been attending a bereavement group and one thing that is clear is that the process of grieving has its own schedule that is not up to me.
This will just be a ramble -- there is too much running through my head.
First off, here are just a couple of snippets from today. This afternoon, I was walking home from the University when I heard a voice behind me: "Hey, I know you!" I turned around to see a woman who was vaguely familiar, and the first thing she asked me was "How's your wife?" I couldn't figure out exactly who she was and I couldn't think of anything else to say but "My wife is dead." She was, of course, very apologetic, and then she explained to me that she was one of the nurses who had taken care of Angela in the ICU -- she had seen us in the Au Bon Pain in the hospital the Friday after Angela had been released from the hospital -- we were back for her regular blood tests and transfusion -- and she had no idea that Angela had died just four days later. She was a wonderful nurse, actually, and she clearly had the greatest affection for Angela, and was really sorry to hear about her death. I gave her one of the cards from Angela's funeral (I seem to carry a few of these around with me at all times for occasions such as this). But it was eerie explaining Angela's death to her.
Then, this evening, I moderated a debate put on by the undergraduate philosophy club on the topic "Can there be a reason to be moral without God?" (or something like that). I moderated the question-and-answer period after the formal debate. I was pretty interested in the debate as it took place, even though I found the topic somewhat irritating -- and I thought I did a good balanced job as moderator -- though I did make the mistake of calling on one audience member whom I should of guessed was off his rocker (he began his discourse by announcing "maybe I should have the last word" and then explaining that he had arrived at insights no one in the room could match -- I asked him to put a question to the panel and he eventually asked them what they thought of just adopting the morality of Mr. Spock, that everyone should live long and prosper...). But as the debate ended and we left the room, I immediately began to think about how I would tell Angela about how it went (she would definitely have wanted to know). Of course, I quickly realized I would not be telling Angela about the debate. So, I'm writing this blog post instead.
I have managed to do some good things -- I have started to go to the gym semi-regularly and I am getting a bit more efficient at work. But I need to make sure I leave time in my days for grieving and contemplation. I am struggling with the question of how I want to store all the cards and other gifts and mementos I accumulated after Angela's death -- these have all been displayed along with some pictures of her, my memory book about her, etc, on the dining room buffet, and I want to clear that off over the next month so we can put up the creche there at Advent -- but I don't just want to put all that away in a box. This may be something to work on over the next weeks.
This weekend I am going to South Bend for the 30th anniversary reunion of the Notre Dame Folk Choir, which I sang in from 1986-1991. There are a lot of good memories of Angela tied up with that choir -- members sang at our wedding, and she and Lucia went along for a choir tour (Detroit, Toronto, Pittsburgh) in my last year. Angela actually went into labor with Lucia at a St. Patrick's Day party at the choir director's house. I hope the reunion is fun and musically rewarding and not too difficult emotionally, and provides me with a good break from my routine here.
So, life goes on. That is how it is, for better or worse. There are many more things I could recount. This is one of Angela's favorite times of year -- the weather has been beautiful. Angela would always listen to the Bach Cello Suites in the fall, they seemed to her to suit the season -- and as I think her intuition was spectacularly right there, I have been doing the same. It is still astounding to me to think that this time last year she was so very much alive -- filming the kids and friends dressed up as characters from the Matrix for Hallowe'en and posting that to her facebook account for example... this year Rosie and her friends are dressing up as the Spice Girls (a bit of nostalgia for them -- Rosie's dyed her hair red and ordered a Union Jack mini-dress) -- but Angela won't be here to take pictures, so I'll do it for her. Every day I pray for her, and dedicate my day to her memory, and ask her help. And I believe that I am getting it.
This will just be a ramble -- there is too much running through my head.
First off, here are just a couple of snippets from today. This afternoon, I was walking home from the University when I heard a voice behind me: "Hey, I know you!" I turned around to see a woman who was vaguely familiar, and the first thing she asked me was "How's your wife?" I couldn't figure out exactly who she was and I couldn't think of anything else to say but "My wife is dead." She was, of course, very apologetic, and then she explained to me that she was one of the nurses who had taken care of Angela in the ICU -- she had seen us in the Au Bon Pain in the hospital the Friday after Angela had been released from the hospital -- we were back for her regular blood tests and transfusion -- and she had no idea that Angela had died just four days later. She was a wonderful nurse, actually, and she clearly had the greatest affection for Angela, and was really sorry to hear about her death. I gave her one of the cards from Angela's funeral (I seem to carry a few of these around with me at all times for occasions such as this). But it was eerie explaining Angela's death to her.
Then, this evening, I moderated a debate put on by the undergraduate philosophy club on the topic "Can there be a reason to be moral without God?" (or something like that). I moderated the question-and-answer period after the formal debate. I was pretty interested in the debate as it took place, even though I found the topic somewhat irritating -- and I thought I did a good balanced job as moderator -- though I did make the mistake of calling on one audience member whom I should of guessed was off his rocker (he began his discourse by announcing "maybe I should have the last word" and then explaining that he had arrived at insights no one in the room could match -- I asked him to put a question to the panel and he eventually asked them what they thought of just adopting the morality of Mr. Spock, that everyone should live long and prosper...). But as the debate ended and we left the room, I immediately began to think about how I would tell Angela about how it went (she would definitely have wanted to know). Of course, I quickly realized I would not be telling Angela about the debate. So, I'm writing this blog post instead.
I have managed to do some good things -- I have started to go to the gym semi-regularly and I am getting a bit more efficient at work. But I need to make sure I leave time in my days for grieving and contemplation. I am struggling with the question of how I want to store all the cards and other gifts and mementos I accumulated after Angela's death -- these have all been displayed along with some pictures of her, my memory book about her, etc, on the dining room buffet, and I want to clear that off over the next month so we can put up the creche there at Advent -- but I don't just want to put all that away in a box. This may be something to work on over the next weeks.
This weekend I am going to South Bend for the 30th anniversary reunion of the Notre Dame Folk Choir, which I sang in from 1986-1991. There are a lot of good memories of Angela tied up with that choir -- members sang at our wedding, and she and Lucia went along for a choir tour (Detroit, Toronto, Pittsburgh) in my last year. Angela actually went into labor with Lucia at a St. Patrick's Day party at the choir director's house. I hope the reunion is fun and musically rewarding and not too difficult emotionally, and provides me with a good break from my routine here.
So, life goes on. That is how it is, for better or worse. There are many more things I could recount. This is one of Angela's favorite times of year -- the weather has been beautiful. Angela would always listen to the Bach Cello Suites in the fall, they seemed to her to suit the season -- and as I think her intuition was spectacularly right there, I have been doing the same. It is still astounding to me to think that this time last year she was so very much alive -- filming the kids and friends dressed up as characters from the Matrix for Hallowe'en and posting that to her facebook account for example... this year Rosie and her friends are dressing up as the Spice Girls (a bit of nostalgia for them -- Rosie's dyed her hair red and ordered a Union Jack mini-dress) -- but Angela won't be here to take pictures, so I'll do it for her. Every day I pray for her, and dedicate my day to her memory, and ask her help. And I believe that I am getting it.
Friday, October 15, 2010
A Scattering
I have been reading a book of poems by the British poet, Christopher Reid, written after the death of his wife Lucinda from brain cancer, A Scattering. There is much that speaks to me in these poems. If you would like to understand me as I now am, read this, I would like to say. (Unfortunately it is not easy to buy in the US.)
Here are a couple from his "Widower's Dozen":
Conundrum
I’m the riddle to an answer:
I’m an unmarried spouse,
a flesh-and-blood revenant,
my own ghost, inhabitant
of an empty house.
A Reasonable Thing to Ask
Please explain tears.
They must have some purpose
that a Darwin or a Freud
would have understood.
Widowed, a man hears
music off the radio –
Handel – Cole Porter –
that sharply recalls her,
and they swamp up again.
A faculty that interferes
with seeing and speaking
and leaves him feeling weaker:
what does he gain by it?
What do we gain by it –
blind to the tiger’s leap,
voiceless under the avalanche?
Somebody must know.
Actually, I think we gain a great deal by tears. They are a great source of consolation. They are necessary. Augustine has a beautiful image for this when he writes that in setting free his tears for his mother's death, which he had repressed, he was he was "spreading them out as a pillow beneath my heart."
Here are a couple from his "Widower's Dozen":
Conundrum
I’m the riddle to an answer:
I’m an unmarried spouse,
a flesh-and-blood revenant,
my own ghost, inhabitant
of an empty house.
A Reasonable Thing to Ask
Please explain tears.
They must have some purpose
that a Darwin or a Freud
would have understood.
Widowed, a man hears
music off the radio –
Handel – Cole Porter –
that sharply recalls her,
and they swamp up again.
A faculty that interferes
with seeing and speaking
and leaves him feeling weaker:
what does he gain by it?
What do we gain by it –
blind to the tiger’s leap,
voiceless under the avalanche?
Somebody must know.
Actually, I think we gain a great deal by tears. They are a great source of consolation. They are necessary. Augustine has a beautiful image for this when he writes that in setting free his tears for his mother's death, which he had repressed, he was he was "spreading them out as a pillow beneath my heart."
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
When I need her help
This past weekend, Angela's mom and I visited Benedictine College, where my oldest daughter Lucia is now studying. Of course, I wished Angela were there with me.
But then things took a turn -- on Saturday night, Lucia's boyfriend of four years, who is also a student there, and is a major part of the reason she transferred there, told her he thought their relationship wasn't going to work out. On top of Angela's death, this was a hard blow for Lucia. And I wished so much that Angela were there with us at that time. I felt Lucia really needed her mom more than anyone else then. Gloria and I offered her the comfort and advice we could. But Angela could have spoken to her from experience of a breakup with a college boyfriend, of the pain that caused, but that it was possible after that to establish a new and permanent union with someone else -- a union that produced the most wonderful gifts life can bring in Lucia and her sisters.
I find this role of being both mother and father to my daughters very hard to work out. I can't replace Angela in their lives, and there are times, like this weekend, when her absence is very painfully felt. Yet I feel that even in her physical absence she is present. I pray that she will be able to offer Lucia some guidance and comfort and help in this time.
I can't say this too many times: I miss you Angela, and I love you still. I so need your help and support and I believe that you can still give that to me, in some way.
But then things took a turn -- on Saturday night, Lucia's boyfriend of four years, who is also a student there, and is a major part of the reason she transferred there, told her he thought their relationship wasn't going to work out. On top of Angela's death, this was a hard blow for Lucia. And I wished so much that Angela were there with us at that time. I felt Lucia really needed her mom more than anyone else then. Gloria and I offered her the comfort and advice we could. But Angela could have spoken to her from experience of a breakup with a college boyfriend, of the pain that caused, but that it was possible after that to establish a new and permanent union with someone else -- a union that produced the most wonderful gifts life can bring in Lucia and her sisters.
I find this role of being both mother and father to my daughters very hard to work out. I can't replace Angela in their lives, and there are times, like this weekend, when her absence is very painfully felt. Yet I feel that even in her physical absence she is present. I pray that she will be able to offer Lucia some guidance and comfort and help in this time.
I can't say this too many times: I miss you Angela, and I love you still. I so need your help and support and I believe that you can still give that to me, in some way.
Friday, October 1, 2010
waking up
I keep finding things in Angela's papers and other places that I didn't know about. Recently I came across a small piece of paper I think she must have picked up in the last year, used as a bookmark in one of her books. It was titled "Gratitude" and contained a number of thoughts about this topic. The first, longish, selection struck me, because it corresponded to so much of how she tried to live her life in the last year:
"Waking up is a continuous process. No one wakes up once and for all. There is no limit to wakefulness, just as there is no limit to aliveness. It is risky to be awake to live. It takes courage.
We have to choose between risk and risk. We run the risk of sleeping through life, of never waking up at all. Or else we wakefully rise to the challenge of life. facing the challenge of life, of love.
Waking up is a process....[it happens differently for folks] what counts is that we don't go back to bed again. What counts on your path to fulfillment is that we remember the great truth that moments of surprise want to teach us: everything is gratuitous, everything is gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is the measure of our gratefulness. And gratefulness is the measure of our aliveness. Are we not dead to whatever we take for granted? Surely to be numb is to be dead. For those who awaken to life through surprise, death lies behind, not ahead. To live life open for surprise, in spite of all the dying which living implies, makes us ever more alive.
David Steindl-Rast, OSB"
To whoever placed this in Angela's hands, or made it so that she would find it, thank you. She certainly awakened to life through surprise, and lived life in a spirit of gratitude -- before the seizure, but especially after it. And so death, though it lay in her temporal future, was already behind her. I really believe that and am grateful for it.
"Waking up is a continuous process. No one wakes up once and for all. There is no limit to wakefulness, just as there is no limit to aliveness. It is risky to be awake to live. It takes courage.
We have to choose between risk and risk. We run the risk of sleeping through life, of never waking up at all. Or else we wakefully rise to the challenge of life. facing the challenge of life, of love.
Waking up is a process....[it happens differently for folks] what counts is that we don't go back to bed again. What counts on your path to fulfillment is that we remember the great truth that moments of surprise want to teach us: everything is gratuitous, everything is gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is the measure of our gratefulness. And gratefulness is the measure of our aliveness. Are we not dead to whatever we take for granted? Surely to be numb is to be dead. For those who awaken to life through surprise, death lies behind, not ahead. To live life open for surprise, in spite of all the dying which living implies, makes us ever more alive.
David Steindl-Rast, OSB"
To whoever placed this in Angela's hands, or made it so that she would find it, thank you. She certainly awakened to life through surprise, and lived life in a spirit of gratitude -- before the seizure, but especially after it. And so death, though it lay in her temporal future, was already behind her. I really believe that and am grateful for it.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
How not to spend an evening
Well, I had chest pains today, worried myself for a few hours, then called the doctor and was directed to the ER, where I spent 4 or 5 hours getting an EKG, blood tests and a chest x-ray -- all negative -- no heart problems, no infections, no pneumonia, no blood clot in the lungs. The end result was that I was sent home with the suggestion that it was something "musculo-skeletal" (like I hurt myself coughing...) -- which the resident said just meant they didn't know what it was but it wasn't going to kill me. Once before, when we lived in South Bend, I went to the ER for chest pains and was told it was acid reflux, but I don't think that was it this time. Of course, that time, Angela drove me there and stayed with me. This time a friend drove me but then I was alone -- and walked myself home. I wasn't really worried, though.
But one thing this did do was to make me go through a little bit of what Angela had to go through for so long -- I had an IV, and was in a flimsy hospital gown, and it was cold and the blanket was thin, and I was connected to monitors, and couldn't reach the book I had brought without detaching myself from the monitors, and the nurses and staff were busy with really sick and injured people, and I was whisked off to the chest x-ray in the same radiology suite Angela and I had visited so many times (TC-100)... And I felt like this was a necessary way of connecting to her experience, at least a little bit, for a little while. How she put up with everything she had to put up with... she was amazing, and her will to live was very strong.
But one thing this did do was to make me go through a little bit of what Angela had to go through for so long -- I had an IV, and was in a flimsy hospital gown, and it was cold and the blanket was thin, and I was connected to monitors, and couldn't reach the book I had brought without detaching myself from the monitors, and the nurses and staff were busy with really sick and injured people, and I was whisked off to the chest x-ray in the same radiology suite Angela and I had visited so many times (TC-100)... And I felt like this was a necessary way of connecting to her experience, at least a little bit, for a little while. How she put up with everything she had to put up with... she was amazing, and her will to live was very strong.
Monday, September 27, 2010
a brass rubbing in our bedroom
Hanging in our bedroom is a large framed brass rubbing that Angela made on our first trip to London, in 2000, in the basement of St. Martin in the Fields church, if I remember correctly. (There was a place in which you could make rubbings from brass engraved plates on black paper with chalk, and Angela chose to do this one.) It shows a man and a woman in Elizabethan dress, with the following text below:
When Oxford gave thee two degrees in art,
And love possest thee master of my heart
Thy colledge fellowshipp thow lefs't for mine
And nought but deathe could seprate me fro thine.
Thirty-fire yeares we livd'e in wedlocke bands
Conioyned in ovr hearts as well as handes
But death the bodies of best friendes devides
And in the earths close wombe their relyckes hides
Yet here they are not lost but sowen, that they
May rise more glorious at the Judgment day.
(Googling shows that the original of this is in the church of St Michael in the village of Bray in Berkshire. It is amazing what one can find out so quickly.)
I always knew the first lines of this to be significant to Angela. (They reminded her of a Billy Bragg song: "Scholarship is the enemy of romance. Where does that leave me? alone in the rain again...") And I thought of that rubbing in connection with those lines and the choice made of love over career. But only recently did I reread the whole inscription and come to the last lines. And those are as significant now to me.
(There are quite a few pictures of this online -- finer versions of the rubbing than Angela made can be bought on e-bay and elsewhere. But of course I like the one she made in spite of some flaws. From one of these sites one can learn that the couple portrayed were John and Mary Rixman. He died at 66, and she erected the brass plate in the church in his memory.)
When Oxford gave thee two degrees in art,
And love possest thee master of my heart
Thy colledge fellowshipp thow lefs't for mine
And nought but deathe could seprate me fro thine.
Thirty-fire yeares we livd'e in wedlocke bands
Conioyned in ovr hearts as well as handes
But death the bodies of best friendes devides
And in the earths close wombe their relyckes hides
Yet here they are not lost but sowen, that they
May rise more glorious at the Judgment day.
(Googling shows that the original of this is in the church of St Michael in the village of Bray in Berkshire. It is amazing what one can find out so quickly.)
I always knew the first lines of this to be significant to Angela. (They reminded her of a Billy Bragg song: "Scholarship is the enemy of romance. Where does that leave me? alone in the rain again...") And I thought of that rubbing in connection with those lines and the choice made of love over career. But only recently did I reread the whole inscription and come to the last lines. And those are as significant now to me.
(There are quite a few pictures of this online -- finer versions of the rubbing than Angela made can be bought on e-bay and elsewhere. But of course I like the one she made in spite of some flaws. From one of these sites one can learn that the couple portrayed were John and Mary Rixman. He died at 66, and she erected the brass plate in the church in his memory.)
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Life is getting too busy
Life is getting so busy it is hard to find time to sit back and think -- my counselor wants me to balance action and contemplation but there seems little space for contemplation some times. It is that time of the year in the academic world -- just before our term begins, with lots of preparation and work with graduate students wanting to go on the job market... and at the same time it is already family weekend coming up at Lucia and Teresa's colleges, and open house at Rosie's high school... and there is only one of me who is going to cover all of these.
Gloria and I sang in the choir at a wedding on Saturday that was very beautiful. And although it inevitably made me think of the day I married Angela, I was able to make it through the ceremony with my voice slightly cracking only once. It probably helped that we were up in the choir loft and did not go to the reception.
Yesterday I attended, and helped lead a discussion at, a workshop on teaching for graduate students. I will do the same today. But yesterday just before my discussion group met I ran into a colleague from another department who asked me how my summer went, and after about 30 seconds I realized he did not know about Angela's death. Her passing was not all that well publicized outside of her program and my division, and so this sort of encounter is bound to repeat itself a number of times this year. It threw me off in my discussion leading role, and I kept finding myself wanting to use examples from her teaching like "my wife does this in her classes..." -- and then modifying what I was saying so as not to bring her into it explicitly. I don't know how I seemed to the graduate students but I think myself I would normally have been a bit brighter and cheerier with them than I was capable of yesterday. We'll see how today goes.
This weekend is the Loyola family weekend and my parents are coming for a visit so they can join Gloria and me to go up and see Teresa. I am looking forward to that, though once again it will be strange not to have Angela with us. Last week I had several dreams in which she was with me in one way or another, and I have sensed her presence as loving, accepting, and supporting me. I know how happy and proud she would be of Teresa and Lucia now -- the following weekend Gloria and I are going to Kansas for the Benedictine family weekend. Angela would have been very happy to attend both of these events. But I know she will be with us.
Gloria and I sang in the choir at a wedding on Saturday that was very beautiful. And although it inevitably made me think of the day I married Angela, I was able to make it through the ceremony with my voice slightly cracking only once. It probably helped that we were up in the choir loft and did not go to the reception.
Yesterday I attended, and helped lead a discussion at, a workshop on teaching for graduate students. I will do the same today. But yesterday just before my discussion group met I ran into a colleague from another department who asked me how my summer went, and after about 30 seconds I realized he did not know about Angela's death. Her passing was not all that well publicized outside of her program and my division, and so this sort of encounter is bound to repeat itself a number of times this year. It threw me off in my discussion leading role, and I kept finding myself wanting to use examples from her teaching like "my wife does this in her classes..." -- and then modifying what I was saying so as not to bring her into it explicitly. I don't know how I seemed to the graduate students but I think myself I would normally have been a bit brighter and cheerier with them than I was capable of yesterday. We'll see how today goes.
This weekend is the Loyola family weekend and my parents are coming for a visit so they can join Gloria and me to go up and see Teresa. I am looking forward to that, though once again it will be strange not to have Angela with us. Last week I had several dreams in which she was with me in one way or another, and I have sensed her presence as loving, accepting, and supporting me. I know how happy and proud she would be of Teresa and Lucia now -- the following weekend Gloria and I are going to Kansas for the Benedictine family weekend. Angela would have been very happy to attend both of these events. But I know she will be with us.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
more beautiful days and hard things
The weather here has been frequently beautiful -- the kind of early fall days Angela loved. On the weekend Rosie and Gloria and I, along with Teresa who came down from Loyola for the day, went to the Indiana Dunes to meet with our friends from Communion and Liberation -- there were many people there from places in Indiana, and college students from Notre Dame, Purdue, and other spots, so we knew relatively few of the people. But we went on a beautiful hike, and I thought of how much Angela loved to hike, and how she had done this very hike herself a year ago (while I stayed at the picnic site waiting for AAA to come and unlock my car in which I had left the keys, with the engine running). The beauty of nature was quite overwhelming, as was the beauty of singing together on the dunes -- but again this was one of Angela's favorite things, and it was hard not to have her there even as I appreciated everything and everyone around me. This is the way of it now, I guess. There are still so many reminders of her, and at the same time so many things that reinforce and underline the fact of her absence.
Next Saturday I am going to sing in a small choir at the wedding of one of the younger men in the CL community. I thought initially this would not be too difficult for me, but I may have misjudged things. On Sunday at our rehearsal I discovered that we are singing the "Servant Song" (Richard Gillard) at the Offertory -- a song that always made Angela cry, a song about the mutual service of Christians for one another, that she always understood as having special reference to marriage, and that I have since understood especially in connection with her last year -- a song about sharing in Christ's love and agony, holding the light of Christ for one another in the nighttime of our fear, and singing together in harmony at the end of time... I hope that I can make it through the singing of this song, and the wedding ceremony in general, without breaking down. Angela always loved weddings, though she would always cry at them.
Then, Monday, Gloria and I went to the cemetery and made arrangements for a headstone -- a double stone for Angela's grave and mine, with a simple design giving our names, dates of birth and death, and date of our marriage, as well as the inscription Angela wanted for her epitaph ("O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!") and room for one for me to choose later. This took more than two hours, and afterwards I went to the bank and arranged to have her name removed from our accounts and our mortgage. In the evening Gloria and I went to see a somewhat silly movie that I would no doubt have taken Angela to see were she still alive -- "My Tale of Two Cities," a sort-of documentary made by (and about) a guy who grew up in Pittsburgh, became a Hollywood screenwriter (St. Elmo's Fire), and then returned to Pittsburgh around 2000 to become a film professor at Pitt. Angela would have loved some things about this quirky little film -- its use of Mr. Rogers, for example -- but I think she would have noticed the absence of any portrayal of the sheer physical beauty of Pittsburgh's geography. In any case, this was yet another place where her absence was obvious to me.
Today I finished packing up her office and turned in the keys -- the boxes and files will be moved into a semi-vacant office in the Philosophy department later in the week. It was very strange to think that I will never again have occasion to visit that office, to drop by just to say hello to her, to meet her there after work to walk home. She was so happy to have gotten that office, and she had beautifully organized it just before her seizure last August. Packing all her things strengthened my resolve to see her book project through to completion.
I keep coming on new facets of my situation -- one that struck me today as I ran into a new colleague who has just moved here and he introduced me to his girlfriend, is that he simply never knew Angela, and as time passes more and more of the people around me will be people who never knew me as married to Angela, and never knew her -- I can show them pictures or talk about her but that is worth little compared to the experience of actually meeting her.
After Angela died, Lucia instituted a custom in our house of lighting a candle at dinner and singing a song Angela loved in remembrance of her. Rosie and I have been carrying this on at home, and yesterday I remembered the song "To Be Your Bread" which was sung at our wedding:
Refrain: To be your bread now, be your wine now,
Lord, come and change us to be a sign of your love.
Blest and broken, poured and flowing,
gift that you gave us, to be your body once again.
1. We come to your table with our lives as they are.
Heal us Lord, for we are broken; make us one again.
2. Lord, we stumble through the darkness of night.
Lead us, now, O Lord, we follow; bring us home to you.
3. Give us the bread and wine that bring us to life.
Feed us, and we'll never hunger, never thirst again.
When Angela was in the hospital after her mastectomy, almost ten years ago, I stayed the night. She was scared and asked me to sing to her and this song was what came into my mind and what I sang, and it brought her peace that night. And so Rosie and I sang it for her last night. And tonight we sang a hymn that was sung at my best man Bob King's wedding, "The King of Love my Shepherd is," another song that made her cry then:
The king of love my shepherd is,
Whose goodness faileth never;
I nothing lack if I am his
And he is mine for ever.
Where streams of living water flow
My ransomed soul he leadeth,
And where the verdant pastures grow
With food celestial feedeth.
Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,
But yet in love he sought me,
And on his shoulder gently laid,
And home rejoicing brought me.
In death's dark vale I fear no ill
With thee, dear Lord, beside me;
Thy rod and staff my comfort still,
Thy cross before to guide me.
Thou spread'st a table in my sight;
Thy unction grace bestoweth;
And O what transport of delight
From thy pure chalice floweth!
And so through all the length of days
Thy goodness faileth never:
Good shepherd, may I sing thy praise
Within thy house for ever.
Both of these songs have brought me comfort and peace. Last night I dreamed that Angela and I were sitting on a bench outside in our winter coats, she half asleep, I holding her in my arms, and I leaned over and kissed her and said "I love you so much, Angela." She woke up and said "What did you say, honey?" and I repeated "I said how much I loved you" and she smiled. And so I do love her still. But this dream too made me happy, rather than stricken.
Next Saturday I am going to sing in a small choir at the wedding of one of the younger men in the CL community. I thought initially this would not be too difficult for me, but I may have misjudged things. On Sunday at our rehearsal I discovered that we are singing the "Servant Song" (Richard Gillard) at the Offertory -- a song that always made Angela cry, a song about the mutual service of Christians for one another, that she always understood as having special reference to marriage, and that I have since understood especially in connection with her last year -- a song about sharing in Christ's love and agony, holding the light of Christ for one another in the nighttime of our fear, and singing together in harmony at the end of time... I hope that I can make it through the singing of this song, and the wedding ceremony in general, without breaking down. Angela always loved weddings, though she would always cry at them.
Then, Monday, Gloria and I went to the cemetery and made arrangements for a headstone -- a double stone for Angela's grave and mine, with a simple design giving our names, dates of birth and death, and date of our marriage, as well as the inscription Angela wanted for her epitaph ("O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!") and room for one for me to choose later. This took more than two hours, and afterwards I went to the bank and arranged to have her name removed from our accounts and our mortgage. In the evening Gloria and I went to see a somewhat silly movie that I would no doubt have taken Angela to see were she still alive -- "My Tale of Two Cities," a sort-of documentary made by (and about) a guy who grew up in Pittsburgh, became a Hollywood screenwriter (St. Elmo's Fire), and then returned to Pittsburgh around 2000 to become a film professor at Pitt. Angela would have loved some things about this quirky little film -- its use of Mr. Rogers, for example -- but I think she would have noticed the absence of any portrayal of the sheer physical beauty of Pittsburgh's geography. In any case, this was yet another place where her absence was obvious to me.
Today I finished packing up her office and turned in the keys -- the boxes and files will be moved into a semi-vacant office in the Philosophy department later in the week. It was very strange to think that I will never again have occasion to visit that office, to drop by just to say hello to her, to meet her there after work to walk home. She was so happy to have gotten that office, and she had beautifully organized it just before her seizure last August. Packing all her things strengthened my resolve to see her book project through to completion.
I keep coming on new facets of my situation -- one that struck me today as I ran into a new colleague who has just moved here and he introduced me to his girlfriend, is that he simply never knew Angela, and as time passes more and more of the people around me will be people who never knew me as married to Angela, and never knew her -- I can show them pictures or talk about her but that is worth little compared to the experience of actually meeting her.
After Angela died, Lucia instituted a custom in our house of lighting a candle at dinner and singing a song Angela loved in remembrance of her. Rosie and I have been carrying this on at home, and yesterday I remembered the song "To Be Your Bread" which was sung at our wedding:
Refrain: To be your bread now, be your wine now,
Lord, come and change us to be a sign of your love.
Blest and broken, poured and flowing,
gift that you gave us, to be your body once again.
1. We come to your table with our lives as they are.
Heal us Lord, for we are broken; make us one again.
2. Lord, we stumble through the darkness of night.
Lead us, now, O Lord, we follow; bring us home to you.
3. Give us the bread and wine that bring us to life.
Feed us, and we'll never hunger, never thirst again.
When Angela was in the hospital after her mastectomy, almost ten years ago, I stayed the night. She was scared and asked me to sing to her and this song was what came into my mind and what I sang, and it brought her peace that night. And so Rosie and I sang it for her last night. And tonight we sang a hymn that was sung at my best man Bob King's wedding, "The King of Love my Shepherd is," another song that made her cry then:
The king of love my shepherd is,
Whose goodness faileth never;
I nothing lack if I am his
And he is mine for ever.
Where streams of living water flow
My ransomed soul he leadeth,
And where the verdant pastures grow
With food celestial feedeth.
Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,
But yet in love he sought me,
And on his shoulder gently laid,
And home rejoicing brought me.
In death's dark vale I fear no ill
With thee, dear Lord, beside me;
Thy rod and staff my comfort still,
Thy cross before to guide me.
Thou spread'st a table in my sight;
Thy unction grace bestoweth;
And O what transport of delight
From thy pure chalice floweth!
And so through all the length of days
Thy goodness faileth never:
Good shepherd, may I sing thy praise
Within thy house for ever.
Both of these songs have brought me comfort and peace. Last night I dreamed that Angela and I were sitting on a bench outside in our winter coats, she half asleep, I holding her in my arms, and I leaned over and kissed her and said "I love you so much, Angela." She woke up and said "What did you say, honey?" and I repeated "I said how much I loved you" and she smiled. And so I do love her still. But this dream too made me happy, rather than stricken.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
It is a beautiful day, and I miss you
Life goes on -- Rosie is back to school now, I have spent some time organizing my study at home and my office at work, and am back to going into the office to work at least part of each day. I find I am now able to say "my study" (it was ours) and "my bedroom" and so on. But there are still constant reminders of her. She is everywhere in my apartment, in the furniture and the pictures on the walls, the dishes we eat from and the nick-nacks in the china closet. Yesterday I had to return her university-issued laptop and then spent a couple of hours (with the help of my friend Berthold) packing up her campus office. I will finish with that today or tomorrow and then everything will be moved temporarily to an office in the philosophy department used by visiting faculty, where I will try to sort through it over the next few months in my spare time. This is not going to be easy -- I cannot possibly keep everything yet everything has some significance. Should I keep old letters of reference, or materials for courses she taught, or xeroxes of archival sources for papers she wrote and published, or her first course evaluations? Books she read, and books she meant to read but didn't get to? There are more than 20 large boxes to go through. Each item in each box will bring back memories of her.
Yesterday was a truly beautiful fall-like day and today promises to be more of the same. Angela loved the change of seasons and the especially she loved the early fall -- she would always play Yo-Yo Ma's first recording of the Bach cello suites at this time of year, somehow it just fit with the change in the weather -- she loved that recording for a sort of raw quality in his playing -- I would like to play that now, but I am not sure whether I can stand listening to it without her. I found myself yesterday feeling her absence very strongly, not only because of working on her office but also because it was just the sort of day on which she would have loved to be out for a walk or a bike ride, and there I was riding my bike around the neighborhood without her. It all started in fact when my daughter posted on facebook a line from a Roches song (Mr. Sellack) "since I've seen you last, I've waited for some things that you would not believe" and I immediately thought of the next words "to come true." The Roches were something Angela introduced me to, even before we were actually "going out," when we were just friends -- and we passed them on to our daughters. Then in my office I cleared off the table that was covered with books -- a table Angela was refinishing in her house in Pittsburgh when I first met her, which was then our first dining room table when we married, then became our study table in South Bend when our family grew, and then moved into my office here in Chicago. That table has a lot of memories inscribed around it.
So, here I am, moving on into this new phase of my life, but full of memories of Angela -- I miss making dinner with her, as I make dinner for Rosie and me; I miss her excitement about teaching new classes as we get ready for the quarter; I miss planning new things with her, and her joy in beautiful days like this; the way she would talk about her students and the pleasure she took when they did new and interesting work for her; all of the little things and interactions that shaped our life together and that are now only there in memory. It is hard now to think of this as my apartment, my room, my life, but not our apartment, our room, our life. It is still so full of her presence, as I said before.
I think I will end this with a poem Angela and I both loved, by e. e. cummings. I once sent her this in an e-mail and she told me she had sung the first stanzas at HighScope camp in Ypsilanti when she was a teenager. She also told me she liked it better with the later, more explicitly Christian stanzas added.
i thank you God for most this amazing
by e. e. cummings
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
And with that I will dedicate this beautiful day to doing the work I am allotted in honor of my beloved wife Angela.
Yesterday was a truly beautiful fall-like day and today promises to be more of the same. Angela loved the change of seasons and the especially she loved the early fall -- she would always play Yo-Yo Ma's first recording of the Bach cello suites at this time of year, somehow it just fit with the change in the weather -- she loved that recording for a sort of raw quality in his playing -- I would like to play that now, but I am not sure whether I can stand listening to it without her. I found myself yesterday feeling her absence very strongly, not only because of working on her office but also because it was just the sort of day on which she would have loved to be out for a walk or a bike ride, and there I was riding my bike around the neighborhood without her. It all started in fact when my daughter posted on facebook a line from a Roches song (Mr. Sellack) "since I've seen you last, I've waited for some things that you would not believe" and I immediately thought of the next words "to come true." The Roches were something Angela introduced me to, even before we were actually "going out," when we were just friends -- and we passed them on to our daughters. Then in my office I cleared off the table that was covered with books -- a table Angela was refinishing in her house in Pittsburgh when I first met her, which was then our first dining room table when we married, then became our study table in South Bend when our family grew, and then moved into my office here in Chicago. That table has a lot of memories inscribed around it.
So, here I am, moving on into this new phase of my life, but full of memories of Angela -- I miss making dinner with her, as I make dinner for Rosie and me; I miss her excitement about teaching new classes as we get ready for the quarter; I miss planning new things with her, and her joy in beautiful days like this; the way she would talk about her students and the pleasure she took when they did new and interesting work for her; all of the little things and interactions that shaped our life together and that are now only there in memory. It is hard now to think of this as my apartment, my room, my life, but not our apartment, our room, our life. It is still so full of her presence, as I said before.
I think I will end this with a poem Angela and I both loved, by e. e. cummings. I once sent her this in an e-mail and she told me she had sung the first stanzas at HighScope camp in Ypsilanti when she was a teenager. She also told me she liked it better with the later, more explicitly Christian stanzas added.
i thank you God for most this amazing
by e. e. cummings
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
And with that I will dedicate this beautiful day to doing the work I am allotted in honor of my beloved wife Angela.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Three months
Three months have passed since Angela died. It is very hard to believe that this is true. The summer has passed as in a haze, and I have found repeatedly that my memory is working strangely these days -- things that happened relatively recently -- especially just before Angela's seizure last August -- seem very distant in time, and things that happened a long time ago -- before her initial cancer diagnosis in Nov. of 2000 -- seem relatively close. My entire sense of time is distorted still.
I seem to be doing better in some ways, and am more functional when I am awake. But at night my sleep is disturbed and restless. I continue to have passing thoughts that she is simply out for a little while, or gone on a trip -- when something significant happens I tend to think "I should tell Angela about this" or "Angela will be happy to know about this," and find myself reaching for the phone, as if to call her. My missing her is less physical, less visceral, than it was earlier. C.S. Lewis wrote that no one told him that grief felt so much like fear. My grief feels less like fear now. But it is still pervasive. There is a line from Edna St Vincent Millay that is reproduced on many grief sites, but still has truth in my life. "The presence of that absence is everywhere." (She wrote this to friends after the death of her mother: "Darlings, I knew that you were sorry. But there's nothing to say. We had a grand time. But it's a changed world. The presence of that absence is everywhere." She also wrote the poem that is printed on the card we distributed at Angela's funeral, God's World, the first line of which will be inscribed on Angela's gravestone: "O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!" So finding this quotation about grief from her moved me to find out its provenance.)
Recently a former student whose mother died of breast cancer when she was 19 wrote to me that it was a kind of grace that her mother died at the beginning of the summer, allowing her, her father, and her siblings to work through the initial grief together without the disruption of the school year. And I thought to myself that there was truth in this in many ways -- that the onset of Angela's final illness, the course of it, and even the timing of her death, has a kind of providence to them. That she had her seizure on August 15 of last year, surrounded by friends, near available help, rather than the next day or two, when we would have been on a camping trip in Wisconsin, perhaps driving there, or perhaps sleeping in a tent, or canoeing, and rather than a month later, when Lucia would have been in college in Montreal. That Lucia was able to make the decision to stay home with us for the year and so to see her mother frequently during that last year of her life. (Angela even stayed up with her all night long one day in February, helping her to finish a quilt that she was making as a present for her boyfriend.) That she never suffered serious cognitive or neurological decline. That she suffered her final illness during the first full sabbatical year that I have ever had, so that I was able to spend far more time with her than would otherwise have been possible. That she was able to be released from the hospital, and not die in the hospital, but at home -- as she very much desired. That she was able to see her two older daughters settle their college choices. And indeed, that she died at the beginning of the summer, and not, for example, now -- which would have made the beginning of this school year especially difficult for Teresa and Lucia. That we were able, the girls and I, to take a couple of long driving trips during which we could have long conversations about Angela and our life with her, in the months after her death. All of this seems oddly providential, in a way -- given the reality of her illness. Of course, it goes without saying, I would rather have her back. Oh God, yes. But nonetheless, the manner of her illness and dying allowed us many things that might not have been possible for us. And through the last year we were drawn so much closer together, as a couple and as a family, that I cannot but think much good will come of it.
I seem to be doing better in some ways, and am more functional when I am awake. But at night my sleep is disturbed and restless. I continue to have passing thoughts that she is simply out for a little while, or gone on a trip -- when something significant happens I tend to think "I should tell Angela about this" or "Angela will be happy to know about this," and find myself reaching for the phone, as if to call her. My missing her is less physical, less visceral, than it was earlier. C.S. Lewis wrote that no one told him that grief felt so much like fear. My grief feels less like fear now. But it is still pervasive. There is a line from Edna St Vincent Millay that is reproduced on many grief sites, but still has truth in my life. "The presence of that absence is everywhere." (She wrote this to friends after the death of her mother: "Darlings, I knew that you were sorry. But there's nothing to say. We had a grand time. But it's a changed world. The presence of that absence is everywhere." She also wrote the poem that is printed on the card we distributed at Angela's funeral, God's World, the first line of which will be inscribed on Angela's gravestone: "O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!" So finding this quotation about grief from her moved me to find out its provenance.)
Recently a former student whose mother died of breast cancer when she was 19 wrote to me that it was a kind of grace that her mother died at the beginning of the summer, allowing her, her father, and her siblings to work through the initial grief together without the disruption of the school year. And I thought to myself that there was truth in this in many ways -- that the onset of Angela's final illness, the course of it, and even the timing of her death, has a kind of providence to them. That she had her seizure on August 15 of last year, surrounded by friends, near available help, rather than the next day or two, when we would have been on a camping trip in Wisconsin, perhaps driving there, or perhaps sleeping in a tent, or canoeing, and rather than a month later, when Lucia would have been in college in Montreal. That Lucia was able to make the decision to stay home with us for the year and so to see her mother frequently during that last year of her life. (Angela even stayed up with her all night long one day in February, helping her to finish a quilt that she was making as a present for her boyfriend.) That she never suffered serious cognitive or neurological decline. That she suffered her final illness during the first full sabbatical year that I have ever had, so that I was able to spend far more time with her than would otherwise have been possible. That she was able to be released from the hospital, and not die in the hospital, but at home -- as she very much desired. That she was able to see her two older daughters settle their college choices. And indeed, that she died at the beginning of the summer, and not, for example, now -- which would have made the beginning of this school year especially difficult for Teresa and Lucia. That we were able, the girls and I, to take a couple of long driving trips during which we could have long conversations about Angela and our life with her, in the months after her death. All of this seems oddly providential, in a way -- given the reality of her illness. Of course, it goes without saying, I would rather have her back. Oh God, yes. But nonetheless, the manner of her illness and dying allowed us many things that might not have been possible for us. And through the last year we were drawn so much closer together, as a couple and as a family, that I cannot but think much good will come of it.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Nostalgia
I have always had a strong nostalgic streak, and of course I am now very much affected by it. I have a tendency to idealize the past and wish that it could be preserved. When I was a little boy -- but no longer a baby -- and I had four little brothers -- I once asked my mother to hold me in my lap and rock me. I wanted to recapture my babyhood. Angela would say that I don't like change (especially when she wanted to change something, rearrange the furniture, say), and there is truth to that -- when I do accept change I like it to be gradual and slow. But of course my life right now is imposing changes on me at a pace I am not accustomed to, with the loss of Angela and two girls off to college. I hope I can adapt to them. I have done things to solidify my memories in the face of these changes, like putting up some family pictures and writing things like this blog.
All of this was brought home to me when I took Teresa up to Loyola last week. The night before I had been thinking about how we used to read to the girls at bedtime when we were little, and I thought of reading The Little House in the Big Woods, which has a moment in it that expresses perfectly the desire to hold onto the past. Of course the whole book is an expression of that desire, being the record of the memories of Laura Ingalls Wilder when she was a little girl, making those memories permanent. Angela has distinct memories of her very early years -- many more than I do of mine -- and it would have been nice to have recorded them in her own words. I can record them as I remember her telling them, but that is not the same thing.
The moment I thought about in The Little House in the Big Woods comes at the end, but can only be fully appreciated if you keep in mind the beginning. I remember being struck by this when I read the book to my little girls, 15 years ago or so (Angela had the set from her childhood).
The book opens like this:
**************************
Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.
***************************
The book chronicles a year in the life of this little girl. At the end, Laura is lying in bed, listening to her father play his fiddle and sing.
******************************************************
Pa's strong, sweet voice was softly singing:
"Shall auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And the days of auld lang syne?
And the days of auld lang syne, my friend,
And the days of auld lang syne,
Shall auld acquaintance be forgot,
And the days of auld lang syne?"
When the fiddle has stopped singing, Laura called out softly, "What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?"
"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.
She thought to herself, "This is now."
She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.
*****************************************************
I confess it gives me chills and brings a lump to my throat just to type this out. The desire to hold on to what we remember, in an eternal now, is very strong in me. And so I want to remember when my girls fell asleep with their Daddy playing his guitar and their Mommy singing for them. And yet every now passes us by and is replaced by another, and so we remember, and hope for a fulfillment in which all the nows of our passing time are embraced in one eternal now of the new creation, which Angela so wanted to understand before she died, and which I pray she can now (what "now" is this?) experience. I understand so little of this myself.
Driving up to Loyola last Thursday to move Teresa in, I told her and Rosie about this passage in The Little House in the Big Woods and found myself moved to tears. Whether tears purely of sadness I cannot say. I really was happy to see Teresa excited to move into her dorm room. Yet I have found it hard to adjust to the two older girls being gone as well as Angela. The apartment seems strangely empty at times. On Sunday, Gloria, Rosie and I went back up to Loyola for the opening of the year Mass, and Teresa was singing in the choir, and I was proud of her and happy for her -- she looked beautiful and confident and happy -- yet again there were tears -- because Angela was not there, and would have so loved to see this -- and maybe too, just because my daughter was moving out of our apartment into a world of her own.
Driving back from Loyola, talking about this further with Rosie, I realized that she has no real memory of my reading from the Little House books to her and her sisters -- she was just too young. And so I have started reading The Little House in the Big Woods to her, again. I hope this time will give me an opportunity to get closer to my youngest daughter, who has in some ways gotten the least of her parents' attention of the three -- especially since she was so young when our lives became suddenly more complex, burdened by the cancer. There is some nostalgia in this too, but also a real opportunity which I do not want to pass up.
All of this was brought home to me when I took Teresa up to Loyola last week. The night before I had been thinking about how we used to read to the girls at bedtime when we were little, and I thought of reading The Little House in the Big Woods, which has a moment in it that expresses perfectly the desire to hold onto the past. Of course the whole book is an expression of that desire, being the record of the memories of Laura Ingalls Wilder when she was a little girl, making those memories permanent. Angela has distinct memories of her very early years -- many more than I do of mine -- and it would have been nice to have recorded them in her own words. I can record them as I remember her telling them, but that is not the same thing.
The moment I thought about in The Little House in the Big Woods comes at the end, but can only be fully appreciated if you keep in mind the beginning. I remember being struck by this when I read the book to my little girls, 15 years ago or so (Angela had the set from her childhood).
The book opens like this:
**************************
Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.
***************************
The book chronicles a year in the life of this little girl. At the end, Laura is lying in bed, listening to her father play his fiddle and sing.
******************************************************
Pa's strong, sweet voice was softly singing:
"Shall auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And the days of auld lang syne?
And the days of auld lang syne, my friend,
And the days of auld lang syne,
Shall auld acquaintance be forgot,
And the days of auld lang syne?"
When the fiddle has stopped singing, Laura called out softly, "What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?"
"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.
She thought to herself, "This is now."
She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.
*****************************************************
I confess it gives me chills and brings a lump to my throat just to type this out. The desire to hold on to what we remember, in an eternal now, is very strong in me. And so I want to remember when my girls fell asleep with their Daddy playing his guitar and their Mommy singing for them. And yet every now passes us by and is replaced by another, and so we remember, and hope for a fulfillment in which all the nows of our passing time are embraced in one eternal now of the new creation, which Angela so wanted to understand before she died, and which I pray she can now (what "now" is this?) experience. I understand so little of this myself.
Driving up to Loyola last Thursday to move Teresa in, I told her and Rosie about this passage in The Little House in the Big Woods and found myself moved to tears. Whether tears purely of sadness I cannot say. I really was happy to see Teresa excited to move into her dorm room. Yet I have found it hard to adjust to the two older girls being gone as well as Angela. The apartment seems strangely empty at times. On Sunday, Gloria, Rosie and I went back up to Loyola for the opening of the year Mass, and Teresa was singing in the choir, and I was proud of her and happy for her -- she looked beautiful and confident and happy -- yet again there were tears -- because Angela was not there, and would have so loved to see this -- and maybe too, just because my daughter was moving out of our apartment into a world of her own.
Driving back from Loyola, talking about this further with Rosie, I realized that she has no real memory of my reading from the Little House books to her and her sisters -- she was just too young. And so I have started reading The Little House in the Big Woods to her, again. I hope this time will give me an opportunity to get closer to my youngest daughter, who has in some ways gotten the least of her parents' attention of the three -- especially since she was so young when our lives became suddenly more complex, burdened by the cancer. There is some nostalgia in this too, but also a real opportunity which I do not want to pass up.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Miscellaneous memories of Angela
I have been very busy the past week with getting my two older daughters moved to college – first Lucia to Benedictine College in Atchison, KS, and then Teresa to Loyola University, just on the north side of Chicago. Now I am here at home with only my youngest daughter, Rosie, left. Both Teresa and Rosie went with me to Atchison and helped Lucia move in, and Rosie also pitched in to help Teresa.It was something of an accomplishment for me to get all this taken care of. Dropping off children to college is supposed to be bittersweet anyway, and it is made all the more so by the fact of Angela’s absence. She would have been so happy and proud to see them settled.
The two move-in trips were different from each other in many ways. Angela and I had visited Loyola twice with Teresa, so there were memories there of the times we were together on that campus, sitting in the little coffee shop in the library overlooking the lake, working on her book manuscript. We hadn’t visited Benedictine, so there was regret that Angela hadn’t gotten to see the school where Lucia will study for the next three years. At the end of the move-in day there was a Mass at which the parents were asked to bless their children, and the children to thank their parents, and that was not easy for either Lucia or me. The drive to Benedictine and back was another long car trip (9 hours each way) which gave me further opportunities to talk to the girls. Loyola, on the other hand, is just at the other end of the city.
Atchison is a small town (10,000) that was built by the railroad and has a lot of impressive Victorian houses and buildings. Teresa and Rosie and I took a trolley tour of the town and visited one of the old homes as well as the local historical society museum. This brought back various miscellaneous memories that I want to record here. The associations are pretty loose in some cases. And they don’t add up to more than just a lot of memories, some of them from our time together, some of stories Angela told about her childhood and youth.
I remembered taking the girls to Indianapolis when Lucia was 3, Teresa was 1, and Rosie was no more than a thought in the mind of God, so that Angela could work in the state archives on her paper about involuntary sterilization of prison inmates in Indiana -- I remembered this specifically because I took the girls to various places such as the Indianapolis zoo and children's museum, but also to the home of Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president. The house tour in Atchison reminded me of that house tour in some way. This brought back many memories of other times and places with the girls when they were little -- visits to the South Bend Historical Museum, and Copshaholm, a Victorian mansion in South Bend that Teresa still recalls as a place she loved, and visits also to St Joseph, Michigan, where we would go to the lovely little Children's Museum as well as the beach, which had a giant play structure the girls always enjoyed.
In the Atchison museum, there was some kind of display about the county’s history, and I was reminded of the fact that Angela’s uncle Herman was a county commissioner in Greene County where she grew up. She told a story about passing her driver’s license examination when she was 16. She hadn’t done well on the test, but the state trooper on seeing her name asked “Are you any relation to Herman Gugalatta?” (That’s how he pronounced “Gugliotta.”) When she said “He’s my uncle,” the state trooper told her she passed the test. She said “I’m surprised” and he said “I am too.” Soon afterwards she was driving with her mother in the passenger seat and came to a dangerous curve on the interchange where I-79 north merges with I-70 – this is a curve where you are supposed to slow down to 25 mph and a lot of skid marks are visible on the side of the road, which slopes up like the wall of a bobsled run (I have driven this many times – apparently it is now slated to be replaced as there have been many accidents there). Angela didn’t slow down enough and started to lose control, and as she tells it her mom had to grab the steering wheel from the passenger seat. After that, Angela really didn’t want to drive on the highway, though when I first met her she had a 1976 Plymouth Satellite which she drove around Pittsburgh and later Baltimore, and did drive between Baltimore and Pittsburgh at least once with me as passenger. After I learned to drive and had bought a little Toyota Tercel (1987), I once followed Angela from Pittsburgh to Greene County where her mother lived, and at an interchange where there was construction and stopped traffic, I hit her car with mine from behind -- causing $1000 of damage to my fender and not even a noticeable dent to her bumper. She forgave me for that though I was incredibly embarrassed.
Also in the Atchison museum, I noticed an old player piano. This reminded me of Rita and William Ferrari, an older couple who lived just down the street from Angela’s mother. Rita babysat Angela when she was little, and Angela called her Ritabug, and called her husband Honey, because that is what she always heard Rita call him. After Angela’s father died, Honey became something of a father figure to her, and he walked her down the aisle at our wedding. I was introduced to him as Honey and so that is what I called him, which gave my best man a source of bad jokes at our wedding (“I thought Mike was marrying Angela, and here he was introducing me to this older guy as Honey.”) At some point before we were married, Rita and Honey had rescued and repaired an old player piano from a flood in someone else’s house, along with a bunch of old player piano rolls which they lovingly restored. They had this player piano (pie-anna) in the basement of their house along with the second kitchen (for big cooking days like Thanksgiving) and their two washing machines, the automatic and the “conventional” – the latter had a hand operated wringer, and they still used it. We used to go down into the basement and dance (waltzes and polkas) while Rita or Honey would pump the player piano. New player piano rolls were always a great Christmas present for them – one year we found the sheet music to an old twenties song about flappers, “Roll’em girls,” that Rita liked to play on the player piano. Somewhere in our house we have a cassette recording of Rita and the player piano, with Angela’s handwritten title “Ritabug pumps.” And the first dance at our wedding was actually a waltz to the music from that tape.
Angela's Plymouth Satellite had been a gift from Rita and Honey when they had bought a new car, and they had taken such loving care of it that she felt responsible to keep it going as long as possible. It went with her to Baltimore, where she moved it from parking space to parking space in a futile effort to avoid parking tickets, and occasionally drove it slowly around town. She never minded getting stuck behind a slow-moving truck or double-parked car -- she disliked driving at all fast and would say that her driving motto was "why go when you can stop?" When Angela went to graduate school in Wisconsin the year before we were married, she left the Plymouth parked outside my house in South Bend. Eventually it was ticketed for being parked in the wrong direction, and then we moved it into the driveway. Later we loaned it to some friends on hard times in exchange for their paying for oil changes, insurance, and gas. When they didn't need it anymore, I offered to an incoming professor for free, as long as he would pay for some work it needed -- about $500 of work as I recall -- but after the work was done he drove the car and decided he didn't want it, leaving us stuck with the bill for the work. He will remain nameless (indeed I have forgotten his name, though not the fact that he was coming in with an endowed professorship and I was a junior faculty member at the time for whom $500 was a pretty big deal of money). The garage owner very nicely took the car off our hands, charged us for the work, and then gave us enough free work on our car to make up for the charges. Sometime later we saw the Plymouth being driven around South Bend and knew that the garage owner had managed to sell it.
While in Atchison, I received an e-mail from one of my former colleagues about Angela’s death. He reminded me that Angela had a habit of calling me “Eeyore” whenever I would get into a somewhat morose mood – Eeyore being the character in Winnie-the-Pooh who always looks on the gloomy side of life. I would joke back “Just you wait, it’ll rain yet today.” I then remembered another characteristic expression of Angela’s – “Kennywood’s open.” She would say this if she noticed that I had forgotten to zip up my fly after using the bathroom. Kennywood is a famous old amusement park near Pittsburgh. You can interpret the expression as you like; it’s pretty common in the Pittsburgh area (it’s even made it into urbandictionary.com), but I’ve never heard it from anyone not from Pittsburgh. Angela and I visited Kennywood with a group of friends not too long before we started going out – we rode at least two big rollercoasters, which was a sign of the degree of my interest in her, since I was terrified of rollercoasters. It was worth it to me to get to sit next to her. We had a great time, but her glasses flew off on one of the rides and were never found, so she had to buy new ones. It is nice to remember these things, even if it is kind of sad to think that no one will ever call me Eeyore again, or remind me that Kennywood’s open.
So there are some memories that came to me during my trip to Atchison. More memories came back to me when I took Teresa up to Loyola, but I’ll save those for another post.
The two move-in trips were different from each other in many ways. Angela and I had visited Loyola twice with Teresa, so there were memories there of the times we were together on that campus, sitting in the little coffee shop in the library overlooking the lake, working on her book manuscript. We hadn’t visited Benedictine, so there was regret that Angela hadn’t gotten to see the school where Lucia will study for the next three years. At the end of the move-in day there was a Mass at which the parents were asked to bless their children, and the children to thank their parents, and that was not easy for either Lucia or me. The drive to Benedictine and back was another long car trip (9 hours each way) which gave me further opportunities to talk to the girls. Loyola, on the other hand, is just at the other end of the city.
Atchison is a small town (10,000) that was built by the railroad and has a lot of impressive Victorian houses and buildings. Teresa and Rosie and I took a trolley tour of the town and visited one of the old homes as well as the local historical society museum. This brought back various miscellaneous memories that I want to record here. The associations are pretty loose in some cases. And they don’t add up to more than just a lot of memories, some of them from our time together, some of stories Angela told about her childhood and youth.
I remembered taking the girls to Indianapolis when Lucia was 3, Teresa was 1, and Rosie was no more than a thought in the mind of God, so that Angela could work in the state archives on her paper about involuntary sterilization of prison inmates in Indiana -- I remembered this specifically because I took the girls to various places such as the Indianapolis zoo and children's museum, but also to the home of Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president. The house tour in Atchison reminded me of that house tour in some way. This brought back many memories of other times and places with the girls when they were little -- visits to the South Bend Historical Museum, and Copshaholm, a Victorian mansion in South Bend that Teresa still recalls as a place she loved, and visits also to St Joseph, Michigan, where we would go to the lovely little Children's Museum as well as the beach, which had a giant play structure the girls always enjoyed.
In the Atchison museum, there was some kind of display about the county’s history, and I was reminded of the fact that Angela’s uncle Herman was a county commissioner in Greene County where she grew up. She told a story about passing her driver’s license examination when she was 16. She hadn’t done well on the test, but the state trooper on seeing her name asked “Are you any relation to Herman Gugalatta?” (That’s how he pronounced “Gugliotta.”) When she said “He’s my uncle,” the state trooper told her she passed the test. She said “I’m surprised” and he said “I am too.” Soon afterwards she was driving with her mother in the passenger seat and came to a dangerous curve on the interchange where I-79 north merges with I-70 – this is a curve where you are supposed to slow down to 25 mph and a lot of skid marks are visible on the side of the road, which slopes up like the wall of a bobsled run (I have driven this many times – apparently it is now slated to be replaced as there have been many accidents there). Angela didn’t slow down enough and started to lose control, and as she tells it her mom had to grab the steering wheel from the passenger seat. After that, Angela really didn’t want to drive on the highway, though when I first met her she had a 1976 Plymouth Satellite which she drove around Pittsburgh and later Baltimore, and did drive between Baltimore and Pittsburgh at least once with me as passenger. After I learned to drive and had bought a little Toyota Tercel (1987), I once followed Angela from Pittsburgh to Greene County where her mother lived, and at an interchange where there was construction and stopped traffic, I hit her car with mine from behind -- causing $1000 of damage to my fender and not even a noticeable dent to her bumper. She forgave me for that though I was incredibly embarrassed.
Also in the Atchison museum, I noticed an old player piano. This reminded me of Rita and William Ferrari, an older couple who lived just down the street from Angela’s mother. Rita babysat Angela when she was little, and Angela called her Ritabug, and called her husband Honey, because that is what she always heard Rita call him. After Angela’s father died, Honey became something of a father figure to her, and he walked her down the aisle at our wedding. I was introduced to him as Honey and so that is what I called him, which gave my best man a source of bad jokes at our wedding (“I thought Mike was marrying Angela, and here he was introducing me to this older guy as Honey.”) At some point before we were married, Rita and Honey had rescued and repaired an old player piano from a flood in someone else’s house, along with a bunch of old player piano rolls which they lovingly restored. They had this player piano (pie-anna) in the basement of their house along with the second kitchen (for big cooking days like Thanksgiving) and their two washing machines, the automatic and the “conventional” – the latter had a hand operated wringer, and they still used it. We used to go down into the basement and dance (waltzes and polkas) while Rita or Honey would pump the player piano. New player piano rolls were always a great Christmas present for them – one year we found the sheet music to an old twenties song about flappers, “Roll’em girls,” that Rita liked to play on the player piano. Somewhere in our house we have a cassette recording of Rita and the player piano, with Angela’s handwritten title “Ritabug pumps.” And the first dance at our wedding was actually a waltz to the music from that tape.
Angela's Plymouth Satellite had been a gift from Rita and Honey when they had bought a new car, and they had taken such loving care of it that she felt responsible to keep it going as long as possible. It went with her to Baltimore, where she moved it from parking space to parking space in a futile effort to avoid parking tickets, and occasionally drove it slowly around town. She never minded getting stuck behind a slow-moving truck or double-parked car -- she disliked driving at all fast and would say that her driving motto was "why go when you can stop?" When Angela went to graduate school in Wisconsin the year before we were married, she left the Plymouth parked outside my house in South Bend. Eventually it was ticketed for being parked in the wrong direction, and then we moved it into the driveway. Later we loaned it to some friends on hard times in exchange for their paying for oil changes, insurance, and gas. When they didn't need it anymore, I offered to an incoming professor for free, as long as he would pay for some work it needed -- about $500 of work as I recall -- but after the work was done he drove the car and decided he didn't want it, leaving us stuck with the bill for the work. He will remain nameless (indeed I have forgotten his name, though not the fact that he was coming in with an endowed professorship and I was a junior faculty member at the time for whom $500 was a pretty big deal of money). The garage owner very nicely took the car off our hands, charged us for the work, and then gave us enough free work on our car to make up for the charges. Sometime later we saw the Plymouth being driven around South Bend and knew that the garage owner had managed to sell it.
While in Atchison, I received an e-mail from one of my former colleagues about Angela’s death. He reminded me that Angela had a habit of calling me “Eeyore” whenever I would get into a somewhat morose mood – Eeyore being the character in Winnie-the-Pooh who always looks on the gloomy side of life. I would joke back “Just you wait, it’ll rain yet today.” I then remembered another characteristic expression of Angela’s – “Kennywood’s open.” She would say this if she noticed that I had forgotten to zip up my fly after using the bathroom. Kennywood is a famous old amusement park near Pittsburgh. You can interpret the expression as you like; it’s pretty common in the Pittsburgh area (it’s even made it into urbandictionary.com), but I’ve never heard it from anyone not from Pittsburgh. Angela and I visited Kennywood with a group of friends not too long before we started going out – we rode at least two big rollercoasters, which was a sign of the degree of my interest in her, since I was terrified of rollercoasters. It was worth it to me to get to sit next to her. We had a great time, but her glasses flew off on one of the rides and were never found, so she had to buy new ones. It is nice to remember these things, even if it is kind of sad to think that no one will ever call me Eeyore again, or remind me that Kennywood’s open.
So there are some memories that came to me during my trip to Atchison. More memories came back to me when I took Teresa up to Loyola, but I’ll save those for another post.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The first post
I have decided to start this blog to continue the posts that I had been putting up on the carepages website for my wife Angela Gugliotta, who died on June 1, 2010, of metastatic breast cancer. After her death I continued to post on carepages as a means of recording my grief journey. But now I think it is more appropriate to use some other venue to continue this form of expression. Hence this rather minimalist blog. It may grow and develop over time. I am new to this.
The title of my blog comes from something Angela wrote after her seizure a little more than a year ago. On her facebook page she wrote of waking up in the hospital:
"Hey everyone. I am so moved by the beauty of the efforts and gifts of all out friends. I woke up, and the first thing I saw was my my green blue gold and red painted finger nails,but over the next day or two much more inspiring reasons to wake up were the similarly varied and beautifully colored eyes of friends and family gathered around my beds -- and beyond these visions all the extraordinary support we've had."
She woke up with an immense sense of gratitude for still being alive. She felt the beauty of the world and experienced all her senses as heightened. Although she knew her time was limited she felt that she had some things to do in this world yet, and she had been given some time to do them still. One thing she wanted to do was to explore her spirituality and her beliefs about the value of creation and the idea of a new creation. She started a journal about this and the first thing she did in the journal was to write out a kind of semi-poetic meditation on the experience of waking up and her gratitude for it, and her sense of the presence and reality of God in the world. The first line of this meditation was "What is this that I am awake to?" which she repeated several times in the course of the meditation. I have taken this line as the title for this blog.
She worked carefully on this meditation, as is evident from the fact that there are two versions in her journal, one with edits and scratching out, the other written out in final form. I am not sure whether I should share more of this meditation on this blog. Perhaps at some later date I will write out the whole thing. But for the moment I will just stick to the first line: "What is this that I am awake to?"
That is how she began her journal after her seizure, and her exploration of faith and life over her last months. It has moved me a great deal. I think she accomplished much with the nine and a half months she was given, from August 18 when she awoke from her sedation to June 1 when she died -- almost exactly the normal time of human gestation, from conception to childbirth. Three times she had gone through the 40 weeks of pregnancy, giving birth to our three daughters. Three times she gave birth without anesthetic, experiencing the pains of childbirth. In the last 40 weeks of her life, she gave birth to a new sense of peace and co-operation in our household, to a greater love in our marital relationship, to many new thoughts in her own intellectual life and work, to a deeper understanding of her own spirituality and relationship to God. She did this while suffering pains she would describe as worse than those of childbirth -- even with the pain medication that helped some of the time. She lived out of love for the people in her life, her friends, her family, her mother, our children, and me. She was fully alive to her world and its beauty, in spite of the pain.
But now she is no longer awake to this world. My faith assures me she is not merely dead and gone, and I hope she is now asking with a renewed and even deeper sense of wonder "What is this that I am awake to?"
But in the meantime, I still wake up every morning to this world that she loved, and although I miss her terribly I would like somehow to take up her gratitude for and wonder at the world, its beauty, the friends that surround me, the work that I still have to do. So I would like to take up her question, and the wonder and gratitude it expresses, as a kind of motto and guide: "What is this that I am awake to?" And so I have titled this blog. In it I will record my experiences for the next while -- experiences of grief and sorrow and where possible joy and learning.
The title of my blog comes from something Angela wrote after her seizure a little more than a year ago. On her facebook page she wrote of waking up in the hospital:
"Hey everyone. I am so moved by the beauty of the efforts and gifts of all out friends. I woke up, and the first thing I saw was my my green blue gold and red painted finger nails,but over the next day or two much more inspiring reasons to wake up were the similarly varied and beautifully colored eyes of friends and family gathered around my beds -- and beyond these visions all the extraordinary support we've had."
She woke up with an immense sense of gratitude for still being alive. She felt the beauty of the world and experienced all her senses as heightened. Although she knew her time was limited she felt that she had some things to do in this world yet, and she had been given some time to do them still. One thing she wanted to do was to explore her spirituality and her beliefs about the value of creation and the idea of a new creation. She started a journal about this and the first thing she did in the journal was to write out a kind of semi-poetic meditation on the experience of waking up and her gratitude for it, and her sense of the presence and reality of God in the world. The first line of this meditation was "What is this that I am awake to?" which she repeated several times in the course of the meditation. I have taken this line as the title for this blog.
She worked carefully on this meditation, as is evident from the fact that there are two versions in her journal, one with edits and scratching out, the other written out in final form. I am not sure whether I should share more of this meditation on this blog. Perhaps at some later date I will write out the whole thing. But for the moment I will just stick to the first line: "What is this that I am awake to?"
That is how she began her journal after her seizure, and her exploration of faith and life over her last months. It has moved me a great deal. I think she accomplished much with the nine and a half months she was given, from August 18 when she awoke from her sedation to June 1 when she died -- almost exactly the normal time of human gestation, from conception to childbirth. Three times she had gone through the 40 weeks of pregnancy, giving birth to our three daughters. Three times she gave birth without anesthetic, experiencing the pains of childbirth. In the last 40 weeks of her life, she gave birth to a new sense of peace and co-operation in our household, to a greater love in our marital relationship, to many new thoughts in her own intellectual life and work, to a deeper understanding of her own spirituality and relationship to God. She did this while suffering pains she would describe as worse than those of childbirth -- even with the pain medication that helped some of the time. She lived out of love for the people in her life, her friends, her family, her mother, our children, and me. She was fully alive to her world and its beauty, in spite of the pain.
But now she is no longer awake to this world. My faith assures me she is not merely dead and gone, and I hope she is now asking with a renewed and even deeper sense of wonder "What is this that I am awake to?"
But in the meantime, I still wake up every morning to this world that she loved, and although I miss her terribly I would like somehow to take up her gratitude for and wonder at the world, its beauty, the friends that surround me, the work that I still have to do. So I would like to take up her question, and the wonder and gratitude it expresses, as a kind of motto and guide: "What is this that I am awake to?" And so I have titled this blog. In it I will record my experiences for the next while -- experiences of grief and sorrow and where possible joy and learning.
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