ROCKY BALBOA & Me
One of my favorite movies is the original “ROCKY.” Coleen liked it, too. We usually didn’t agree on movies so it was always special to hit on one we both liked and ROCKY was one of them. That’s a movie I could still watch once a month and not get sick of it. Coleen wasn’t much for watching something she had already seen, but I know for a fact she saw ROCKY, or at least parts of it, several times. Probably every time she watched it, I was with her but she wasn’t with me every time I watched it. Not now.The ROCKY series of movies made a sharp turn towards the absurd after the second one. Stallone took himself and his character too far after that and the stories got pretty ridiculous. For me, I didn’t care so much. I watched them anyway. Not repeatedly, not like the first one, but I have seen them all at least once. After ROCKY 5, I thought the whole thing was over and deservedly so. Stallone was pretty old and the idea of Rocky getting back in the boxing ring with anybody was pretty crazy. Then I heard about one last sequel. The last Rocky movie was called “ROCKY BALBOA” and when I learned of its existence, I had to see it.p> I don’t remember exactly when that was but I do know that Coleen had been diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (should that be capitalized? If so, I refuse to do it.) by then. Some evenings she would meditate or read or do some yoga or maybe just want to rest. Other nights we would be together talking or trying to console each other. Often times we would discuss her treatments and options and how she was feeling about some of the alternative things she was doing. And some nights we would just hold each other. I always tried so hard to encourage her. I hate myself for not being able to fix her. I’ll never get over that failure. It’s true that I don’t walk around with a pocketful of miracles, but she was my Baby and your supposed to protect your Baby. I couldn’t fix her and we both knew that, so instead we tried so hard to encourage and support each other.
Sorry about that. It didn’t have much to do with Rocky but I needed to say it anyway. Sometimes when Coleen was involved in some of her self-help things I would go upstairs and watch sports or TV or movies. One night I put “ROCKY BALBOA” in the Blu-Rayplayer. I didn’t know anything about the movie so I was surprised by everything. The opening scene had Rocky in a cemetery reading aloud and talking to his wife, Adrian who had died of cancer. He was seated at her grave in a folding wooden chair talking to her and he was there every day doing the same thing. He was still sad, but had adjusted. He missed her but created a life of his own after her. A new Rocky. At the end of the first scene he got up, folded his chair, and put it in the tree overhanging Adrian’s grave. He kept the chair there in the tree so he wouldn’t have to carry it back and forth every day. Because he went there every day.
At this point, I am going to assume that anyone reading this post knows about Rocky and Adrian. They were soul mates. She was his inspiration. They were deeply in love and married a long time. In many ways they were similar to Coleen and I. It’s true that I was never heavyweight boxing champion of the world like Rocky, but at least I can say that I am more than just a fictional character. When I started the movie and saw Rocky in the cemetery, I immediately thought of the foreshadowing that represented to me. Was that to be our fate? Coleen was doing pretty well at that time but her overall prognosis wasn’t good. Was I going to be Rocky Balboa someday? I couldn’t help but wonder about that. I didn’t want to think about it, but I wondered.
Coleen and I had talked about how she wanted things to be arranged after her death. I knew she wanted to be cremated but did not know her wishes beyond that. I asked her if she wanted her ashes spread somewhere like the Outer Banks, Adirondacks, Pacific Coast or some other place dear to her. She didn’t have anything specific in mind for that and asked me what I thought. I said that I liked the idea of having a place to go, a special place that would always mean her to me. And a place where our children and grandchildren and her parents and family could go to remember her. She mentioned a quaint little cemetery just down the road from where we live that she always liked. She rode her bike through there a lot and took me there with her sometimes. I liked that idea and we just kind of let the conversation settle right there, both of us seemingly content with our unspoken decision.
A week or so after Coleen died, I went to that cemetery and looked around for plots. It is a very old cemetery and there are many trees there. That became one of my priorities in choosing the right location. I wanted a tree overhead or at least nearby. So that she could have a lot of sun because she loved the light, but at the same time, I wanted there to be shade sometimes to protect her. I can not say that the ROCKY BALBOA movie wasn’t playing in my head while all of this was going on because it was. I didn’t intend on putting a folding chair in the tree, but I wanted a tree there anyway. And I wanted a place to go where I could be alone with her and where we could talk. During a different conversation Coleen and I had toward the end, I told her I was always going to be talking to her. She laughed and said that she would try to find a way to talk back.
I don’t know how Rocky Balboa made his choice, but I was very deliberate in selecting Coleen’s final resting spot. I visited the cemetery several times and viewed the surroundings from many different grave sites. Did I want a new area, an old one, open to the sun, lots of trees? I never bought a piece of land in a cemetery before, especially one as important as this one. The very first plot I was shown stayed with me, though. I kept going back to that one. I brought Patrick with me to get his opinion. A few days later I brought Lindsay and my granddaughters to the cemetery so I could show Lindsay the plots I was considering. We looked at two and then I took her to the very first one I saw. The same Patrick said he liked. It was the one under a tree, part sun, part shade. It was in an older part of the cemetery where there were lots of neighbors and she could be social. The sun was shining that morning, sending streaks of itself through the trees. The girls were running around through the markers, laughing and playing. Lindsay and I watched and laughed ourselves. Just to the right of that plot was a small trail and to the right of that was the stump to a large tree that had been cut down years ago. The tree stump was within a few yards of the grave site. It was about six inches above the ground and maybe three feet in diameter. When the girls discovered it, they decided it was a stage and they took turns standing on it and singing songs. Right next to where their Grandma could hear them.
How could I possibly not think that Coleen was talking to me at that moment, through her granddaughters, through that sunshine, telling me, “Yes, yes, please, this is the spot. This is where we can be together, where we can meet and rendezvous, laugh and cry and remember and be perpetual and eternal. This is us. All of us. I like it here.”
I was listening. I heard her. I went back the next day and bought that plot. Coleen’s not there yet but she will be this spring. I talk to her now but I think it will be very special to have that place under that tree, part sun, part shade, where there’s a stage next door for the girls to sing and sunlight through the trees and where we can all go to be together again.
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