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.
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