I was encouraged to develop a yoga practice, or at least do a little of it from time to time, for many years. Coleen was very enthusiastic about yoga and did a lot of it. She frequently encouraged me to try it but I always had reasons not to. Now, I have finally listened to her and I’m learning not only to try it, but to love it.
I always thought that yoga was: 1. for girls, 2. just twisting your body into impossible positions, 3. too time consuming. I was wrong about it being just for girls. There are men in every class I have attended and yoga is becoming a popular training method for professional athletes. I was wrong about the twisting part. Yes there is a large amount of physical activity and stretching and twisting are among them. But so is balance and breathing. There is so much mental and spiritual reward to yoga that sometimes you forget the position you have put your body into. I was wrong about it taking too much time. It’s true that for me attend a yoga class, I need about 2-1/2 hours including driving time. Which is worth every minute, by the way. It is also true that I can take about 30 minutes out of my day and do some yoga from a DVD at home. And once the weather breaks, I am looking forward to being in my backyard, bare feet on the ground, doing yoga postures from memory. Yoga is time well spent.
I was at a yoga class today with my favorite instructor, Felicitas. Felicitas is a wonderful woman as well as instructor. She owns the studio and was a very good friend of Coleen. She has also been very sensitive to my loss and has spoken to me about Coleen several times. Her classes are different because of her experience and expertise in teaching the mindfulness of yoga. She encourages each student to express their yoga as fully as possible with constant awareness of proper breathing, balance and spiritual awakening. I have learned how yoga is so much more than just stretching and trying to hold a posture for as long as possible without getting hurt. It is mental as well as physical and when done properly, a true union of body, spirit and mind. I don’t know how properly I was doing things today but I must have been at least pretty close. There were times today when I felt everything blending and floating to different places.
Felicitas started by talking about one of my favorite topics these days, letting go. She asked us to think of one thing that we should let go of and to think of that throughout the sesson. I thought of two. I keep hearing messages and whispers about letting go of the past, letting go of the things that bother us, the things that are not true to our authentic selves. As individuals, we owe ourselves the ability to define ourselves and to let that self be authentic. Too many times we fit ourselves into a role someone expects us to play. For me, it was husband and provider. But is that what I am? Is that authentic to me? Can I let go of what’s expected and be my true self? As Felicitas guided us through today’s yoga experience, she kept reminding us to let go of that which haunts us and that makes us uncomfortable. Of course, I thought I should further loosen my hold of Coleen, to let her go a little bit further from me. I focused on the releasing of her and the past we had together. I had visions behind closed eyes, visions that started very clearly and then faded gradually into black. I saw flowers, clouds, faces. I felt sadness and sorrow as I let go a little more and let things drift away and I felt tears down my cheeks. I think Felicitas noticed my emotion. As we were concluding, she spoke once more of the importance of letting go and how we needed to do that in order to move ahead. She was looking me right in the eye as she said it and she smiled.
It wasn’t until later today that I thought of the second thing I had to let go of. I thought that by letting go of Coleen, I would be able to embrace a new relationship. I have been seeing a wonderful woman who has become very special to me. In her haste to make me hers, she has asked me to relinquish a piece of myself which I am not yet ready to part with. She has asked me to put myself in a place where I’m not yet comfortable. At first I thought it would be a place where my authentic self could live. But as it turns out, it is a place where I would need to be someone I’m not comfortable being in order to fit. I would not be true to myself or anyone else there. I need to let go of not being my authentic self as much as I need to let go of Coleen. Maybe even more.
A few years ago, my son Patrick had a website called smallbusinessbuffalo.com where he did interviews with small business owners. One of his finest hours was this two-part interview of Felicitas which is still on the Healing Waters website.
Before I ever met Coleen, I knew a girl named Barbra Butler. I know you might think that I am spelling her name wrong because it looks like I am leaving out an “a” but that is how this Barbra spelled her name. Barbra Butler and I met during the depths of winter in 1978. She was a beautiful girl and we became quite the couple for a while there. Way back when.
I was single again then when I met Barbra. I was recently divorced and was having a cocktail at a restaurant/bar in Cleveland during happy hour on a Friday night. Back then, I fashioned myself a poet and I recall jotting some words that rhymed on a bar napkin. I looked up and noticed an incredibly attractive woman across from me. I ordered another scotch and asked Dennis the bartender to get a drink for the young lady across from me. He obliged but then came back and said to me that the lady said she doesn’t drink alone.
I missed my queue on that but let it go and went back to the verse and the cocktail napkin I was so enamored with. Next thing I knew the woman from the other side of the bar parked herself next to me and said, “Hi, I’m Barbra.” Thus began the most tumultuous relationship I have ever had. Until now.
Barbra Butler and I were either madly and incredibly in love or we were hanging up on each other. We were different in many ways yet identical in others. We both tried to change the other to somehow make things fit better but ultimately, we recognized our futility. We tried though and it took us many fights, discussions and arguments before we finally got to the point where we knew.
As low as the lows were, the good times were incredible. Barbra Butler taught me many things about love and happiness. She will always be memorable for introducing the works of J. D. Salinger to me and for loving my poetry. Barbra had previously dated a musician from Cleveland named Eric Carmen (remember The Raspberries?) and she told me that I wrote a lot better than him. She was a bit of a material girl and I was still part hippie so those parts conflicted. We had very fun times together and tried hard to make things work out. Trouble was, we were too different in too many ways for things to happen for us. One of us would have had to make a significant character change to make Barbra Butler and I a long-term relationship and we were both too stubborn and set in our ways for that.
Barbra Butler and I stopped seeing each other after about eight months, I guess. I hated to stop seeing her but I had to. I could not take the drastic pendulum shifts of our relationship and I was sure that she felt the same. I eventually moved to Buffalo, NY but I came home to Cleveland frequently. It was on one of those weekends when I came back to visit and I was staying at my mom’s apartment. I called Barbra and we met again. The magic was still there and it was wonderful. Unfortunately, so was the friction side and it didn’t take too nlong for that to once again present itself. Barbra Butler and I, as perfect as we were for each other, had no business being together. I did write my best poem ever after our last encounter. It was called “You Again” and to this day, I think it has the makings of an incredible blues song.
So why all the talk of Barbra Butler after all these years? Well, I met her again recently. Only this Barbara used the extra “a” in her name and her last name wasn’t Butler. Aside from that and about 35 years, she was the same. Barbara M was also very beautiful and fun. She and I made each other laugh and we talked a lot and enjoyed each other. The similarities between me and Barbra Butler and me and Barbara M were uncanny. I recognized them almost immediately. I wasn’t sure if part of me was enchanted with the new Barbara because she reminded me of Barbra Butler or if I liked her because she was fun and pretty and seemed to like me back. I learned quickly that she was indeed her own brand of Barbara. We polarized each other, we flirted with love, we argued, we kissed and made up. In both cases, I was unable to make the concessions necessary to advance the relationship. Both women had a clear vision of what their ideal mate would look like and although he didn’t look quite like me, they thought I could be altered enough to fit their needs. I thought otherwise. Both Barbaras were very fashion conscious and dressed much better than me. They both had wealthier financial histories than me and neither of them had much in common with my more alternative, holistic, hippie-ish lifestyle. In other words, we didn’t always have a whole lot of mutual interests. Much of the time I was with the 2014 Barbara, I kept thinking that the fates were doomed to be the same as with the 1978 Barbra. I was right about that. Neither of us was willing or able to make the necessary changes to our character to satisfy the requirements of the other, and eventually and sadly, we parted. Seems that if history has taught me anything, it is that as romantic as things can seem, sometimes they just aren’t right. That can be hard to admit because we are all so damned needy sometimes, but we are better off admitting it than not. We’re better off knowing and admitting than wondering and pretending.
I know that this entire article is uncomfortable. After all, why am I writing about someone I have not seen in 35 years? And why am I dating anyone at this point? And not just dating, but far enough along in a relationship to break up with her. Some might be disturbed by that, others might be relieved and I myself am confused. I just know that Coleen told me to find someone else and to take care of myself and that she was right about that. I do need a relationship, although I need it selfishly right now and on my terms. I’m not yet ready to make any deals or compromises. But at the same time, I need to be in a place where I can release all of my romance, love and intentions to a girl. I held back with both Barbara’s, especially recently with Barbara M. I wasn’t fair to her and I regret that. It’s true that when I lost Coleen, I lost someone very special and I will not be easy to please. That has to be my cross to bear, though. I have to learn not to hold it against anyone. In the long run, we are all just trying to find our way.
I’m not sure if this post is part of the love, the loss, the healing or the discovery. Or maybe it doesn’t belong in any of those slots or even here on this website. Maybe a better description would be “Lost Loves,” “My Regrets,” or “Love Before and After.”
I have been attending church on a regular basis since my wife passed away in September. I missed a few weeks in the beginning because I had company and also took a week long trip to Florida at the end of October. Most other Sundays have found me at St. Paul’s Cathedral for the 9:00 AM service.
It felt good for me to return there after Coleen’s death. That church is a healer for me as are many of the friends I have made there. On the Sunday I returned to St. Paul’s, many people approached me with smiles, hugs and good wishes and I felt very good about being there. I sat with my friend Liz that morning and felt very comfortable even though I was without Coleen. I had attended services at St Paul’s alone before a few times when Coleen had been too sick to come or those two weeks when she was in Florida at the Hippocrates Institute trying to get healed by a raw diet and wheat grass. Those weeks were different though because she was still alive and I told myself I was going alone on a temporary basis and she would be back beside me in a week or so.
St. Paul’s is sacred to me for many reasons. It is where we went the week after Coleen’s initial breast cancer diagnosis and heard the choir sing like there were angels among them. It’s where Coleen received healing prayers every week to keep her spirit strong for her battle. It is where we renewed our wedding vows in front of our children, family and the congregation. It is where we held the memorial service for my mother when she died. And of course, it was the place of Coleen’s beautiful funeral service.
When I go to St. Paul’s now, I sometimes sit in the pew we sat in and other times I sit somewhere completely different. But I always sit alone. Until this week when I brought a guest. Her name is Barbara and we have been seeing each other for over a month. I had been reluctant to announce our relationship with anyone because I wasn’t sure how Barbara and I, as a couple, would be received in light of my circumstances. In recent weeks, I have been hearing whispers and messages about letting go of the past to make way for the present and the future. I have been trying to balance those messages against my unwillingness to let go of Coleen. For me, it has been a process of taking a few baby steps, losing some ground, then finding some traction and taking a few more steps. One of those steps was bringing Barbara to St. Paul’s with me last Sunday. I had been reluctant for people to see me with a woman not named Coleen but wanted to change that. So Barbara agreed to break the ice by accompanying me to church.
I was nervous about introducing her to my friends there. After all, they all knew Coleen and I wondered what they would think. I did not want to make anyone uncomfortable but at the same time, I knew I would. But I thought if I could somehow seem comfortable myself, it would soothe all of us. I considered Barbara to be my girlfriend but I was hesitant to use that term to introduce her. Maybe in a way, I didn’t want to admit that to anyone, myself included. But in another way, I was proud of that fact and wanted to shout it out.
Barbara and I sat in church in a pew that I don’t think Coleen and I ever sat in. We arrived a few minutes late so we did not meet anyone on the way in. I helped her with the service, held her hand during the sermon and kissed her on the lips when it was time for The Peace. I kept looking up at the ceiling which is a brilliant blue with lights and stars on high. I looked up and thought of all the times I was there with Coleen and the times without her. I thought of the recent times I have been there alone, head bowed, holding her rings in my hand, wiping back tears. I thought of renewing our wedding vows and how happy and beautiful she was that day. I thought of her funeral service and the sunlight shining through that window onto her entire family. I thought of everything that church meant to us. I wondered what she might have thought about me being there with Barbara instead of her. Then I looked to my left and saw Barbara and thought how she was the present and the future for me if we could find a way to let that happen. If I could find a way to let that happen. That day could be the beginning of a new start for me and for her if we let it be. There are many memories in that Cathedral for me, but hopefully, many more to come.
I think Barbara liked being at St. Paul’s with me and she might even return someday. On the way out I introduced her to a few people including the priest, Father Don. For some reason, most of my friends were not in attendance that day. Wonder what that means. I never called her my girlfriend, though. I probably should have done that. Barbara would have liked that. We went from church to breakfast then for a drive around downtown and the waterfront. We visited a holistic exposition that I didn’t think she would like. I was right, she didn’t like it but we still had fun there. We took in a movie and then back to her place for dinner and the Oscars. Barbara and I spent the entire day together and we were comfortable and we had fun. I wondered though, if we could ultimately be happy. We had a lot of circumstances and differences between the two of us and I wondered how we might work through those. Was Barbara the secret to me letting go of Coleen or the reason for me not to?
I have reached the point in my new life that I think I’m ready for female companionship. Maybe even have a girlfriend. Some might be surprised by that admission, others might be relieved. I myself am confused and somewhat torn by these feelings and the daily conflict I face between letting go and hanging on.
Coleen and I had a wonderful relationship for 33 years. We were madly in love and shared a life that others would be envious of. Now, I am envious of that life and jealous that I don’t have it anymore. Coleen knew I would feel that way and that is one of the reasons she instructed me to find someone after her. By telling me that, she was relieving me of the guilt I would foster in myself by taking that course. She was giving me her permission to let go.
I wondered when the timing would be right for me to put myself in play and actively seek out another woman. I admit to thinking about becoming active for a while, a couple of months at least, but always questioned if I was being too quick in looking for love after Coleen. I felt guilt about doing something that I would have done with her if she hadn’t died. But she did die and that’s the conundrum I faced and still face. I must let go in order to move on.
And what of the woman I find and invite into my life? How fair is of me to ask her to understand me at this particular place in my time? She meets me as a single man slowly recovering from the loss of his beloved wife. I think I am in the right condition to begin a new relationship, maybe even a romance. Yet I know that I am still hanging on to Coleen in different ways. And although my house is slowly becoming my home, it still has much of Coleen and the 27 years of her life here to overlook. It wouldn’t bother me so much to enter a woman’s house after her husband died, but girls are different and I know that would be an issue for most of them. I have been told by a friend that I might want to look for a different house because no woman will ever be completely comfortable where I live. Or how about the rings I wear on a chain around my neck? Coleen’s engagement ring and wedding ring have been dangling around my neck, flirting with my heart since about a week after she died. I don’t ever want to take them off. But what should I expect a new girl to think when I take my shirt off someday and display those rings? How is that supposed to make her feel?
Sometimes, I think I would be better off if I met a woman who had lost her husband. Since I became a widower, I have felt that losing a spouse is the worst kind of loss. There is just nobody in your life that you share the things with that you share with your spouse. All your emotions, troubles, worries, joys and intimacies are placed in the trusts of each other until death do you part. And then what happens after death parts you? A sorrow and vacancy overwhelms us and we want to do what we have always done and that is turn to our spouse for comfort. Only we can’t. A victim of the same pain, a fellow survivor would be able to best understand what my dilemmas are. We would be well equipped to comfort each other, share our loss and our healing. I would not be asking as much of her as I would be asking of an otherwise single woman.
During the past few months, I have developed several activities that not only keep me busy but interest me immensely. I am on a board of directors for a new nonprofit, do a lot of writing here, take yoga classes, get reiki and massage therapies, attend a support group, and have contributed time to my church and some cancer organizations. I am very inspired by these interests and plan on not just continuing them but to also expand them. I want to become more involved in helping people understand loss and their healing and find ways to develop new projects, market and grow the nonprofit, advocate for breast cancer concerns. Of course, most of these interests and inspirations were born as a result of losing Coleen. I would argue that although inspired by her, my participation comes from my enjoyment and ability to bring special talents and skills to those projects. A new girl in my life might think otherwise. She might see my interests as a another way of me holding on instead of letting go.
Some people have already expressed discomfort with the idea of me being together with someone other that Coleen. We were not the perfect couple but we got along well and had a lot of fun together. We presented well and made people very happy and comfortable around us. Coleen and I had many diverse interests and explored those individually but we did so many things as a couple. We were Coleen and Rob to almost everyone. In my new life I am just Rob and that is hard enough for people to accept. It is already a harsh and constant reminder that Coleen is gone. Imagine the uneasiness I will cause when I introduce my “friend” to them. They all know it’s coming but nobody wants to see that.
How fair is it for me to ask a woman into my life and she has that issue to deal with? How comfortable will she be in that situation when I introduce her to my daughters or son or friends or sister-in-law? Or if I am with her and run into one of Coleen’s friends or someone we knew as a couple? I envision that scenario as being not only inevitable, but extremely awkward and uncomfortable for everyone involved. Am I being fair to ask a girl to enter my life and be put in such stressful situations? How about the old friend? She would be troubled seeing me someone other that Coleen. And I would feel bad about being the catalyst for all this discomfort.
Ultimately, I guess it’s going to come down to me being comfortable with myself, my situation and my new friend. Once I am that, I can share or pass that comfort on to everyone else. I don’t want to fall in love right now. It’s too early for me to do that and I am too selfish with my time and interests. But I would like to be able to spend time with a new girl, get to know each other, do some dating and see what happens. I know I have a lot of luggage with me that I have to deal with and that she will have to deal with and I’m worried about how fair all that is for her. I worry about how I will affect my family and friends by being with another girl. I worry about how I will react when I start getting closer to her, when I feel myself slipping away from my past and reaching out for newness. I want to let go but a part of me wants to hang on, too. I never wanted to think about love without Coleen, let alone love after her.
Everywhere I go today, I will hear people saying “Happy New Year.” They have no idea.
I don’t mean they don’t know what they’re talking about. They know about what they’re saying and we all say those words this time of year every year. What they have no idea about is who they are saying those words to. I’m not claiming to have had the worst year of anyone alive because I’m sure I haven’t. I will say with confidence though, that 2013 was the worst year of my life and I am anxious to have it all behind me.
The birth of a new year is really nothing more than a new number. For most of us, nothing changes much. We all make resolutions and claim that we will somehow modify our behaviors when the clock strikes 12:00. Those resolutions don’t last long and really have nothing to do with a new year. But still, we identify the dawn of a new year as the perfect opportunity to make changes and to create things new and different.
We all know that 2013 brought the deaths of my wife and mother. I also lost an aunt. My mother suffered a catastrophic stroke and although still alive, she was not going to recover and would be living in a vegetative state. It was my job to inform her doctors that she would not want to be kept alive under those circumstances. For the ensuing seven days, she was in a Hospice bed and I watched her die with Coleen and my brother Jim at my side.
Although well into her first year of her Stage 4 diagnosis, Coleen was doing well at that time. She had undergone chemotherapy and was then taking an oral chemo drug. She was tired a lot but completely functional and self-sufficient. I know that those hours she spent with me in my mother’s hospital room were not good for her though. She had to be thinking about her diagnosis and what her future would look like. Coleen was strong for me during the entire ordeal of my mother’s passing. She helped me make the end-of-life decision, supported me emotionally and with her presence. Of course she planned and orchestrated the post funeral service reception we held at our house. Her selection of caterer and food was excellent as always.
Coleen’s condition worsened shortly after that and three months after my mom’s death, I lost her. And I have been on the mend ever since.
2013 was a ridiculously painful year for me and I am happy that it will soon be ending. Some would say it’s time for a new start, but I won’t say that because I have already made a new start. I have already become something new. A lesson to be learned from such loss is to move forward with purpose. A lesson to be unlearned from loss is to spend excessive time in sorrow and sadness. A loss as devastating as a 33-year-old love fest with your soul mate is not easy to rebound from. I expect to never completely recover from that. The wound may heal but there will always be a scar. But if ever somethings good can come from something so bad, I believe in certain ways, it has for me. I believe that I have discovered things I would not have. I believe I know things now that would have remained unknown to me. I have met many wonderful people I would have never known. I have discovered a new ability in myself to communicate and to extrovert myself to people I don’t know. I have released a pent-up creativity that I am still learning about. I have become closer with my children and them with each other. I have learned to let myself happen.
These are all things to come out of a terrible and painful situation. My perfect world pitch is that I would have met with all those fates without losing Coleen. It’s not necessary for me to say that I would trade all those new things for my old life back with her at my side. But I can never have that so it doesn’t matter. What I do have is myself and my newness and my family. I have my new role as patriarch and mentor and grandfather. I have my new friends and my new interests. I have many of my old ways but they have been garnished with new discoveries.
I even made a new friend last night that I would not have otherwise met. We spent several hours over a couple cocktails and never stopped talking. At the end I gave her a real kiss and a Hershey’s kiss wrapped in red foil. I told her I wasn’t sure if she would let me kiss her, so I brought a candy kiss to give her just in case. Something old like flirting, that I miss so much, with someone new.
So you see, even though it was still 2013, I have already started somethings new. In part to dim the past, in part to brighten it. Happy New Year, 2014. Let’s get it on.