We’re all trying to adjust to life’s milestones continuing on without David. It’s Chelsea’s birthday tomorrow, so I thought I’d include this adorable photo of Chelsea and David from MANY years ago. →

And here’s one more that I love from a little more recently, back when she was in school at GW. ↓

Happy Birthday, Chelsea!

It was right about this time every year that David and I would head back to Sunapee to enjoy the fall foliage . . .

. . . and help close up the lake house for the winter. I could have gone this year, of course, and almost did, but after all my travels this summer, it felt a bit overwhelming. So I’m enjoying a Colorado fall this year and working on my writing, as well as trying a few arty things. More about that another time.

Sometimes thinking of the future without David is as disorienting as looking down over the edge of the Quechee Gorge . . . ↓

. . . but I’m doing better overall, apart from the occasional stab. Those aren’t likely to disappear anytime soon, I’m told, but I promise you, the privilege of having him in my life was worth the pain of now.  Here’s another piece I wanted to share with you from my writers workshop:

A New Kind of Different

              Things are different now, and they’re a new kind of different than they were during the months that followed David’s cancer diagnosis. In some ways those sixteen months were not only different, but weirdly better: more tender, more intentional, more together. For a while we couldn’t stand to be in separate rooms, but then we were lulled by the efficacy of the first rounds of treatment, and we began to believe we’d have more time.

With the illusion of more time, we were afraid we couldn’t sustain that level of intimacy. We decided we needed to continue our lives as before, certainly with time together but also time for our individual interests. David wanted that for me to prepare me for life without him. I wanted that for him, because I would have granted any of his wishes if I’d had the power, and I did have the power to release him from constant attendance on my emotional state, to free him to watch a little golf or college football on TV if that appealed to him. Sometimes I couldn’t stay away, though, and I found myself heading down to be with him, no matter how limited my interest in televised sports. My interest in David was unlimited in those days.

One evening he had gone downstairs to watch TV, leaving me upstairs scanning through photos of our travels on my laptop, only to return hours later to find me distraught at finding fewer photos of him than I had expected. He was always in the way, I’d thought. He was usually out ahead of me as we walked, since I stopped so often to take pictures, but then he’d be right in the middle of what I wanted to photograph, so I’d make him move out of the shot. But once time got short, I’d have traded every single beautiful postcard shot of France for more of him. I’m better now, since at the end I dragged boxes of photos out from storage and scanned a hundred or so shots from our nearly forty years together, and a few more of the rest of his sixty-five years. So I’ve now got a slideshow and some videos our girls took, but of course, I don’t have him, my favorite companion in all things.

We used to go out for dinner or drinks and tapas all the time, nice places always, and regular Saturday morning breakfast walks. After he started chemo and the doctor advised him to try to keep his weight up, we were at the mercy of whatever highly-caloric thing he thought he could eat: Big Macs, pizzas, several versions of chicken pot pie for a few days, one regrettable Dunkin Donuts episode, where neither of us felt good for hours afterwards. He could never finish any of it. I, on the other hand, gained twenty pounds. Now I rarely go out, except with my Denver daughter on the occasional evenings I’m in town. On the plus side, the twenty extra pounds melted away, although now they’re creeping back a bit. There’s no one to make comments about how quickly the ice cream is disappearing. And I’m still way too sedentary.

We had all these plans to get more active. We were regular walkers, but we wanted to diversify, so we bought bikes that we rode exactly four times before his diagnosis, and now I’m finding it hard to get going again. Everything was in slow motion for so long: walking from the car into the Cancer Center and back out to the car again, even driving. It hurt him if he was jostled too much, and he’d say, “Easy there, Mario,” if I took a corner too fast. Then grief put a sort of fog over everything that still has the power to keep me in the slow lane, definitely not when I’m driving anymore, but in other everyday activities, like getting up, or going to bed, or trying to drag myself out for a walk.

I know I probably have years more of my life to live, not that any of us knows that for certain, but dreaming of the future has changed drastically. David had a way of asking provocative questions, like, “What would you change in your life if you could change anything?” or “If money were no object where in the world would you go and what would you do?” And I always knew to dream big, partly because it was more fun that way, but also because there was a very real possibility he’d figure out a way to make those dreams come true, so why not aim high?

But I’m not dreaming as much these days; I’ve lost confidence in the unlimited possibilities of the future. I am exploring the present, though. I’m trying new things to see if they resonate. I’m offering, when I can, encouragement to others who are also hurting. And I’m learning for the first time how to be alone without being lonely. But I’m also signing up and showing up, for whatever strikes me. Maybe that will turn out to be the first step in making new dreams come true.

*****

Wishing you peace, joy and love in the present and hope for the future. Bless you, dear ones.