Norm and I were unlikely friends. We met in 1980 when we worked for the same company. Aside from that, we didn’t have much in common. Norm was about four years older than me and was what we called back then as a motorhead. He liked cars, liked breaking them, racing them and fixing them. Norm is one of those guys who can fix anything or build anything. It doesn”t matter if it’s made of wood, steel. concrete or dirt, Norm is an expert. It’s funny, but I know several guys like him with talents like that.
Norm was with me almost from the very start. I don’t recall specifically if he was at Major Hoople’s Restaurant the first night I met Coleen but he must have been because we were both there almost every night for happy hour. I think he went home early that evening because he was not there when I gave Coleen a ride home after she finished her waitress shift. Anyway, Norm and I were good friends and while dating Coleen, we would get together with Norm and his wife Carmen for dinner or drinks on occasion. And later on, when Coleen and I were planning our wedding, I asked Norm to be my best man.
Norm and I worked together so we saw each other every day and along with another co-worker named Steve, often had a few cocktails before going home after work. One of those evenings was memorable as it was just Norm and I and it was a different bar than we usually frequented. The date April 11, 1981 and the reason I know that was because the following day was the launch of the first space shuttle, Columbia. Norm and I were both fascinated with events like that and started talking about it when we first sat down at the bar. We both ordered Chivas Regal scotch on the rocks and as the bartender poured, he ran out and opened a new bottle. Norm and I were apparently there longer than we had planned because when we had our final Chivas that evening, the new bottle was also empty. Our boss was out with us one night and he referred to us as “professionals” when discussing our drinking prowess.
Norm was a great choice for best man and he played that role well. Coleen and I saw him a lot prior to the wedding and I liked it that she and Norm got along so well. Not long after we were married, we had some cutbacks at work and Norm was layed off. We still stayed in touch but it was a little different not seeing him every day. Norm helped us move in our house and he even did some work on it for us which he wouldn’t take any money for. He did accept the case of beer and bottle of scotch I bought for him, though. We saw each other less frequently though and as time went along, we drifted further apart, each focused on our own lives more and more. Then we lost touch entirely. I tried to look him up a few times but couldn’t find a phone number. I knew that he had divorced his wife and she left town but not much else about him.
One Saturday I was returning home from a lunch with a different old friend. I stopped in a convenience store near my house to buy something and was standing at the register waiting to pay. I heard a voice from the register to my right say “ID? I’m old enough to be your grandfather, for Chrissake, and I have to show you ID?” I didn’t have to look to see it was my old friend Norm, trying to buy a 12 pack of Labatt Blue and giving the kid behind the counter a hard time for trying to do his job. I spoke up and said to the clerk, “It’s okay. I can vouch for this guy. He’s really old.” Norm turned and looked at me. He paused before speaking, almost like he was trying to focus on me, recognizing but not believing. It seemed like a five second delay before he spoke. “Rob?”
So there it was, standing at the register of a 7-11 that Norm and I were reunited. Kind of. He was with his wife and we talked for about 30 minutes promising at the end to get together. We exchanged phone numbers and parted and still have not seen each other since. Friendships are stupid sometimes and I am not as good with them as I should be. Especially with this one. I of all people should know better than that.
Norm and I spoke on the phone several times since that encounter. Shortly after we met, Coleen was diagnosed with her second bout of breast cancer and I mentioned that to him. And I think we talked on the phone once or twice after that before she passed away. When Coleen died, I called people but I never called Norm. It wasn’t like I was ignoring him, it just never occurred to me to let him know and it should have. Was it a subliminal slight because of how close we once were and because he was there from the start? I don’t know, maybe. I think I just forgot to call him and I should not have. Not long ago, Norm called me to say hi. At that time, Coleen had been gone about four months. Of course, Norm didn’t know. I told him. I felt horrible telling him about her death and of course he felt horrible hearing about it. He deserved to hear that news when it happened and I should have delivered it to him.
In three days I am going to finally get together with my old friend, Norm for lunch. After all this time, we will reunite and talk of our lives then and now and in between. Is it ironic that I am writing about Norm 33 years to the day of when he was the best man at our wedding? I don’t know about it being ironic but it is certainly way overdue.
Norm and I in our usual pose back then. Cigarettes and scotch in our hands, smiles on our faces. Wedding receprtion, June 6, 1981, Samuel’s Grand Manor, Clarence, NY
I know it is a common occurrence for husbands to forget their wedding anniversaries. There have been many jokes made about that and some guys have even tried tactics like getting married on a holiday or their birthday to lessen the chances of them forgetting that precious day. I am not going to say that I never forgot an anniversary although I sometimes didn’t think of it until Coleen reminded me a week or so before. Then there was the one year that we both forgot it. We didn’t realize it was our anniversary until a card came in the mail from my mom. Good thing she reminded us.
There are two anniversaries that stand out for me. Our first was June 6, 1982 and Coleen was pregnant with our daughter who would be born six weeks later. I was working at a job that didn’t pay very well after being out of work for several weeks before. I would actually get a new job, one that would last for 22 years, just a few weeks after our anniversary. But times were tough for us that first year and we had very little extra money, making a big anniversary celebration unlikely. We found a way to overcome that though. The credit for that goes to Coleen. She found a special offer in the paper for a dinner at Tony Roma’s restaurant. I don’t remember the details but it was buy one dinner, get one free or something like that. So to pay for the one dinner, we rolled a bunch of change we accumulated over the year and had more than enough for a pretty nice night out. Not fancy, but nice.
Our 25th Anniversary was eight years ago. Our children had a surprise party for us which was very nice although we kind of figured out the surprise before we got there. It was a lot of fun and there were many people there whom I did not expect to see. A few days after the party, Coleen and I took our children to dinner at Coleen’s favorite restaurant, Hutch’s. We had a wonderful evening and dinner and we loved that we shared our night with our kids. It seemed very special.
Anniversaries are special to a couple in love. Holidays are nice, but the anniversary is a day just for that couple. I didn’t always buy gifts or send flowers but the day never escaped me and I always paid special attention to my bride on a day like that. And I certainly wasn’t going to let our 25th get away from me without doing something special. Our wedding photographer was not very good. He was a friend of a friend and although he took a lot of photos, they were pretty bad. And as if that wasn’t enough, when he developed them for us he gave them to us as slides. Remember those? Little tiny squares that looked like a negative surrounded by cardboard. You needed to put them in a projector to see them. We looked at them a few times but for most of those 25 years our wedding photos sat in a box in a closet. I decided to dig them out, sort through them and find the best of the bunch. I took those to a photo developer and had them converted to 4 x 6 inch prints, bought a nice photo album, put the photos in it, and wrote a note to my bride inside the front cover. I liked that for a gift, but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted more. I wanted jewelry and I knew exactly what it was I wanted.
I told the girl at the jewelry store, “I am looking for a necklace. White gold. Nothing too big. I want it to have two hearts connected to each other or intertwined. Do you have anything like that?” She did and I bought it. That might have been the easiest thing I ever bought.
After our anniversary dinner at Hutch’s we came home and I gave Coleen the gifts I was so proud of. She opened them and was so touched. I had tears in my eyes as we all looked at the wedding album. After all this time she finally had a collection of photos to look at from our wedding day. And the necklace? Well that became her favorite and she wore it a lot of the time. Not always, but certainly more than any other. She has it on in many of the photos I have of her and it always made me smile when she wore it. Two hearts intertwined forever.
Tomorrow is the first June 6th I have experienced in the last 33 years that I will not be Coleen’s husband. I wanted to say that tomorrow would have been our 33rd Wedding Anniversary but that is not exactly right. Actually, it is our 33rd Wedding Anniversary and the way I feel right now, it will be the hardest day I have faced since she died. Tomorrow will be our day, the day we always celebrated as husband and wife. It will be my loss to bear alone tomorrow. I don’t know what I will do but I have a busy day ahead. Ironically, I have a session with my bereavement counselor in the morning. I will also spend time volunteering with Coleen’s friend and mine, Rebecca, for a health fair. And I have a wake to attend in the afternoon for an old friend who died earlier this week.
Like all of our other Wedding Anniversaries, I will not let the day get away from me. I have a book of photos, another of poetry, a beautiful necklace, a plethora of memories and a place to go. There are geraniums at her grave right now and I will bring some roses and maybe some champagne. We always drank champagne on June 6.
My wife was taken from me last year. Her wonderful life was shortened considerably by breast cancer. She did not go quietly or predictably. She fought her disease twice with courage, grace, research and alternative therapies. You see Coleen was not one to take such matters sitting down. If there was something to learn, she taught herself. If there was something she didn’t know, she asked. Although treated by the traditional methods of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, Coleen knew there was more to fighting cancer than just what the doctors ordered. So she combined traditional western medicines with several forms of holistic treatments and therapies to wage her war and protect her wellness as honorably as she could.
Coleen’s holistic weapons included yoga, massage, vitamins, nutrition, reiki, meditation, acupuncture, Eastern spirituality and more. She was an avid reader and remembered details from books long ago read. Her insatiable thirst for knowledge led her in many directions and taught her so many things. Through her holistic practices, Coleen developed an impressive and talented network of practitioners and advisers. It was kind of dream team of support for her and although she never expected to be healed from any one of them, the emotional and internal strength provided by each was crucial to her state of mind as her journey developed.
One of Coleen’s favorite holistic treatments was reiki. Someone recommended it to her along with a reiki practitioner named Rebecca. Coleen loved it. She had several sessions with Rebecca and I was always very excited for her when she told me she had a reiki appointment because it always put her in such good spirits afterwards. I didn’t know much about reiki and even Coleen, as articulate as she was, had a difficult time explaining it to me. Maybe I just didn’t listen well enough, but I knew she loved it and that was really all that mattered.
When Coleen met with Rebecca, there was more going on than just reiki. They talked together. Coleen could tell Rebecca things she didn’t feel comfortable telling others and Rebecca helped her with many things. One of the things they talked about was me. Coleen expressed her concern for me and how I would be crushed by her death. She was worried about how I would get along without her and with the rest of my life. Coleen told Rebecca that she did not want me to be alone and that my life would take on so many changes. Coleen was so worried about me that she arranged for eight sessions for me with Rebecca to be used after she died. She told Rebecca something like “Rob’s going to have a really hard time with losing me and he’s going to need help. I know he’ll listen to you.”
About a week before Coleen died, Rebecca called her. I answered the phone because by then Coleen had lost her voice and couldn’t be heard very well. I had never talked to Rebecca before but she was worried about Coleen and called to see how she was and to offer a reiki house-call. We accepted her offer and scheduled it for the upcoming Friday. Unfortunately, Coleen died two days prior to that appointment. I texted Rebecca to tell her and to cancel the appointment and she said she would get back to me in a few days to see how I was. And she did.
A week after Coleen’s death, Rebecca called me and told me about the gift Coleen had left me, the reiki and counseling sessions she had purchased to help me cope with my loss. As Rebecca explained Coleen’s gift, I was so stunned that I sat down on my porch and let the tears out. Overwhelmed as I was with Coleen’s planning and love, I still had not met Rebecca and had no idea of the power that gift held.
Rebecca and I met a few days later and we talked for nearly an hour about me, Coleen, life with her, life without her and life ever after. She introduced some sound therapy to me and told me she could help me. That Coleen would be helping me through her and that I would be safe. I believed her, I believed them. Throughout the last eight months, Rebecca has been a tremendous guidance and comfort to me as I have journeyed on a brand new path. She has reikied me, counseled me, scolded me, and most of all encouraged me to take on my feelings and my loss and become stronger and newer because of it. She has helped me realize the life opportunities I have before me and how I can be a difference not just to myself but to those around me. She has been a guiding light to me and I truly do not know where I would be, what I would be or who I would be without her.
A few days ago, I had a reiki session with Rebecca. It was different from all the others because it was the last one. I have visited with her at her little reiki cottage at 4588 South Park Ave many times during the past eight months. And many changes have occurred in me as a result of those visits. As that last reiki session played out, I was overwhelmed with emotion. It hadn’t dawned on me until I was under Rebecca’s reiki care for the final time the significance of that session. Suddenly I realized all of the things that had transpired in that room. I remembered the first time I was there, wounded badly by Coleen’s death just a week before. And I thought about all the different things I learned there, all the healing that had happened, all the discoveries I had made, and all the comfort and love I felt from Rebecca and through her, from Coleen. I didn’t always feel Coleen’s presence in the room when I had reiki, but there were many times when I did and they were powerful and emotional experiences. As I layed on that table, I thought about the journey I had taken and what had become of me since I first arrived. I realized what a changed person I had become because of Rebecca and Coleen and what I learned from them at 4588 South Park Ave. I will miss that place and the counsel and talents of Rebecca and the spirit of Coleen. Yet I believe I take from there and from them the knowledge I have gained and the lessons I have learned. I believe I can apply all that into my new life and wonder if that wasn’t the purpose of it all anyway.
One year for Christmas Coleen bought me a book that contained 100 different date ideas. She said it was a gift that kept on giving. So was her last gift to me, it keeps on giving and teaching and healing and I don’t think it will ever stop.
Yesterday morning I was cleaning my house in anticipation of a guest. I thought I would put on some music and decided a record was a good choice since I hadn’t played anything on my turntable for a while. I lifted the cover and saw a record was already on the turntable. It was the Beatles “Abbey Road,” which I had since I was in high school. I had no recollection of putting it there. I admit that some nights I drink a little too much wine, but I was very shocked to see that album. I looked down at the other albums I have and the “Abbey Road” album cover was there among them but was backwards and facing the wrong direction. I am kind of anal about such things and it is unusual that I would have done that, wine or no wine.
I looked again at the album and it was on side one. “Abbey Road” is one of my favorite albums but it is because of side two that I like it so much. I rarely play the side that was on the turntable. So I took it off, flipped it over and started to play the first song on side two which is of course, “Here Comes the Sun.” Something else was wrong. The turntable speed had been changed from 33 to 45 making the record spin too fast and the vocals sound more like The Chipmunks than the Beatles. My turntable was a recent gift from a friend and since I have had it, it’s always been on the 33 speed. In fact, as I stood there in amazement, I realized that I didn’t even know how to change the speed.
That was the point where I shut everything off and sat down. I had no explanation for what had just happened. There is the possibility that I may have done some of these things myself but not all of them. And certainly not changing the turntable’s speed. Of all the signs, whispers, messages I have received, none have been anything like this was. Figuring it out is like trying to interpret a dream which I have never been very good at. I always needed Coleen for that.
This morning I tried it again. I had on side two, queued up “Here Comes the Sun,” found the speed switch, slowed the revolutions to 33 and played it. Everything worked just fine. The album is old and has a few scratches but still sounded quite good. I must be doing something better today than I was before.
I have to leave for a few hours this morning but when I come back, the first thing I am going to do is check that turntable.
I have recently discovered a Buffalo institution. It is a place called Sportsmen’s Tavern and is an old neighborhood bar made over into an eclectic music club. There is a regular music schedule there and most of the talent is from this area although they do recruit some lesser-known national performers as well.
Every Saturday, Sportsmen’s has a matinée performance starting at 3:30 which is perfect for guys like me who no longer possess the last night stamina of our younger days. A few months ago I discovered a band called The Ron Davis Combo. They are an accumulation of several Buffalo music veterans including a very talented singer named Sue Kincaid. The Combo does mostly cover material but they mix in some originals every now and then. But its the covers and the band’s treatment of them that really get my attention. Just about everything they play has some kind of personal interpretation of the original, a certain Ron Davis Combo twist that makes the song almost their own. You have to hear them to believe them, but when I describe the Beatles classic “Day Tripper” with a bossa nova rhythm or the Bill Withers song “Ain’t No Sunshine” with more soul than he ever imagined, maybe you can get the idea. These guys are good.
Two days ago, I was downtown and not far from Sportsmen’s. I knew the Ron Davis Combo was playing that afternoon so I took a ride over to hear them. I forked over the $3 cover charge and found a front row seat at the bar. I ordered a local draft called “Trainwreck,” sat back and fell into the groove. About halfway through their second set, they introduced a song that I had not heard them play. They said only that it was a Beatles song covered by a woman named Nina Simone and that they were going to play her version of it. Nina Simone is an interesting singer who remains unknown to most people. Her music and voice are both hard to describe but she tends toward blues and soul versions of her original songs and the covers she does. I was somewhat familiar with her and was curious about what I would be hearing.
The opening piano riff was hard to identify, familiar but I wasn’t sure what it was. Then the band joined in and I found myself in the opening of the George Harrison classic “Here Comes the Sun.” Only it wasn’t because it had such a soulful spin to it that it sounded like a brand new song. When Sue Kincaid added her sultry vocal, the song really took off and I sat smiling. Then I heard it. I almost missed it but I was able to rewind a few seconds and get an instant replay of the lyrics she had just sung. Instead of the sticking to the original lyrics “It feels like years since it’s been here,” she sang “It feels like years since you’ve been here.” Once I realized what I heard, I got a chill, I smiled and just shook my head. The song was remarkable and I wish they would have played it again.
That night I went home and dialed up Nina Simone on You Tube and found “Here Comes the Sun.” I played it and it was different from the version I heard earlier in the day. A little slower. I actually liked the live version from the Ron Davis Combo a little better and thought it was interesting how they altered the cover of the cover of the original. But that lyric, the changing of that one word from “it’s” to “you’ve” just kept coming at me. Nina Simone sang it that way every time she got to that line and every time I heard it, I was thinking how long it’s been since Coleen has been here. It does seem like years. And it seems like it’s getting longer all the time.
“Here Comes the Sun” has become an anthem to me and my girls as we heal from Coleen’s death. My daughter hears that song on the radio as a way her mom communicates with her. Our granddaughters hear the “Sun Song” and know the words and sing along. The cellist played it at Coleen’s burial service and everyone smiled. I think of the lyrics and the message of newness the song presents and I can’t help but take it as a personal message to move forward with things that I am wrestling with. And with Nina Simone changing that word to “you’ve,” meaning Coleen to me, I hear that message even louder.
It’s funny how that one song has shown up so frequently in so many different ways since Coleen’s death. It seems that it has been everywhere, playing, encouraging, teaching. No coincidences. With lyrics like “It’s been a long cold lonely winter, It feels like years since you’ve been here,” how can I not take things personally? I am putting a lot of weight on the closing words, “It’s all right.”
