Valentine's Day reflections

It's been a long time since I've posted anything.... Today is Valentine's Day, which promises to be harder than most. I have made a plan to meet with some members of the bereavement group that I attended in the fall for dinner, so we won't be alone and moping this evening.

Time passes, but in this first year since her death I am able to think each day "last year at this time, Angela was..." -- and on this day, February 14, in 2010, we went to the University of Chicago Folk Festival and she participated, vigorously, in the folk dancing that she had loved since her youth. The kids were all gone for the weekend, and we came home after the folk dancing and had fondue and wine and chocolate covered strawberries. It was a beautiful day and the memories are still warm and fresh. Three months later she was in the hospital.

I am painfully aware that in a few months I will no longer be able to say "last year at this time, Angela was..." A colleague said to me: you won't get over this, but you will get used to it. I feel like I am slowly getting used to it. But it doesn't happen easily, not at all.

Yesterday I did my taxes -- still filing "married filing jointly," one last time, "as surviving spouse." Just another reminder. Yet the night before I had a beautiful dream in which Angela was making us dinner and we kissed... something of a Valentine weekend reminder, perhaps.

So, things move on and I do my best. I am working at 75% efficiency and have to do 150% of what I am used to. But slowly things are changing. That is the way of it and there is not much more to say, or there is so much more to say that I could write all day.

Sometime soon I might post the bit of writing of Angela's that inspired the name of this very intermittent blog.

Christmas ... and menus

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.