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.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
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.
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