One thing I’ve learned about loss is you just never know when you are going to feel it. They told me that grief comes in waves, crashing at the shore of your emotions them returning peacefully from where they came. There is a sudden rush of grief and longing and helplessness that gives way to what is now supposed to be normal life. Although life will never be the the normal one I knew it to be.
A few nights ago, our granddaughter Samantha graduated from pre-school. When I say graduated I mean the pre-school she attended held a commencement ceremony in a local school complete with caps, gowns, procession and diploma. When Lindsay invited me I didn’t think much of it. Kind of just another one of those little things that grandparents went to like a school play or a Christmas pageant. I expected it to be cute and brief and fun to be at. I didn’t expect it to be so painful.
I sat with six other members of Samantha’s family in the third row of the auditorium. The music started and the graduates walked down the aisle from the rear and sat in their seats, bringing smiles to all of the parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier, but it wasn’t until I saw Samantha in her green cap and gown and big, proud smile that I realized we were once again one person short that night. That Samantha was missing a grandmother. And not only was she missing a grandmother for her pre-school graduation, but she would missing her for every occasion to come. Birthdays, recitals, plays, all of it. We all missed Coleen’s happiness and enthusiasm that night. She would have been all smiles and hugs and would have probably invited everyone back to the house for dessert or something. I thought about the day Samantha was born just five short years ago and how excited Coleen was. One day while Lindsay was pregnant, Coleen and I were in a store and there we saw a newborn baby. Coleen looked at the baby and smiled and said to me, “Hey, we’re getting one of those.” Or when she called me at work just before Samantha was born and told me she didn’t care about work, she was on her way to the hospital and said I better be too. And then I thought about all that has happened in those five years and how fast that time went and how Coleen isn’t with us anymore.
When it hit me at graduation, it was just like one of those waves crashing the shore. Oh my God, I thought, Coleen is supposed to be here too. This is the perfect event for her and she would have been so excited to be part of it. I half held back tears and I don’t know if anyone noticed but I was quite saddened by my realization. I guess I actually thought about Coleen’s absence before I left home because I wore her flower pin on my collar. It looked good and was quite noticeable against the black fabric of my shirt but nobody asked me about it. And nobody else from the family had one on. For me it is a way of including Coleen in functions like these. Even though she’s not physically with us, it’s a way of inviting her spirit to join in. It’s a way of honoring her and her enthusiasm.
Samantha & I at her Pre-School Graduation 7/26/2014
Coleen would have wanted to bring flowers to Samantha and I thought about that. But I thought Samantha would get plenty of those so I bought her a couple small gifts instead. She liked them, especially the bracelet from the Disney movie “Frozen,” and I thought Coleen would have approved of my choice. She might have even used one of her loving phrases like “You’re so smart,” on me after that.
For me, I never know when the grief and the loss are going to strike. I should have seen it coming at the graduation, though. I
Coleen with Claire smelling flowers
should have anticipated the void I would feel in that auditorium coming from that empty seat next to mine. I choked up several times but the biggest was when Lindsay said to me at the end how much she missed her mom there that night. How she wished she could have been there to see Sammie graduate. I said the same things to her and we talked about how hard these things are for us. Poor Lindsay. I think she got my sentimental genes. I feel bad for her and for me but mostly for our granddaughters. They are the ones getting short changed by not having Coleen as a Grandma. Of all the roles Coleen was to different people, Grandma was the one she was best at. Except for wife.
There is something different about me now. Actually, most things are different about me now. The way I live. The way I think. The people I know. The things I do and the places I go. They are all different. But it’s more than that. It’s me. Inside. Outside. I talk to people with such a calmness, such a quiet confidence. I hardly recognize myself. I am much more interesting than I was before. I should be. I know more than I did. I have been exposed to an entirely new cast of characters than I surrounded myself with before. Nothing negative about my life in the corporate world but the people there were much less interesting and inspirational than the people I have met since. My goals are different, my intentions clearer.
I wonder what Coleen would think of me now. She knew me better than anyone ever has but she knew me differently than I am now. She knew the old Rob and loved me in that persona. What would she think of me now? I wish she could see me today. I wish I could talk to her. I would be better for her now than I was when she knew me. The new self I have become would be much more pleasing to her and more receptive to her. She loved me before, she would love me even more now. She would like me better.
So I take that newness in myself to different places and I talk to different people. People I never knew before get the new version of me. Not that the last version was bad, but I am so much different now. I feel that I have a new awareness and I am eager to share that with people I know and with people I meet. It has become a passion of mine to reach out to people.
I have had occasion to speak with women who could be potential partners of mine. The calmness and confidence I spoke of earlier is even more evident in these encounters. Ironically, it is the discoveries I have made since Coleen’s death that propel me forward into my future. It is the newness that has developed in me that gives me the strength and the ability to not replace her, but to move forward without her.
A dear friend recently gave me a hand-written note that spoke of the expansive powers of the heart. She wrote that just when you think the heart is full and can not accept anything or anybody new to love, it finds a way to expand and make room for new love without sacrificing any love it already had. I believe that. I believe I will find that new love and that my heart will find the room for her while saving the space that will forever be Coleen’s. It won’t be competitive, it will be complementary.
I was recently at the venue of our wedding ceremony, a park not far from where I live. I met a woman there. She had brown hair, brown eyes. She was part German, part Irish and she had a lot to say. She was familiar, she was different. I was calm and I was confident and I tried to be interesting. She got the version of me that Coleen created but never saw. It was all very new and I felt my heart opening up.
I have read about grief. I have attended support groups for widowers. I have gone to individual counseling and attended bereavement seminars. I have lived through milestone days without the most important person in my life. I have celebrated my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve, New Years Day, Valentine’s Day, her birthday as well as all the monthly markers of her passing, all without her. Those days were all difficult, as I expected them to be. None of them were as difficult as June 6th which was our 33rd wedding anniversary.
Why was that day so much harder than the others? It shouldn’t have been. I mean it was just a part of the first year cycle of loss. It is said that the first year of occasions after a loss is the hardest and that the sum of all those special days is never again equaled. I don’t know about that because I am still within the first twelve month time zone. But it was by far the worst day of all. Here’s why.
Our wedding anniversary was a day that the two of us shared as a couple. Yes, we would get cards from people and some acknowledgement but it was our day to remember and to celebrate. It was a day when we would buy each other cards, I would buy flowers, we would go to dinner. Whatever happened, it was celebrating us and our lives together. So when June 6 came up in my rotation of days to feel shitty about, I didn’t have much company to share my grief with. It was my day to grieve alone.
I wasn’t sure what I would do that day. A few weeks ago at a luncheon with my support group, I was asked what I was going to do on the day of my wedding anniversary. I didn’t have a good answer because I really didn’t know what I was going to do or how I would feel that day. I thought about options ranging from going out to a fancy dinner alone to ignoring it completely. I knew I couldn’t just turn my back on it and did not want to eat alone. What happened that day seemed to take care of itself almost like I was just the conduit, the guy doing the deeds that had already been decided. In the morning of my 33rd wedding anniversary I left my house with a vase, a pair of scissors, and a bottle of water, and a book of poetry. I bought a dozen red roses and an anniversary card and drove to the cemetery where Coleen’s ashes are buried. I wrote something special in the card and sealed the envelope. I trimmed the roses, poured the water and placed them in the vase. I placed the card in the middle of the roses and read several poems from Coleen’s favorite book of poetry. I left to attend to some appointments I had that day. Ironically one was a session with my Hospice bereavement counselor where we talked about how I was handling the day. She liked it.
I returned to the cemetery later that day. I brought with me a bottle of champagne, two flute glasses, the book of poetry, our wedding album, and a folding chair. I opened the wine, poured two glasses, and toasted our loves. As I drank from one glass I poured the other into the ground. I looked at our wedding photos and remembered the day aloud. I opened the card I had left that morning and read it to her. I read another couple of poems. I drank more champagne and shared more with the earth. I celebrated the love I shared with Coleen. I celebrated us. At the end, before I left, I poured the rest of the champagne in the ground, slowly circling the vase of red roses. I selected one rose from the vase and brought it home. I left the others along with the vase, the card, and one of the flute glasses partially filled. I was sad throughout the entire yet when I left, I took with me a sense of calmness and peace. Something that I had done that day, or maybe the sum of all of them, made me feel better. Something had pulled me through and made me realize that an anniversary should be a celebration not a wake.
The love story that was Coleen and I was Coleen and I. Sure, there were many wonderful people in our lives but the love story was her and I. And it was an incredible story. Perhaps nothing special to most people and certainly nothing to ever make a movie about, but to the two of us it was special. From start to finish, we were in love. Actually, we were madly in love. Yes, we had moments when we were mad at each other and when we disappointed each other. Nothing was perfect. But when we got past those moments as we always did, it was true love. Nobody understands the relationship two lovers have. The intimacies, the conversations, the sharing of secrets and concerns and weakness, the planning, the memories. Nobody understands that relationship except the people in it. We understood it. We knew what we meant to each other and how lucky we were to be together. No wonder the date we celebrated our love together for so many years, now left for me alone, was so painful for me.
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.
