 
I Pity the Man Who Marries You

Published by Amy Heath at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Amy Heath

Cover art: Amy Heath

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you want to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – The Unthinkable

Chapter 2 – Flipping on the Light

Chapter 3 – Birth of a Friendship

Chapter 4 – An Abbreviated Timeline

Chapter 5 – The Next Day

Chapter 6 – The Tie that Binds...

Chapter 7 – "There Won't Be No Procession"

Chapter 8 – A Shapeless Summer

Chapter 9 – Random Kindnesses

Chapter 10 – Post-Charlie Craziness

Chapter 11 – The Dear Tim Letters

Chapter 12 – The Message

Chapter 13 – Poor Me?

Chapter 14 – The Quest

Chapter 15 – Numerology

Chapter 16 – The Dream

Chapter 17 – Reducing my baggage to carry on...

Chapter 18 – Now

Chapter 19 – Many Thanks...

Appendix

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Chapter 1: The Unthinkable

As I drove home from the library, I kicked myself for not calling Charlie during the afternoon to let him know I was thinking of him. The trouble was, I had allowed myself to become so immersed in learning a new program that I lost track of time, of where I was even. Lately, the more confident I grew with new computer applications, the more curious and absorbed I became. And it made me feel good about myself as I jumped hurdle after hurdle. I needed to feel strong, be strong.

I climbed out of the car and scanned the garden, the backyard, the field down below, figuring I might see Charlie weeding or mowing or practicing archery. No sounds came from the garage when I briefly glanced back over my shoulder at the door slightly ajar.

The house was too quiet. The girls were off playing with their friends. My sub job at another library branch had been last minute, so it worked out nicely that the play time had already been arranged.

The pile of white business-sized envelopes on the kitchen table caught my eye immediately. It was not a stack of mail. I saw Charlie's handwriting on the top one.

My mind screamed, "No! He wouldn't!"

My heart raced me across the field to the neighbor's house to ask if they'd seen him go off on his bike. I had checked the garage and saw it was gone. I pictured Charlie pumping out a good, vigorous ride, pumping out his frustration, battling himself in the Metroparks, then resting against a tree trunk, tipping back his water bottle, thinking, practicing positive thinking.

I was trying to think positive thoughts, hoping against the evidence unfolding.

What good would it do for me to drive down there and search for him? He could be anywhere on the trails. I called his best friend from high school, his cross country buddy. They'd been in closer touch recently. I asked if Charlie had called him. He was aware of how Charlie had been suffering. Tom offered to come over to help. He told me he would call Charlie's dad, too, to let him know what was going on.

When I hung up I couldn't breathe. A murky thought was sucking me into a deep, dark hole. I looked out the kitchen window just then to see my sister Izzy arrive, the crunch of her tires on the gravel sounding louder than normal. I met her outside.

"Hey, Ame, what's going on?" she asked, just as perplexed as I was about why she was there.

"I don't know. I can't find Charlie. He left letters. What are you doing here?"

"Charlie called me earlier today and asked if I would come out here to be with you. He said you guys had argued."

"I just called his friend Tom. He lives close by. He's coming over. I think Charlie might be in the Metroparks somewhere riding his bike."

While we were in the kitchen, Izzy sifted through the white pile. I couldn't look at it. My mind refused to consider what it meant. My heart raced. Some fiend was tearing my soul in half as I paced around the living room, the dining room, anywhere but the kitchen. I fought that fiend. Charlie would never ...

I heard more crunching of tires on gravel. I ran outside. My brother Dan was here now. What the heck is going on? I couldn't connect all the dots.

Or I didn't want to.

"Hey, Ace, Charlie called earlier and said you needed help with something. What's up? Isn't that Izzy's car?"

"Yea, she's in the kitchen. I don't know where Charlie is. His friend Tom is coming over. I think Charlie may be riding his bike in the Metroparks."

My big, younger brother put his arm around my shoulder and walked me back into the kitchen. My knees felt rubbery on the steps. The look on Izzy's face told me what I didn't want to know. She had pulled a note from the bottom of the pile, one not in an envelope, and as she held it out to me Tom arrived, immediately followed by Charlie's dad. They stood outside talking before coming into the house.

"Ame, who are these people and what does this mean?" Izzy asked, still holding the note out to me, pointing to names.

I looked at the note. "Charlie's been taking care of their cats. They live over on Clague."

"Where's your phonebook? We need the address!" Her tone scared me.

Now the kitchen was crowded. Howard and Tom had come in. They spoke quietly with Dan while I ran into the dining room where we kept the phone on a little corner table. I heard Tom say something about the notes. Izzy grabbed the book from me. But Tom came in and said he knew exactly where the house was. The sun was starting to set. Pink light filtered through the buds of the mock orange outside the window.

As soon as Tom, Dan, and Howard left, Izzy asked what she could do. I told her about the girls and that I needed to pick them up. Izzy called my friend Sara for me. She explained briefly what was going on and asked Sara if she would pick up some overnight things for Meg and Claire.

Please let him be all right. Please let him be all right. Please don't let him have done anything awful. Those lines ran through my mind over and over.

I don't know what Izzy and I talked about or did. It seems Howard's wife was there, too. Inside me hope fought dread. I recall the slow motion silence of time passing.

The sun had set by the time they found him. The sun had set when they called.

Dan's quiet voice said, "He's gone, Ame. Charlie's dead."

I hung up the phone. My father's voice immediately echoed in my mind: "I pity the man who marries you."

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Chapter 2: Flipping on the Light

Once when I expressed anxiety about an upcoming visit with people whose political and social views were quite different from mine, my older daughter offered sage advice: "Pretend you're a cultural anthropologist." She suggested simply that I would observe and listen, but with no judgment. In those few words she successfully illustrated for me the concept of equanimity, of giving space impartially.

Where would I be now, I wonder, had I heard this long ago?

Throughout the years following Charlie's suicide in 1994, my hamster-wheel mind kept me going, reminding me of my responsibilities, round and round, year after year. I operated on assumptions and reactions. Imagined guilt was another fuel. I had always been hard on myself—and others— expecting a lot, judging a lot, not allowing for what I perceived to be weakness. Even after reading books that encouraged practicing kindness toward oneself, I could not catch on to the concept.

While first writing this book, I did not give myself much space as I puttered along. An uninvited self-doubt crowd often surrounded me.

"So what's your point?"

"Why do you bring this up after so many years?"

"Do you really think this could help anyone?"

"Lots of people have experienced far worse things in life."

"Oh, puh-leeeeease!"

Until recently, I viewed such a barrage in a negative light.

Occasionally that crowd caused a crash, tearing off my wheels and doors, my creative energy spilling out onto the road. My response? I got up, figured it was totaled, walked away, and hitched a ride with distraction. Assured-Productivity-with-the-Promise-of-Positive-Outcome pulled up and motioned me to get in.

"Hey! You're wasting everyone's time with all that drivel. Finish knitting that purse, the one with the spiral pattern that all your friends like. There are no rejection slips in knitting," it told me.

Over the excited urging of my creative voice it yelled, "You really are being so obnoxiously self-absorbed with this project!" Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. "Go volunteer somewhere!"

Distraction was especially happy to drop me off in the kitchen where I could pour myself a glass of wine and make a plate of nachos, then lose myself in mindless television.

But I needed to return to the wreckage and try to fix what I myself had caused.

After all, I set out with a goal.

I drove myself from Washington State halfway across the country to spend the winter in Minnesota to work on this. I repeat, the winter, in Minnesota. It was a lovely drive actually. My toy piano rode along as my passenger. It sat at just the right height so I could easily reach over and play little one-handed ditties any time. While keeping my eyes on the road, of course. Well, not when I was going 50 mph through a big city during evening rush hour in a torrential downpour. I felt oddly calm driving in that late summer storm in Spokane.

Just a little side note: have you ever noticed that a dry stretch of highway covered in brand new, finely grooved, bright white concrete renders the musical tone of high E when you're doing 75 mph? It changes slightly, half a pitch or more, when you hit a bridge. Ed Emberley's brilliant onomatopoetic children's book Klippity Klop expertly illustrates such road sounds as Prince Krispin's mighty steed Dumpling trots along the solid path, over a wooden bridge, and back onto the solid path: "...klippity klop, klippity...klump klumpity, klump klumpity...klop, klippity klop..." On I-90 and I-94 I found that music! It was a different kind of horsepower and a different road, but music all the same. The surrounding landscape was beautiful, too.

But this book is about a different journey and when I say that I no longer perceive the uninvited critics of my efforts in a negative light, you yourself are witnessing a bend in the road I just came around. The room was full of naysayers!

The approach to that bend began at the downtown bookstore where I was leisurely browsing the shelves and displays before meeting my daughter for lunch. The book Buddha's Brain, by Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius, respectively doctors of neuropsychology and neuroscience, jumped off the table at me. This was a book a Port Townsend friend had recently mentioned and here it was! I opened it, and it opened my eyes. The neurochemical functions of the human brain, specifically relating to emotions, are fascinating, complex, powerful! Research continues, revealing more information every day.

What I learned from that book relates to a very heated discussion about emotions a friend and I once had. He boiled it all down to brain chemistry, stating that every time I got upset, for example, it was only the release of certain chemicals in my brain causing certain neurons to fire in a certain way. I was absolutely enraged by this seeming unsympathetic, pragmatic, cold, clinical description of my feelings! I wrote a song with this refrain: "All my raw emotions / he'd love to have you know / are only chemical reactions. / Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!"

Though I dislike admitting it, he was right!

A few weeks later I purchased a copy of Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them? In this book, Daniel Goleman narrates a week's worth of intriguing dialogue between the Dalai Lama and a group of psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers. This was another title that same Port Townsend friend had recommended. Not long afterwards, I finished reading Sharon Salzberg's book A Heart as Wide as the World about compassion and loving kindness. Another very good friend and colleague had put this into my hands years ago. The day before I 'crashed myself,' I had read in the Dalai Lama's book How to Practice: the Way to a Meaningful Life: "Enemies provide us some of the best opportunities to practice patience, tolerance, and compassion."

Those nasty, negative naysayers, my own thoughts, had trooped in and flattened my tires, ripped off my doors, and shoved me onto the shoulder. What did I do this time? I walked away and exercised. It was invigorating. It raised levels of positivity-inducing chemicals, endorphins, in my brain. It was uplifting!

And then, while I sat on the floor stretching, I happened to notice on my daughter's shelf the book Rosie and the Nightmares by Philip Waechter. It shows how a bunny named Rosie overcomes her struggles with the monsters that inhabit her dreams. Ultimately she enters the amusement park's Tunnel of Fear and after taking care of the lesser fiends, kisses the most gruesome monster smack on the nose. It was just like the Dalai Lama said!

Light bulb! I have to kiss those naysayers right on the nose, embrace them, patiently listen to them, tolerate their negative blather, thank them for their input, and with loving kindness, send them on their way. After all, they are part of me. This is what it means to practice equanimity and compassion with oneself.

I understand now that everything, absolutely everything is interconnected. It's a strangely comforting, mind-bending concept. I understand, too, that change is inevitable and that suffering comes in resisting this fact. Life is dynamic. With the good comes the bad. With the bad comes the good. I understand that I am my own thoughts, my own fears, and that my energy connects with a great universal swirl of energy. And when I slip into chiding myself for not catching on to all of this and many other logical ideas a lot sooner in life, I recall what Sharon Salzberg shares in the introduction to her book Lovingkindness: the Revolutionary Art of Happiness:

"The vision is always available to us; it doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, or a week, or ten thousand years – we turn on the light and it is illumined. Once we contact our capacity for love and happiness – the good – the light has been turned on."

Lovingkindness was published in 1995. My husband, my best friend Charlie took his life in 1994. Had I known about Sharon Salzberg's book back then, would I have been ready for it? There's no point in speculating. All I know is that for a long time I groped around in that dark room, catching faint suggestions every now and then of the light switch, but all the while lacking the compassion for myself to flip it on.

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Chapter 3: Birth of a Friendship

Years before, Charlie and I both worked at the Bavarian Pastry Shop in Lakewood, Ohio, a family owned and operated bakery. I so clearly remember when I first met him. He'd been in sunny, warm Florida and oddly enough had returned to the Cleveland area in the dead of winter 1977. Klaus, who owned the bakery, hired him as an apprentice bread baker. I did not envy him his early start time of 3:30 a.m.

Our schedules didn't overlap by much, so our initial exchanges were few. Here was a thin, serious young man, a man of few words. His large wire-framed glasses gave him a perpetual look of bewilderment. He seemed tired, but understandably happy when he passed through the front of the shop at noon to head home.

Celebration is part of a bakery's raison d'être and Charlie's birthday occurred in April. In Pavlovian response, my creative juices bubbled forth. I always appreciated opportunities to draw and write, so I made him a special card. My character du jour was a long-necked fantastical snail creature, which for Charlie's card sported a white baker's hat and large glasses. I composed this poem for him:

The baker's apprentice is Chuck,

Who once heard a strange little cluck

Sounding out from the freezer.

"Oh, what can this be here?"

And then in the dough he got stuck.

Now unstuck, good ol' Chuck went to see

What all this strange clucking could be.

In the cooler he found

What couldn't make the sound,

Headless chickens! "Oh my! Oh me!"

Now becalmed Chuck went back to his bread

Which he made into kuchens instead.

"What will the boss say?

This is surely no way

In this business to get ahead!"

Well, here's what the good boss did say:

"We have far too much work anyway.

Let's close up the shop.

With our baking we'll stop.

Now you go have a Happy Birthday!"

Hey, at least it rhymed! I was 22 years old when I composed that poem and was more practiced at writing very schlocky sonnets. He'd walked into the freezer and expecting to find only mounds of dough, was shocked to find chickens. We'd all had a good laugh with him. Charlie, whom we also called Chuck, appreciated the thoughtfulness and was touched by the embrace of his new bakery family.

A couple of months after that, I left for Norway. I had received a partial scholarship to attend the University of Oslo's International Summer School program. Since I could afford only a one-way ticket, I had to find a job there once I finished school. Just three days before having to leave the dorm, I landed an au pair position with a family living outside Oslo. That's a story for another day.

In March 1978 I returned to Lakewood and worked at the bakery during Easter. Charlie had learned a lot in his first year, but looked thinner than when I left the previous summer. I remember feeling concerned about him.

His sense of light-heartedness was wonderful, as always. He stood silently next to me while our older co-worker enthusiastically told her story about a European customer who had visited the bakery while I was away. Mrs. P. was pretty sure the woman was Norwegian. The customer had been very excited about the huge variety of pastries. She was especially delighted to find the bakery open on a Saturday afternoon. This was not her experience in her own country where union laws dictated that bakeries close at noon on Saturdays.

Coincidentally, about a month after that customer's visit, a letter to the editor, sent by a Norwegian, appeared in the local paper. She had been so delighted by her experience at the bakery she wanted to share it publicly. Mrs. P. declared the letter writer had been her customer. I certainly never thought the letter I composed in awkward English in praise of the bakery, and sent from Oslo, would ever get printed, let alone that such a customer would have happened into the shop. As he stood there, I could feel Charlie daring me not to laugh.

During that 1978 spring stint at the Bavarian Pastry Shop, a sort of layover as it turned out, Charlie and I went to see The Goodbye Girl. He teased me about how appropriate this was, considering I seemed to leave a lot. Indeed, in May I moved to Seattle, flying out with only clothes and a few precious books and artifacts in my luggage.

December of that year brought a turning point in our acquaintanceship. After my 1978 summer adventure in Alaska as cook aboard the salmon tender the Ironhead, and needing to get away after a failed attempt at a relationship, I returned to the knowing-what-to-expect existence at the bakery in Lakewood for the Christmas rush. I paid several months advanced rent on my U-District apartment in Seattle, packed my suitcase, and this time rode Amtrak.

I had fond memories of Christmastime at the Bavarian Pastry Shop. I also wanted to spend the holiday with the part of my family who still lived in the area. I returned to the security of what I knew.

My high school friend Mary's mother took me in during that time, giving me a warm home away from home. I remember walking up the long street of house after house to the bakery, the crunch of my boots on icy sidewalks, the welcome warmth of the bakery steaming up my glasses. Oh the smells! Cinnamon. Lots of really good cinnamon and almond. And there was Charlie back in the corner by the bubbling cauldron of oil, frying apple doughnuts. His were the best!

During those months we came to consider one another Mitleider, an invented form of the German verb mitleiden, meaning to empathize, literally, to suffer together at the same time. Charlie and I felt a compassion for one another and enjoyed making light of our situation. Klaus was a tough boss. Not unfair, but tough and demanding. We worked long and hard, but of course, not as long and hard as Klaus himself or any of his family who also worked at the bakery.

By some miracle we managed to get the same couple of days off in a row. Charlie thought it would be great fun to test our fortitude and do some tent camping at Mohican State Park. It was mid-November. Was I crazy? Yes, crazy and desperate to get away, out of the reach of an emergency call to fill in for someone at the bakery. Yes, crazy and adventuresome enough to drive off with this young man.

He decided it would be good preparation to drive down without heat in the car, to acclimate ourselves. It sounded reasonable to my untrained camping mind. Indeed, it was the reason I could not feel my feet when I climbed out of the car onto the gravel. I placed one block of ice after the other to the site where we pitched the tent. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when attempting to tie knots with fingers frozen inside bulky gloves. Good thing Charlie knew what he was doing. I helped him as best I could. I had flunked Girl Scouts, but I could at least carry things and hold the flashlight, though not steadily. Brrrr!

We had enjoyed convenience store cuisine en route to the park and it was too early to climb into the tent, so we hiked to a spot Charlie particularly wanted to show me. What an adventure to walk through the wintry woods at night. Except for the lack of snow, it reminded me of the cross-country ski run I made alone just after ringing in the New Year in Norway. I had experienced at that time a sense of safety spiced with a few sprinkles of caution. The brilliant stars, the snow-clad trees, the trail all embraced me.

It wasn't too far to the primitive campground, a great open expanse with no concrete buildings in sight or iron grills sprouting up every so many yards. The night sky was a sparkling indigo bowl overhead. Once again I was reminded of a special moment, another I had spent alone, this time on the Ironhead's topmost deck in a coil of line. It was as though someone had sifted powdered sugar onto deep blue velvet. The Milky Way took my breath away.

Charlie had been telling stories about the fun times he and his high school buddies had shared at this particular campsite, but now he was silent. We both stood stock still, listening to total silence. No jets. No trains. No highway sounds. No birdsong. Not even wind rustling through the trees. It was amazing. And I recall a fleeting, oddly oppressive sensation, a heaviness in that same moment. What was that all about?

Of course, we could stand there only so long drinking in the beautiful sky and awesome silence. Spontaneously we both started jumping, running in place, and howling. We were crazy! We were young and directionless. This moment was absolutely liberating.

Back at our tent, the non-liberated life, the one directed by the mores of society, brought us to an awkward moment. Somewhere in my frozen mind I knew we could be much, much warmer, happier campers if we zipped the bags together and embraced one another, but I was way too...too something even if we kept our clothes on. Or was it that I wanted to be too much in control? In any case, at that point, as far as I was concerned, Charlie and I were pals. Why mess up a good thing? Charlie told me many months later that he had been "prepared" for the best possible outcome, in his mind anyway, of that encounter. It's good to be hopeful. And prepared. I, on the other hand, was clueless.

Brrr! Nothing like having to pee first thing in the morning to launch you out of that somewhat warm cocoon. While I was away, Charlie built a fire. I brought back a pan of water for tea and while we waited for it to boil, we played a crazy game of picnic-tabletop hockey with the box of tea. We laughed like lunatics as we blew the cellophane covered box back and forth across the frosty surface. It certainly got the blood moving. Pretty soon we were chasing one another around the table. Panting, we stood by the fire, drinking our tea and spooning soggy flakes from a mini cereal box into our mouths.

After we packed the car, we hiked around the park. We climbed a rise and were walking along the crest when we came to a lovely green slope. The sun was bright and warming, almost reminiscent of spring, so we dropped to the ground and rolled down the hill. Again, we were crazy! We couldn't stop laughing. That 24-hour period of utter silliness stood us in good stead for the days to come. Christmas was only short weeks away. The bakery would be abuzz with extra work.

In December Charlie announced his plan to sell his old station wagon, a pea soup green, spray-paint-splotched Dodge (say that five times fast!), complete with duck-taped bench style front seat. He would even throw in snow tires, all for the excellent price of one hundred smackeroos! Such a deal! Hey, it ran. It was perfect for my plan to drive all of my worldly possessions, heretofore stored in my older brother Mark's attic, out to the great Pacific Northwest. "Sold! to the girl in the apron out front!"

According to my journal, Charlie and I settled the deal on my older brother Mark's birthday, leaving the bakery earlier than usual to take care of the title transfer before the Department of Motor Vehicles closed. Afterwards, we enjoyed a bit of celebration at Mark's house. Beth had cooked a lovely dinner and had made his favorite cake. We had a great time with my young niece and nephew! Unfortunately, I had told Klaus I would return to the bakery to make up for the hours I missed by leaving early. Damn!

Reluctantly I asked Charlie to drive me back to the bakery at 9:00 p.m. so I could follow through on my promise. It was, after all, one short week until Christmas and all those special little cookies flew off the pans by the pounds. In the back I found a tall rack holding at least a dozen thin cutting boards covered edge to edge with cream cheese kolache dough, all scored in perfect diamond shapes. My job was to squeeze filling (raspberry, apricot, cheese, prune, or poppyseed) into the center of the diamonds, fold them, pinch them, brush them lightly with a wash of egg white, sprinkle a little sugar over them, and arrange them on baking sheets. It took forever! But, oh the sense of accomplishment.

It was after midnight by the time I got home to Mrs. Springer's house and quite likely I had to be back in the bakery early the next morning. But now I owned a car and the prospect of driving across the country and starting fresh with all of my stuff lightened my spirits.

What did it matter that I didn't have a credit card or insurance? I had enough money saved to pay for gas and food. Surely it wouldn't be too cold in January to sleep in the car since I planned to take the southern route. I'd taken risks before. Heck, I flew to Norway on a one-way ticket. As a 23-year-old woman I cooked for an all-male crew on a boat in Alaska. What's a four-day road trip across the country in winter?

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Chapter 4: An Abbreviated Timeline

The apparent chronology of Charlie's illness is brief; Charlie kept a lot to himself. His easy- going manner successfully masked whatever might have been deeply troubling him. On a few occasions during the early years of our relationship he mentioned that he'd had some problems as a college freshman. He left school, found work, traveled a bit, and managed to get his associate degree while working as a pressman. He was interested in many things, but like so many young people, couldn't decide on one particular subject to study. At some point he became so depressed he went to live with his sister in Florida. That was perhaps in 1976.

The depression that descended on him prior to his death first manifested itself the winter of early 1993. During those months, he did not believe his problems to be psychological. Rather, he expressed concern about picking up germs whenever we ate out. Indeed, his immune system was vulnerable. He seemed to catch colds more often. Feeling a distinct lack of energy, he lost desire to train for cross-country ski races and local marathons.

His job was increasingly stressful. With ownership and management changes came cutbacks on engineering hours, so he was responsible for more duties.

I was working at the library part time and doing extra programs at schools following the publication of my book Sofie's Role in October 1992.

The warmer days and greater sunshine of spring seemed to lift Charlie's spirits, giving him more opportunities to enjoy nature and his garden. At this time he got the idea he might try some sort of body building supplement, a powder one mixes with juice or milk. The construction workers at Dillard's had been making life challenging for him. He felt they belittled him, snickering at his size, and the work he did there. He seemed more self-conscious than ever about his physique.

That summer we took a little family trip to Dearborn, my childhood town. It was good to get away. We had beautiful weather for a day at Greenfield Village. But toward the end of those more relaxing months, Charlie began to think ahead to winter. He thought of all the problems that would arise, forcing him to work outside on the roof of the store in the cold. His anxiety level grew and grew. He was having difficulty with the transition from summer to autumn. This began to manifest itself in physical problems. He felt his skin was breaking out more than usual. He mentioned a buzzing sort of feeling in the back of his head.

He saw our primary care physician, who cautioned that he weighed less than he should. It seems Charlie also, at that time, tried to steer us, as a family, toward a more meat-free diet. He had tried that in college and talked a lot about the book Diet for a Small Planet. He was a very socially conscious man. He cared a lot about the people of the world, about what we were doing to the environment, about how rapidly the population was growing. It was as though he was absorbing all of the world's problems. He was deeply affected and frustrated by the news. It all seemed to send him into a rapid downward spiral, but as far as he was concerned, his was a purely physical illness.

After several doctor visits and blood tests and still feeling horrible, still experiencing that buzzing sensation in the back of his head, Charlie was referred to a neurologist. The tests came back negative. According to the doctor, there was no obvious abnormal brain activity.

Charlie's father went with him to that doctor's appointment; my work schedule couldn't accommodate it. The two of them had not spent a lot of time alone together. It was no doubt troubling for Howard to see his son in such a weak and agitated state.

Once, when Howard encountered Charlie's mother somewhere in town —they had divorced when Charlie was a toddler—he declared that no one on his side of the family had ever displayed this kind of illness. Yes, certain tendencies do seem to be genetic, and I learned recently that Charlie's maternal grandmother suffered from depression. But Charlie's depression stemmed from so much more. Finger-pointing served no constructive purpose.

By Christmastime, Charlie felt he could not work at all. He hated how he felt. He described it as existing behind a veil. He could see what was going on around him, but he couldn't grasp it. I could tell him what a wonderful, loving husband and father he was, but he couldn't process my words. My love and concern for him wasn't getting through. These are all symptoms, as I now understand it, of depression. How could anyone convince Charlie he had a serious problem?

We scheduled him to see a counselor, someone associated with the EASE program we were able to access through my job. I don't recall how many sessions we tried there, but we eventually got him in to talk with a psychologist. At this time, Charlie also started working through The Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns. He started a journal, as well. I'm not sure if it was our family physician and/or the psychologist who suggested it and consequently referred him, or Charlie himself who requested it, but after a time, he went to see a psychiatrist.

Charlie described the visit as a 5-minute conversation during which the doctor labeled him obsessive/compulsive and prescribed for him Prozac. He was visibly upset by this doctor's seeming lack of care and his hasty assessment. It only made Charlie feel worse about his situation. The psychiatrist seemed not to notice that Charlie was quite thin. Nor did he seem to care or even realize that one of the possible side effects of Prozac is loss of appetite.

Eventually Charlie did try the drug. He did not like the way it made him feel, which he described as even more detached and out of it than before. He wasn't hungry. He couldn't sleep. He felt more agitated than ever. He understood that the medication had to build up in his system before he could feel any results, but he was impatient to feel like his old self. He had tried going back to work, now in the housekeeping department, but suspected the cleaning solutions he worked with were doing him greater harm. He felt anxious about everything.

It occurred to him that perhaps some sunshine would help, so in March 1994, he flew with Claire to Florida where his father and stepmother had a condo. It seems he figured he had licked this problem once by spending time in a warmer, sunnier climate and that this might really help him. Indeed, it did. For that time during which he was there. But by mid-April, now back in Ohio, he could not endure the way he still felt. He checked himself into the psychiatric ward of a Cleveland area hospital.

There a doctor tried giving him a different medication, Lorazepam. He tried to believe this new drug was helping him, but he was at the same time skeptical. Being surrounded by souls even more troubled than himself did not help his outlook.

We celebrated Charlie's 40th birthday with him in the community room of that secured wing of the hospital. We took balloons and other decorations for the room, flowers, a cake, and presents all in hopes of lifting his spirits. He put the best possible face on it, even trying to laugh at the absurdity of spending such a significant birthday on the psych ward. And we lightly joked about the fact that the maternity ward was on the other end of that floor.

He had been writing a lot and expressed a desire to paint, so I brought him watercolor paints and paper. He'd enjoyed doing the craft projects offered there. I think, though, that some of the sad cases he observed among his fellow patients dragged him down even more. He felt powerless to help them, just as I felt powerless to help him.

He spent a week there and before leaving, had to sign an agreement in which he promised that should he feel he might harm himself he would call the suicide hotline.

Here we are in this timeline at the end of April 1994. One month later he was gone.

~~~~~

Chapter 5: The Next Day

My first journal entry, the few lines I wrote the morning after Charlie's suicide read:

Charlie finally could take it no longer. He died in Mrs. H.'s backyard. I'm writing this at 3:30 a.m. I'm all cried out for the moment.

I couldn't believe Charlie would do this. To himself. To us. I was so angry with myself for letting this happen.

Of course, now I realize what futile, self-destructive thinking I engaged in then, but at that moment I believed so strongly that I could have prevented this somehow. Is there any feeling worse than knowing you can't go back and change the course of events? The 'shoulda- woulda- coulda' syndrome crushed me like a pile of boulders.

Izzy kept apologizing for not paying more attention to the sound of Charlie's voice when he called her earlier that afternoon. What about me? I, his own wife, hadn't called him during those few hours I was away. Why was I so dense? Why hadn't I sensed something awful was going to happen when he kissed me that last time out on the driveway, hugging me extra tightly, with tears in his eyes? How blind could I be?

We had had such a lovely time together the evening before. We enjoyed a relaxing dinner out and went for a walk in the Metroparks afterwards, talking, holding hands. Charlie had seemed almost his old self.

I know now that this was a sign of his intentions. His apparent wellness and his calm reflected his decision to take matters into his own hands. He was resolute.

He had expressed emotion more openly in the last year. Still, why had his last kiss not been more of a sign for me? I had failed. I was the one who had not paid sufficient attention. I truly believed I personally had failed him. I had failed our daughters. And I failed myself at that moment believing my father to be right when he predicted during my teen years that I would be a horrible match for any man.

In fairness to my father, now that I can look back with more emotional intelligence than I had in 1994, I must believe my siblings, who tried so hard to convince me that our dad was only teasing me. Because I always took him literally and because I so desperately wanted his approval, his off-the-cuff comment made a deep impression on me. Apparently, his sense of humor was as dry as the unfiltered Camels he sparked up one after another.

Mark and Beth had come over later the night Charlie died. She commented about my working at the library, that is, "outside the home," and my already guilt-ridden mind heard her implying that this was directly connected to Charlie's self-image and consequent depression. But I recognize now, many years later, that we all naturally grab at straws, looking for reasons. We need reasons. We want to know "why?" And in times of stress and high emotion, we reason out loud, trying to piece it all together.

Charlie used to talk about the concept of "going Hollywood." He first mentioned it after I had interviewed early in 1979 for a job at Rainier Bank in Seattle. He was periodically in touch with a friend who then lived in Kansas. His friend's wife was not content being a housewife and managed to get an interesting job at the radio station in their town. Apparently her self-esteem grew with the work she did there. Charlie's friend felt this created a rift in their marriage.

Charlie's opinion of well-dressed career women was clear to me. But I wasn't trying to climb any corporate ladder. I wasn't interested in designer fashion. None of our furniture matched. Did I care? Granted, life was different with my having a part time job, but Charlie and I worked out the balancing act pretty well I thought. He was a great dad. Did "going Hollywood" mean any work outside the home? Did it mean ultimately feeling better about oneself? My sister Izzy has been a nurse for years. This did not affect her family adversely.

A police officer arrived much, much later. Perhaps he was the one who brought back Charlie's bike. Izzy had fallen asleep on the couch. It seems I sat at the kitchen table until 2 o'clock in the morning talking to this policeman, answering questions, feeling very vulnerable. I may have asked if he was one of the officers who had come to the house one morning earlier in May. The following journal entry tells that story:

Two police cars stood in our driveway the other day. This was reported to me by two people, two people with whom I work, two people who were afraid for me, concerned for me. While I was out in Maple Heights doing an author presentation, Charlie became upset, called St. Vincent, and cried over the phone of sheer helplessness, feeling totally defeated by this whole thing – WHATEVER IT IS – and they sent out the North Olmsted police to make sure he was all right. He has had such an awful time this past half year, not responding really to the anti-depressant medication, heart racing, mind racing, still a zit or two popping out now and then, beating on himself (psychologically), feeling guilty all the time. This just isn't some textbook case. Dr. P. in so many words has admitted to being mystified by it all.

My colleagues had assured me that they saw Charlie and that he was all right. When I got home, however, he told me the details.

When he had checked out of St. Vincent's psychiatric unit in April 1994, he had to sign a contract promising to call the suicide hotline if he felt particularly low and apt to harm himself. He'd been working in the garden, but dark thoughts had swirled around in his head. He called the hotline number. Instead of some benevolent-looking social worker showing up at the house, as he had imagined, two uniformed policemen climbed out of their patrol cars and, hands on hips, approached Charlie and gruffly, he reported, asked what he was up to. He said they made him feel like a criminal. They didn't seem at all to care what was going on with him emotionally. He vowed never again to call the hotline.

Years later, I attended a library workshop about dealing with challenging patrons. The speaker, a psychologist, addressed mainly those situations in which a person might lose control, become aggressive and ultimately dangerous in the library. She also touched on the very sensitive issue of someone who acts depressed and requests information about suicide.

I recall some discussion about offering the person social services numbers in addition to the information he or she actually requests, or asking the patron if he or she would like someone to be contacted. All I could see during that discussion, however, was my very gaunt, vulnerable husband suffering even more in the presence of two husky, seeming insensitive men in uniform.

I shot my hand up and suggested, in a very shaky voice, not to call the police in a situation such as this. The speaker agreed there are other ways of handling it if the patron is calm. She also indicated that police departments had begun offering sensitivity training to their officers. I barely heard this, though, because a tsunami of emotion engulfed me and I sat there, thankfully in a back row, sobbing uncontrollably. Two kind-hearted colleagues passed me tissues and a glass of water.

The officer who came that awful night asked me about the letters. They were sealed and addressed to the girls and me, to his parents, to various friends, to my siblings. What really troubles me is that I have this weird, wispy memory of seeing Charlie seated on the couch while we were all watching a show together, writing on lined notebook paper, using a large book as a lap desk. It seems I even asked him at one point what he was writing and he actually told me "letters." Did I press on and ask to whom? Did he reply simply, "Friends."?

Izzy called my friend Sara, with whose daughters Meg and Claire had been playing, to tell her about Charlie. It was so late. I knew I couldn't face my daughters until the next day. Izzy stayed with me that night. I don't recall if I slept. I must have a little. I was exhausted.

When Meg and Claire arrived home the next morning, the three of us walked down to the hammock under the maple tree. They undoubtedly sensed something was wrong, considering their Auntie Izzy was there without her boys. I sat there with one on each side, my arms wrapped around them.

We swung gently as I said, "You know Daddy's been sick and feeling really terrible for a long time." I think in the pause that followed, one of the girls asked if he was back in the hospital. I continued as best I could. "No. He's not suffering anymore. He's in heaven now." Those were the words that came to me. And considering my religious faith at the time, I believed this to be so.

What a horrible, horrible moment for the three of us. And I sat there thinking of the times at the dinner table when Charlie said, "You three make such a nice little family." How those words angered me at the time! They were giving-up words!

Another entry, one from April:

I think I've cried enough this week to flood the Midwest all over again. The crying and the after-cries and the heavy, empty insides after that reminded me of when Dad died and when Johnnie died. The zombie walking, doing "necessary" things automatically, the emotions switched off. It was like grieving. But no one had died. Yet someone had, or felt so. Charlie had been contemplating suicide. He has felt so hopeless, felt that he will never snap out of this perpetual fog that he's in, or feels he's in. It's all depression and anxiety. I think he's grieving the loss of his old self. If only I could believe that this is a good and powerful sign of "Stirb und Werde", that his old self, the one that stuffed everything away behind the façade of being easy-going, the one that lacked self-confidence, the one that cared too much about physical appearance---that his old self is dying off only to be replaced by a new and better self, the actual metamorphosis being an exceptionally cruel process. I hope his butterfly self will be of this world. I pray that he not try to end the suffering himself. Various of us have tried to impress upon him the extreme selfishness of such an act, how deeply it would harm Meggie and Claire. We don't want to be without him, yet he is the one suffering.

On a few occasions I even tried to lighten things up by telling him that if he ever tried anything like this I would never speak to him again. He had always been the part of us to lighten up heavy situations.

After seeming endless crying and hugging, Claire asked, "But how did Daddy die? Where?" When Meg thought I was going to answer this very pointed question, she threw her hands up over her ears. She didn't want to hear. She possessed an imagination developed enough to figure it out for herself. She grabbed her volleyball, ran down the hill and over into our neighbor's pasture, where she hit the ball off the barn roof again and again and again. It seemed she was down there for hours.

Izzy brought out a blanket and arranged it in the cool shade of the maple tree. She asked if we had a box of pictures or albums she and Claire could look through while I was busy speaking with the pastor who came later in the afternoon. Bless her heart, that Izzy. What would I have done without my dear sister?

When the pastor asked Claire how she was doing, she shocked him with her eight-year-old matter-of-factness. She said, "If I get a new dad I hope he will like to play baseball and read out loud to me."

This man didn't have children of his own and didn't have much contact with really young children beyond Sunday mornings. He was aghast that this little girl would even think about a replacement father so soon. He didn't comprehend that Claire was telling him two really important things she will miss about her own father.

The pastor and I proceeded to the picnic table, away from the quiet time Izzy and Claire were having together, away from whomever else was there. Friends and family came and went throughout that day, a steady stream of loving, caring people, looking in on us, figuring out what they could do to help without having to ask, all of them wondering, just wondering what had happened? How? Why?

But for now, my back was to it all.

We got down to the business of planning a memorial service. Charlie's written wish had been to be cremated and for his ashes to be sprinkled in a particular place. So after we figured out the basic layout of the service, which hymns, etc., the pastor asked if the congregation would be invited to accompany our family to a cemetery. I'm almost positive I blurted out, "There won't be no procession," in the same twangy voice in which Charlie and I jokingly uttered these words, and I'm pretty sure I started laughing my head off.

Talk about aghast. Noting the look on the pastor's face, hearing the echo of my laughter and realizing I was laughing hysterically in the face of a devastating event, I felt I had to explain. It took me a while, deep breaths, perhaps even a drink of water before I calmed down enough to relate the story.

Charlie and I had, just a few years prior to this, attended a traditionally executed funeral complete with horrible, warbly organ music, padded vinyl chairs, hushed voices, garish floral arrangements filling the crowded room with overpowering fragrance, and black-suited men wearing appropriately somber faces. It truly was an honor to the person who had died. After everyone had had their chance at the podium to reminisce and utter blessings, and when the final "Amen" had been spoken, a young man who worked for the funeral home walked slowly up to the front and very seriously stated, "On behalf of the family I would like to announce that there won't be no procession to the cemetery."

For some reason this tickled Charlie and me in the very same way at the very same moment. We looked at one another, smiling, mouthing the words "no procession" and thought we would burst with laughter. Of course, we guarded our behavior, because this was a very sad affair for the people gathered there.

We sensed, however, an underlying atmosphere of craziness when people began to stand up, knees cracking, purses snapping shut on damp tissues, because the children attending this funeral almost immediately began a game of chase. It might only have been that a brother pinched a little sister and so revenge was in the air. Who knows? In any case, Charlie and I felt more at liberty to chuckle over the grammatical gaffe. The phrase became a stock household jest. The fact that the young man had emphasized the first syllable of 'procession' seemed to make it all the funnier.

Yes, I explained all of this to the pastor. Well, the condensed version anyway. I suppose you had to be there. His sort of wan, you-poor-woman-you've-lost-it smile smacked a little too much of sympathy, or was it judgment that I had found the young fellow's speech funny? Whatever.

Of course, it was probably too early in the game for him to remind me that people who commit suicide go to hell. But that's another chapter.

Twenty-four hours after Charlie died, I could write only another couple of lines:

Claire chose out two of Charlie's sweaters and kept one for herself – the other for Meg. Claire carries his sweater around like a cubby.

~~~~~

Chapter 6: The Tie that Binds...

I'm writing this section of the book on the anniversary of Charlie's and my wedding. On October 27, 2009 we would have hit the thirty year mark. In 2009 this awareness was that huge wrecking ball swinging back to hit me again for all it was worth. I woke up that October morning thinking about the poems I'd been writing, poems about kisses. I'd begun writing one the night before about my first kiss, but my morning thinking leaped to a last kiss. Charlie's last kiss. I have described it earlier in the book. In 2009 I did not understand what it was to show oneself compassion.

At that time, my mind dwelled on a perceived prediction I'd forgotten for years until it seemed to fulfill itself. Or so I felt. As a teenager, I must have voiced indignation within my father's hearing at some issue involving gender inequality. The early 1970s continued to be a time of great social upheaval. My dad, and consequently our family, was quite conservative. My outrage at gender unfairness didn't line up with his thinking, hence his reaction "I pity the man who marries you!" While my relationship with Charlie was growing, that declaration remained buried deep in the annals of mean things parents say to their teenagers.

Speaking of parents, it was also at this very low moment in 2009 that I had the best conversation ever with my mom. She had been suffering a lot of back pain since 2005 and was tired of it all. When I told her on the phone that I couldn't understand why I was still taking up space on the planet, her response totally surprised me. I was expecting, "You shouldn't feel that way! God has a plan for you. You just have to be patient." Her words were not full of judgment. Instead, my mom confessed to feeling precisely the same way. She couldn't figure out why she continued living, what her purpose was. She didn't even express her usual guilt feelings about questioning God in this way. It was the most open and honest conversation I could recall having with my mom. Ever! And I considered it a gift. Eventually we were both able to laugh.

Fast backward to early 1979 in Seattle when Charlie moved into my tiny apartment. He was such a sensitive, romantic young man. For Valentine's Day he made me a wood block print card. He was so excited to see me off to work that morning, for he had propped his creation against the front seat of our old car. It was the dearest card I'd ever received. It read:

YPPAH SENITNELAV YAD YMA.

Hearts surrounded the message printed in black on red paper. We hugged and laughed as he explained that he had forgotten one crucial step of the wood block print process. I absolutely loved it and I loved him for his sweetness and humility. I came home that night to a beautifully set table in our little dining nook, complete with candles and a touching bouquet of roses.

I loved our set-up. Since Charlie worked as a cook for the schools, he arrived home earlier than I did from my job at the bank. He made us the most delicious dinners! And I cleaned up the little kitchen afterwards. Our fridge was around the corner in the living room. Sometimes at night we would hear chunks of ice fall from the freezer compartment through the metal racks of the fridge. Freezer chimes we called those tinkling sounds.

We were very proud of our young selves saving money by living together, especially after we decided to get married. We had sat one night talking about this idea. We observed how well we got along, how much we enjoyed one another's company, how much we enjoyed the same activities, projects, pursuits. We fit together well. Besides, Charlie was a great cook and he knew how to fix things. Like my head.

I came home one evening from work with the worst and strangest pain I could remember feeling. It was mainly on top of my head, but it affected my eyes and temples, as well. Charlie pulled a chair out into the middle of the living room and told me to sit down and close my eyes. He proceeded to massage my head from the center outward and down, pressing firmly and slowly all around. I couldn't believe the effect! His massage totally worked. How did he know to do that? It was a miracle! Okay. He's a keeper!

Was I still seated in that chair, when he knelt down in front of me and offered me a cigar band to seal the deal? Where he got a cigar band I can't say, but I do know that we loved each other for who we were for each other. We were more than just buddies. It was a profound feeling this love we shared.

We also felt a bit like we were living on the edge. I knew our arrangement flew in the face of my puritanical upbringing, but I also knew it was no one else's business. Besides, how could anyone argue with practicality? We saved money living together. I hand-designed our wedding invitations, then had them photocopied. It was a very good copier! No splotches of stray ink. And I even included the Bible verse, "...we walk by faith, not by sight." Indeed, it was how Charlie and I saw our life at that time. We decided to marry late in October and in Ohio. All of Charlie's family and friends were there and most of mine.

I decided to sew my own wedding dress. I had an extremely comfortable pair of burgundy suede shoes (remember crepe soles?) and thought an ivory-colored dress with trim to match the shoes would be quite lovely for an autumn wedding. One evening Charlie and I went to the mall in search of some suitable fabric. This might have been toward the end of the summer; December holiday projects were already out on display. As we walked into the store, we both spied these amazing embroidered Christmas stocking kits on sale. There were so many different designs! Charlie picked up one that showed three little bears unwrapping gifts, satiny ribbon swirling all around them. He was sporting a beard in those days, so I picked up one with a jolly Santa, whose beard would be all French Knots. We loved the designs we had chosen for one another. We were anxious to start on them. We were so excited we forgot all about the wedding dress fabric!

On another trip, I found material I liked, as well as lace for the yoke, which I would dye to match the shoes and the satin sash. As for actually sewing the dress, I made it as far as the yoke. I'd sewn clothes before, but the fabric I'd chosen proved frustrating to work with. That silky stuff was a far cry from the sailcloth and other cottons or woolens I'd sewn! It was so slippery! Time was also a factor. Luckily, I found someone in the University District willing to complete the dress for me. Was I ever grateful! Phew!

I'm pretty sure our announcement about getting married surprised a lot of folks. Certainly Charlie's buddies were amazed. My mother, although she knew what a good man Charlie was, was kind enough not to comment on our co-habitation to my face. I asked her to be my matron of honor. One of Charlie's good friends in Ohio would be his best man.

As soon as we arrived in Cleveland several days before the wedding, we launched into taking care of all the details we couldn't attend to living in a different state, or at least as we understood things at the time. We had to run for blood tests. And then there was some seeming archaic physical exam – who knows what government office mandated that – so we had to ask around and get in to see a doctor. The mother of one of Charlie's friends suggested a local physician she supposedly went to. To my young mind he was one of the creepiest doctors I'd ever met!

And of course we had to obtain the marriage license, our ticket to wedded bliss in the state of Ohio.

Throughout that week, Charlie stayed at his mother's place at night and I stayed at my brother Mark's. It was fun getting to play with my young niece and nephew. A lot of that week, though, is a blur. I'm sure Charlie got together with his old school chums and roommates at some point the day before the wedding. I enjoyed sipping a Mai Tai or two that afternoon with my sisters at a downtown restaurant.

That Friday night we rehearsed the wedding. Many of us were extra happy, if not downright wobbly. Thankfully, Charlie's dad and his wife offered to host the rehearsal dinner. The dynamic of divided families coming together for the blessed occasion of their offspring about to unite with an offspring of another somewhat dysfunctional family presents those "we'll be able to laugh about it someday" moments. We were spared the details at the time; they were shared after the fact.

We got married in a Lutheran church, the church my brother Mark and his family attended, the very weekend they would be celebrating Reformation Sunday. Our flowers happened to be white carnations and deep red roses, a color combination that would suit the church's needs quite nicely for that special day.

Charlie looked so handsome, yet so not Charlie and so nervous. I was nervous, too. Certain family issues had arisen that gnawed at our hope for everything to go smoothly and for everyone to be happy. When we talked about it later, we agreed that we both felt like we were putting on a show for everyone. We also knew, though, that despite the difficulties among those we cared about, we were loved by all the family and friends who attended the ceremony.

My mother took her role very seriously, carrying her bouquet, pacing a straight line up to the front in perfect time with the music. Regal is a word that comes to mind.

Mark, who had put me on the back of his bike when I was little and told me to hold on tight; who gave me all his leftover paperclips and hole reinforcers when he cleaned out his desk drawer; who let me drive the go-cart he had built; my older brother Mark walked me down the aisle of his church. He was there for me. Unconditionally.

I knew we would all be able to calm ourselves and have fun once this official part was over.

When I got up close, Charlie's eyes were a soothing balm for my soul. This normally casually dressed man looked so dashing in his new three-piece pewter gray suit and spiffed up Frye boots. We were such a good fit, such a good team. We had so much fun together. We expressed ourselves to one another so easily, with such openness. In the eyes of those assembled we were making it official.

I recall how I chafed at that whole business in traditional wedding vows of the wife promising to be obedient to her husband. Was this not a two-way street? No, no, no, the whole concept of obedience places the husband in a superior position. Charlie and I were on the same level. We balanced one another. But what did I want, "Egg in my beer?" as my parents used to say. This was a Lutheran church. Tradition! We hadn't considered writing our own vows.

It makes me laugh, a sad sort of laugh, though, that when Charlie took my hand to walk back down the aisle, I think I unconsciously switched positions to what felt more comfortable to me. I think my hand was in the lead. What had Charlie got himself into?

We stood side by side greeting one by one all those who had witnessed our union. We enjoyed the surprise of seeing and visiting briefly with those we weren't sure would be coming. We were grateful for the company of those who did. Since Mark's house, the venue of our reception, was large enough to accommodate only our families, we offered to everyone a cake/coffee/punch gathering in the church's fellowship hall.

After posing for pictures in the sanctuary, we walked down to where our friends and family stood or sat in clusters awaiting the next step. The church ladies had kindly decorated a table for us, placing colorful autumn leaves near the punch bowl and the coffee urn. They had arranged the clear punch glasses in graceful arcs on one end and cups for coffee near the large blank area in the middle. That was for the wedding cake.

I don't recall if we had any music playing. We shared the feeling that we needed to entertain our guests, to fulfill some imagined expectation, but neither of us had considered offering anything beyond refreshments and chairs. At one point, the mother of one of Charlie's pals suggested they, meaning she, her two sons, and Charlie all go off to a bar and celebrate. Unbelievable! I kind of felt like a shrew putting the nix on that one, but come on! This wasn't a party for me. It was to celebrate us. Perhaps it was only a joke my keyed-up self couldn't comprehend. I was often slow on the uptake.

Hurray, hurray when the cake arrived. The baker's daughter Lauren, wearing a shimmery light green dress, her cheeks rosy from the brisk October air, proudly carried it in. The two-tiered spice cake with butter cream frosting showcased Klaus's artistry. He was a wizard with the pastry tube. The velvety roses looked like real ones picked just moments before. It was absolutely delightful. It was also delicious. And it was so good to see Lauren, my old friend, who called me Ermels and whom I called Mäusel.

After Charlie and I gave an entertaining shove-the-cake-in-the-other-person's-mouth performance, everyone got in line allowing the oldest and the youngest to go first. Charlie and I, sometimes together, sometimes individually, made our way around the room, visiting a little longer now with the family members and friends we had hugged and kissed or shaken hands with after the ceremony. Everyone enjoyed the refreshments and the cake.

We opened a few gifts there in the church hall. I particularly remember one moment, perhaps because we have a photograph of it. Charlie's mother's sister, his Aunt Lucille, had crocheted us a beautiful afghan of autumnal burnt orange, oak brown, and beige in that traditional wave pattern. How touched I was by the work she put into that. Eventually she would crochet smaller versions in bright colors for Meg and Claire.

A basket on the table was filled with envelopes containing good wishes for a long and loving life together. The spirit of this reception was so positive and happy. I did feel a twinge of regret not being able to include everyone in the dinner reception, but I could not dwell on that. I think I tended to feel too directly responsible for each person's happiness in certain circumstances. This may have been owing to the fact that neither Charlie nor I really enjoyed being the center of attention; we felt easier about putting others first.

Well, before we knew it, we were outside the church. People were tossing handfuls of bird seed at us. It was time to move on to the next phase. After saying all of our good-byes, we drove the few short blocks to Mark and Beth's house.

We arrived to find that the food was mostly ready. My brother Dan had brought, among other gifts, a case of champagne. That was indeed special. And Beth had prepared some wonderful side dishes and salads. The only problem was we had no glasses, plates, silverware or napkins! Did I mention this was an informal affair, this dinner reception we planned? Oops!

Still in our wedding clothes, Charlie and I drove up to a convenience store and quickly bought all the necessary items. Why we didn't allow, or think to ask someone else to run the errand I don't know. Maybe we didn't have enough cash on us and had to write a check. It is also possible many guests were still on their way over to the house. Most likely, though, we believed this was our show and that it was up to us to make things right. We undoubtedly felt we needed to prove to everyone how responsible and independent we young twenty-somethings were.

It all turned out well and if anyone had a bad time I never heard about it. People brought gifts into the living room. We had borrowed folding chairs from the church, so manly men were carrying those down to the basement and placing them around. This was to be our main merry-making venue. Beth had arranged the dinner buffet on a long table next to the player piano. Mark made the washer and dryer the beverage center. Upstairs, the coffee urn sat in wait next to the remaining wedding cake on the round oak dining room table. Their house was so festive, always a warm and cozy place filled with interesting antiques and musical liveliness.

"A good time was had by all."

When it was time for us, the newlyweds, to leave for our 'honeymoon,' I had a difficult time explaining to my young niece Miriam why I couldn't stay overnight at her house anymore. I was torn. We'd had so many interesting conversations and fun times drawing together. I'm sure it was hard for her to understand this grown-up business. In the end she accepted what must be. I believe I had felt a twinge of something similar when my sister Izzy got married. There went my best friend to live with someone else. Time passes. We let go. We move on.

The night of our wedding we spent at Charlie's Aunt Mae's house not far away. She was with friends and had turned her cottage-like home over to us. The room she had prepared for us was like something out of a movie. I don't know where she found it, but she had covered the bed with an enormous tiger print comforter. A colorful beaded lamp on the small, scarf-draped table next to the bed cast a soft light on the orangey stripes. On the dresser she had arranged on a fancy gilt tray a beribboned bottle of champagne and slender flutes and a vase of beautiful faux flowers. It wasn't that she was wealthy in material goods. The champagne had been a gift to us from her neighbors. Those same neighbors had received the glasses for their wedding long ago and loaned them to us for our special occasion. A kind gesture with a dear story behind it. Aunt Mae's income was negligible, but she had her house and surrounded herself with possessions that made her happy. And she had a flair for making moments festive. She was rich in good intentions that day.

After enjoying a leisurely breakfast by the fireplace the next morning, we headed to a cabin in Pennsylvania. We had borrowed Mark's newer Ford; he actually preferred driving his Model A, which he had lovingly restored to its original integrity. The cabin belonged to Beth's family. They referred to it as "the shack."

We slithered along tree-lined country roads, passing acre upon acre of winter-ready fields. We sang. We talked. We laughed. When we finally arrived, we indeed thought 'shack.'

This was going to be fun. We were going to be roughing it, just like the year before. This time, however, we wouldn't be building a warming fire in a pit, but in a potbelly stove. We had brought toilet paper for the outhouse, but didn't want to use that to start the fire. Outside in the frosty air we gathered twigs and small branches. I remembered that someone said there might be some kindling or newspapers in the attic. When I climbed up the ladder to look around, all I saw were yellow jackets scattered quietly across the floor.

Finally Charlie discovered a stash of newspapers. We got a nice fire going, but realized the only water source was the pump outside. This was really roughing it, washing dirty hands under ice-cold water outside in the ice-cold air. Yes, we were tough!

We might have brought along sandwiches or snacks or something, but I don't recall what we ate, if anything. We had each other and that was all that really mattered at the time. We kept each other warm. We kept each other company. We got up in the middle of the night and stoked the fire together. We watched over one another as we each made hasty trips to the outhouse by flashlight. And the next morning, when all those yellow jackets were now awakened from their frozen stupor, we got the heck out of there! Yikes!

Road trips were one of our favorite pastimes, getting to see the countryside, discovering small towns, imagining our future, but being grateful for the present. We were young and now married and very excited about life. It was a great feeling.

On the plane back to Seattle, we happened to mention to the flight attendant that we had just been married. He very kindly brought us a bottle of wine and two glasses to celebrate. He also announced over the loudspeaker our news and all the passengers clapped. It was quite a moment. We were pretty high on life. We splurged and took a cab to our little apartment in the U-District. $19 in 1979 was living 'high on the hog' for us.

Life is a roller coaster ride! The next morning Charlie was sicker than a dog. He was stuffed up and he ached all over. I had developed one of those annoying, uncomfortable female problems. And we were both jet-lagged. Thank goodness we weren't due back at work that day.

Thinking as a good, caring, loving wife should, I walked to the grocery store and bought the ingredients for homemade chicken soup. This would fix Charlie up in no time. I put it on the stove to simmer and went back out to pick up the necessary items to address my own ailment, as well as some other things I had forgotten to purchase in my haste to prove myself an able wife. When I returned home, I found the now covered pot of soup sitting outside our daylight basement apartment. Whoa! That's strange. I could swear I left it on the stove.

Poor Charlie! He felt so ill the smell of the soup cooking made him want to vomit. My first day on the job and I flunked the Good Wife's test! (cue: melodramatic organ music) Was this a portent of things to come?

~~~~~

Chapter 7: "There won't be no procession."

The word companion has food built right into it. Well, bread, specifically, in the 'pan' part. How appropriate that I should meet Charlie in a bakery. He was a true companion, someone with whom I enjoyed sharing not only meals, but all aspects of life. I can remember standing in the kitchen when the girls were young and reminding myself never to take our relationship for granted. I was thankful every day for Charlie's love.

After he died, people brought over all kinds of dishes, platters, pans, bags, boxes, all filled with food. It was a kind and beautiful gesture. It was surprising. And it was filling up the fridge at an astonishing rate! I have this memory of not being able to see the light when I opened the refrigerator door. In retrospect, it is symbolic. At that time it meant friends and family pitching in. And I appreciated their thoughtfulness.

Izzy might have gone home to be with her own wonderful family for a few days. After all, her boys were about the same ages as Meg and Claire, who were 12 and 8 at the time. Her four sons and her husband needed her, too. I assured her I would be okay.

It may have been that night she was gone that I experienced a horrifying feeling. Well, actually, many feelings and thoughts had been horrifying. I was trying very hard to push away the scene my imagination insisted I look at. I did not want to put myself in Charlie's shoes, but my mind kept walking me into that backyard, to that tree. My emotions were all over the place. What was he thinking? Did he consider if children were playing next door? How could he do this to us? Poor, dear Charlie.

Anyway, sometime after falling asleep I woke up quite suddenly, opened my eyes, but to complete darkness, a pitch blackness I had never before seen. And I couldn't move. Not a single muscle. I felt as though I were in a coffin deep underground, but not dead and very conscious of the fact that I couldn't get out. It was absolutely terrifying. I can't remember if I just gave into it and fell back to sleep or if miraculously I burst out of this paralysis or if I made sounds that alerted one of the girls.

All my life I have feared the kind of tight space I experienced that night. When I was a carefree little girl out riding around our neighborhood, one of Mark's friends stopped me. He came over to me and my Schwinn, straddled the front tire and, his hands firmly on my handlebars, looked me straight in the eye, and said, "Someday I'm going to put you in a coffin, nail it shut, and throw you in the Rouge River! And if you tell anyone I said this, I'll do it even sooner." After that, I steered clear of him, but I don't think I really feared him, because I trusted my brother would never let such a thing happen to me. Still, the image he painted for me, enhanced by terrifying situations I'd viewed on TV shows like The Rifleman and Twilight Zone, was vivid and frightening enough to carve a very deep impression into my young mind.

During those days before the memorial service, my very dear friends Agnes and Nora spent time with the girls and me. They both had their families. Their children were friends with mine. Supportive doesn't even begin to describe the role they played in the life of our newly truncated family. What I remember in particular is when they came over to help me prepare the house for the post-memorial gathering.

It seems those days after Charlie died I walked around, went about life as if in a stupor. I tried not to think of reality, but robot-like took care of all the fussy details. Agnes and Nora must have recognized the importance of keeping me busy. They were tough and strong and helped me laugh a bit. I appreciated so much that they didn't insist that I just sit and let them take care of everything. Together we dusted and vacuumed, cleaned the bathroom, took inventory of what was on hand for the event, what we might need to pick up, and so on. I don't believe the girls went to school that Monday. Or maybe they did. It's all fuzzy and oddly enough I find none of these particulars noted in my journals.

The only writing I did was a eulogy to Charlie. He had indeed been the best friend, husband, father. Part of me thought I would be able to stand in front of the church and read this, but deep down I knew much better.

Someone asked about having pictures of Charlie on display for the memorial service. Had we had access to digital photos in 1994, we could have put together such a poster. It's possible I thought, for a split second, about making a collage from our family pictures. It might even have been a good activity for Meg and Claire. I think I felt too broken, though. Too entirely 'not there.' Maybe I thought it would be my total undoing even to look at my poor husband's image. People would just have to use their imaginations and memories. I remember feeling a little guilty thinking that, but the best I could do was tread water. I felt like I was drowning.

Meg and Claire stood with me as we shook hands with and hugged all our family and friends streaming into the church lobby that morning. Only they can say what was going through their young minds. It had to be such a difficult time for them. I don't know what enabled me to stand there, to hold in the torrent of tears I felt building up, like a river approaching a dam. What kept me breathing even though some powerful hand had reached inside my chest and was squeezing my heart and lungs? And I was actually smiling through much of it.

Charlie's coworkers and friends solemnly offered their condolences and filed into the church.

So many people! It was incredible. When the first few of my library colleagues entered the lobby, I felt a tremendous wave of support and love. It was undoubtedly some of that energy that buoyed me up during those moments. More and more of them came through the line, hugging the girls and me one by one. My mind flashed to the library and I saw none of them at the reference desk or the check-out counter or in the stacks or the delivery room. I was truly concerned. As Lorna our Branch Manager approached, I asked, "Who's taking care of the library?" She smiled at me and simply replied, "Subs."

That just about undid me, knowing that all the wonderful women with whom I worked showed up to support my daughters and me in this moment. I had felt assured of love and support from family and friends, but this added an entirely different dimension. And not only did the entire staff of North Olmsted Public Library come to Charlie's service, but several colleagues from other branches, as well as from the Children's Services Department of Cuyahoga County Public Library, came through the line. The world has since lost Jan Smuda, but her devotion to literacy as the Early Childhood Specialist continues in the programs offered by CCPL. She was a dear, dear friend.

Has anyone ever described you in terms you didn't recognize, used words you never would have connected with yourself? One comment made to me that morning sticks with me to this day. I don't dwell on it. Rather, it's a quiet little treasure I pull out of a pocket of my mind only when I really need to hold it. That morning Barbara Barstow, then Manager of Children's Services, said as she hugged me, "Amy, you are one classy woman." Whether it was due to my tremendous respect for her that I believed her or simply that part of me in that moment desperately needed to believe her, I'll never know. I'm not sure I even understood what she meant by 'classy.' All I know is that it was another powerful gesture that kept me from sinking.

The church was absolutely packed. We sang, we prayed, we listened. The pastor read my words. And he ended up reading the words Tom, Charlie's best friend, his cross-country running buddy, had prepared. We sang some more and prayed some more. I held on tight. I had to be strong. And that was that. There would be no procession of cars to a cemetery. Not like when my dad died in 1973, the first weekend I came home from college.

Somehow I managed to get through my dad's funeral without losing it, that is, until I saw my older brother Mark break down in tears. To see this grown man, who had taken such good care of me when I was little, who was himself a father now – to see him cry this way, to see this sensitive side of him broke the surface tension of my own anguish.

The cemetery where my father is buried is 20 miles south on I-71. The day of his procession was suitably cold and dreary. We were all in a movie in that slow stream of cars wending through Lakewood, Ohio to the big highway and then south those seeming endless miles. At least it felt that way. As we passed houses I remember realizing that every family experiences this kind of loss. We were not unique in our grief. But I was not mature enough then to be comforted by this thought.

The day before Charlie's memorial service, his Aunt Mae called. I was in the basement absently pulling clothes out of the dryer as I heard her say that she approved of however I decided to take care of Charlie's remains. In the same breath she reminded me to think of his father and his anguish over losing his only son. Well, guess what, Aunt Mae, it was not my decision what to do with Charlie's ashes. I planned to observe Charlie's own wishes regarding this. I'm not sure I had the presence of mind during that conversation to make this point to her. But after thanking her for her concern, I declared rather vehemently that I did...NOT...need... her... approval! I'm pretty sure I slammed the dryer door after I hung up. How dare she? Who did she think she was, approving!

Back then this woman unfortunately became a magnet for all of my negative emotions. I was so sure the propaganda she spoke into Charlie's young ears, and her generously shared disrespect for his mother, damaged him sufficiently to push him as an adult to a point of confusion he could no longer bear. After all, every time I voiced guilt regarding Charlie's depression and suicide, I was told I should not blame myself. Well, in the context of my skewed thinking back then, someone was to blame for this! I had once been dominated by such an aggressive person as this woman and I was not going to allow it to happen again.

Part of me was aware that this was entirely unfair, wrong, and not at all helpful. Still, another voice in my head argued, the strong role she played in his youth, this phone call in which she tried to manipulate my plans to fulfill Charlie's own request, and her bizarre behavior following Charlie's service, on top of many other jab-filled conversations throughout the years all combined to make her a prime suspect. As we were leaving the church, she motioned me over to meet someone. She was always connecting people. For some reason she felt it immensely important that I meet this individual. I can't even recall if it was a man or a woman. But this person had recently marched in a Gay Pride parade somewhere. Yes, in 1994, this was an amazingly courageous feat, but why there, following my husband's, her nephew's memorial service did she need to share this with me? She was so showy about it. This was absurd! Unreal! Did I simply nod and smile in response? I can't say. Had I been one to use the f- word, I would have screamed right there in the emptying church, "WTF!" Luckily someone pulled me away. We needed to get back to the house.

In a somewhat twisted way anger helped me. I suppose it took a little pressure off my belief that I was a horrible wife, that I had caused all of this to happen. Of course, now I completely see how this kind of thinking arises. In her book Start Where You Are, Pema Chödrön states, "...blame is probably one of the most well-perfected armors that we have." I was quite successfully casting blame and protecting myself. Or so I thought. I have to laugh now, in the present, as I realize here is another book that was published, this time, the very year Charlie took his life. Wow!

Chödrön encourages us to experience what blame feels like. Had I done that, I would have recognized that it really only made me feel worse. When I put myself in Aunt Mae's shoes, the target of all of my newly widowed woman's fury, YIKES! Poor thing! And the most important realization is that all the blaming in the world would not bring Charlie back to life!

I did think about this occasionally back then. All of the kicking myself, all of the jealousy I felt towards happy families or authors publishing books, all of the self-pitying I engaged in, NONE of it would ever bring Charlie back to life. And none of it accomplished anything positive. It was an incredible waste of energy. I should have posted this idea on colorful papers all over the place to remind myself. Anger, blame, guilt, jealousy, self-pity, regret, among many others in our bag of tricks, are all a complete waste of precious energy. I did myself no favors. But I hadn't yet put all the puzzle pieces together to get the whole picture.

Of course, I behaved myself towards Aunt Mae at the gathering in the back yard following the service. I have no recollection of setting up the food and drink tables in the garage, nor how we obtained all the tables and chairs spread around the yard. I remember sitting briefly in a circle of chairs, under the sassafras tree and being aware that a blank book was being passed around in which those attending could write a favorite memory of Charlie. The whole thing was so surreal then and is even foggier now.

I do recall, though, that our station wagon, which had replaced the green Dodge, fell apart that day. I might have ridden from the church with someone else and then perhaps my brother Dan drove my car back to the house. Some rods from underneath, something to do with the wheels, had snapped and then just fell off. I can see long, thin metal pieces lying in the grass near the driveway. I was well aware of the irony. Fate was throwing me another curveball. I'm sure I didn't take the news calmly. I probably cried. It was all just so much to deal with.

To allay my worries, my dear brother-in-law Bill, Izzy's husband, who sold cars, assured me we could find a 'new' vehicle. In the meantime, the station wagon could be fixed. I can feel Dan's hand on my shoulder, part comforting, part telling me to "chill out." He knew what a worrier I was. Anxiety had been an inner enemy of mine for a long time just as much perhaps as it had been Charlie's. The difference is Charlie kept his quiet and to himself, at least until that last year. Mine radiated out and affected all those around me. Anxiety is another total waste that harms not only the worrier, but those close by.

We expend precious energy trying so hard to be in control. It is a matter of ego and involves old patterns of behavior. We put ourselves into various roles as we grow up. I was an independent kid, learning as I went along in life about pecking order, respecting elders, and then in adulthood, taking care of myself, being in charge of my life, running the family show. I felt I had to hold it together. I got into the pattern of thinking ahead so I would be prepared. Well, mix a big imagination with anticipation and POOF! we're talking a mushroom cloud of worry. Not good.

Once again, worry accomplishes absolutely NOTHING! But that's the only way I knew how to be back then. When you have been told all your life that you are 'high-strung' you figure that's how you are wired, pure and simple, with no possibility of change. WRONG-o!

As for the post-memorial gathering, I have only vague impressions of the rest of that day. I'm pretty sure I held it together in the presence of all those people. It occurs to me that perhaps we control our emotions because to express them might make others feel uncomfortable. There's a fine line between showing compassion for oneself and feeling concern for others.

~~~~~

Chapter 8: A Shapeless Summer

I have often referred to those months following Charlie's death as a shapeless summer. That's how it seemed. Yes, there were swimming lessons and softball practices and games, not to mention my work schedule at the library, but there was no urgency to race home from an afternoon swim to put dinner on the table. In my journal I wrote:

These three summer months have sped by like the bullet train. Much of it a blur. Much of it too much activity for the slow luxury of deep sadness, melancholy, like running over hot coals, never on one long enough to feel the burning...It's been exactly three months since Charlie took his own life, decided he could no longer bear whatever torment was inside his head. I sometimes catch myself shaking my head in disbelief of the whole thing or sighing his name.

I noted later in this entry that I overheard Claire telling a friend about something her dad had given her and how much it touched me that she even mentioned him.

We three felt cast adrift in many ways that summer. We'd lost our anchor. The current of deep sadness rippled among us. It seemed to send us farther and farther away from one another at a time we needed to stay together. I tried to be the unifying force, but here, when I look back, it seems I lacked a true compassion for what these young girls were experiencing. I knew they held tightly inside a knot of confusion and hurt and anger. Surely I was compassionate, but did I express it enough or in the right way? Was I perhaps trying so hard to be a good mom and dad that I overdid it? Was I now the one in denial of being depressed?

In retrospect, of course, we three together should have sought grief counseling, but the taste in my mouth for any sort of professional help was still bitter. They, none of them had helped Charlie. How could they possibly help us? I think, though, that self-pity and jealousy played a role here, as well. I was not thinking straight. At the time, I imagined most people in such positions were happily married, led financially sound lives, and experienced no insurmountable waves in life. How could they possibly empathize with our situation? I know. It sounds absolutely crazy! I encourage you to read the chapter in which I describe in greater detail just how irrationally my mind worked in those days. Imagine eschewing professional help because you didn't want to face someone else's success!

Perhaps I was also avoiding the digging in of heels I assumed would occur were I to arrange for us to see a counselor. Did I really want to cause us any more discomfort than we already felt?

Finally, pride was perhaps a factor. I was determined to get us through this on my own. Then again, did I simply not know how to ask for help?

For the most part it seemed Meg and Claire wanted to spend time with friends who had 'normal' families with both a mom and a dad and siblings and pets. It was a familiar atmosphere. I was extremely grateful to those families, and happy and relieved for the girls when they had these opportunities. I knew this was offering them lighter times, chances to experience happiness and perhaps the perspective of other adults who cared about them. It does take a village.

And it was an escape from the sadness that hung in the air at our house. I remember encouraging them to talk about their dad, that we shouldn't be afraid of sadness. They feared, though, that mentioning him would make me cry, something they perhaps did not want to witness. But even more, I think it just hurt them too much. This was an amazingly cruel thing that happened to them. It was a blow out of nowhere. There were no answers for why. I have always heard that children are pretty resilient. They did laugh. They did play. But when I couldn't be as gentle and easy-going as their dad had been, those ripples turned into huge stormy waves. We fought a lot.

A corner of my mind contains an image of little Claire hiding in Meg's closet, sobbing out of tired sadness and fury, because Meg and I were yelling at one another. She couldn't stand it. When Claire and I were at it, or if Meg did not want to comply with something I was demanding she do, her refuge was the top of a tall blue spruce down the hill from the house, a Christmas tree from when Charlie was little.

It often struck me that they simply wanted their dad back, a fun-loving, light-hearted man who played with them, read to them, and who didn't discipline them. I was the serious part of the parenting scene. I felt I had to play the 'bad' guy, insisting that they put their dishes in the sink or straighten their rooms or be responsible for their kitty. Yes, I totally needed to "take a chill pill," but I couldn't change overnight. I had all these responsibilities now as I saw it. I had to hold it together. I had to maintain an energy level to take care of everything. Once I was revved up, I had to keep going or I would crash. I was as loving and caring with Meg and Claire as I could be at the time. But I was not their dad.

My mother, who had moved from Ohio to Bellevue, Washington in 1974, the year after my father died, visited us that summer. In my journal I noted that on the evening of July 22nd a group of us including Izzy and Dan, Tom and his wife, Charlie's sister and her oldest daughter trooped down to the location Charlie requested his ashes be sprinkled. It was actually two places. In honor of Charlie's light-heartedness and great sense of humor, we took a measuring cup. The day had been humid. The ground from recent rains was soft and squooshy, and the mosquitoes loved it all! And they loved us! So up to one place that held special meaning for Charlie we hiked. Up and down that steep hill he had trained for his high school cross country races, and in the late 1980s, for local marathons. There we flung out into the moist air cupfuls of Charlie's remains, all thinking our private thoughts. I don't believe we sang; we didn't want to attract any attention.

As quickly as possible we hiked a soggy, mosquito-clouded trail over to the other location Charlie had indicated in his request. He had shown me this beautiful spot the night before he died. It both saddened and angered me to think what he had been contemplating then as he pointed out the myrtle and Jack-in-the-Pulpits in the fresh greenness of that solitary place.

It was closer to marshy areas, so we had to move fast. My mom was a good sport about it, taking the girls' hands, doing jumping games with them, trying to lighten the atmosphere of our mission. The swarms of mosquitoes helped lighten our spirits, too. I imagined Charlie perhaps subconsciously planning it this way, now chuckling from his new vantage point at the sight of us swatting and jumping and slapping and scratching during the performance of an otherwise solemn duty. If I recall rightly, we returned to our cars laughing at the absurdity of it all. Back at the house we enjoyed a little snack of crackers, cheese, wine, and fruit. We talked and reminisced. When the full moon shone high above the tall pines, I walked through dewy grass to the lower backyard and played "Amazing Grace" on my recorder.

In the autumn Nora and I snuck down to the myrtle patch with a bag of hyacinth and daffodil bulbs. We planted each one with a little blessing. We imagined getting caught as we did this and what story we might tell. This got us laughing. It was a good time to be down there with this dear friend.

My ever compassionate library supervisor Karen learned about a bereavement group that met locally. Lillian, a family counselor who had suffered much loss in her own life, conducted the weekly meetings. I recall the first time I entered the room. Long tables formed a square with chairs around the outside, and against one wall stood a single table offering coffee, tea, juice, and a plate of assorted cookies. After Lillian introduced herself and gave an overview of what we might expect from these sessions, she asked us to write our names large enough for the others to read on cardboard plaques. She then encouraged us one by one to tell our stories. My heart raced as the woman next to me finished her tale. I would be next. In as controlled a voice as I could muster I told the group I wasn't ready to talk about my loss. Lillian was naturally understanding, as were, I assumed, the others.

Most of the attendees were older women whose husbands had died. I recall only a couple of men. They, too, were older. Some of these folks had lost children or a very close friend. I was so inundated with my own grief and bewilderment I could absorb what Lillian shared only in terms of my own circumstances.

One point she stressed in that first session really surprised me. She said any emotion one feels in a time of loss is okay. I was relieved to hear that laughter was an acceptable expression, that I wasn't actually crazy or unfeeling because I found something amusing in the face of this tragedy. Countless times had Charlie's mother mentioned she couldn't eat or sleep very well as a result of her deep sadness over losing her son. My appetite was as healthy as ever and I slept like a log. What was wrong with me? My old pattern of assuming criticism caused me to think she was saying I was not grieving properly. This, of course, was utter nonsense. She was only stating what was going on with her. The main point is there is no proper way to grieve!

Lillian offered poems of comfort, excerpts from books on bereavement, bibliographies, engaging cartoons that offered the light angle of humor, and, if I remember correctly, worksheets that guided us in writing about our sadness. She also touched on practical aspects by giving us contact information for social services agencies.

One of the darkest moments I associate with those meetings was the drive home. The route I took wended its way along the upper edge of cliffs dropping sharply to the valley below. Every time I saw those guard rails in my headlights, I thought how easy it would be to swerve 'accidentally' off the road and crash through, flying out into the night. Wasn't it possible I could have been trying to avoid hitting a deer or raccoon? But of course, the only answer to this imagining was "The girls would never forgive me." They would know it was no accident. They would wonder how I could be so cruel as to leave them this way. I really did want to die, so ripped in half I felt by Charlie's suicide. But I could never do this to them. I loved them.

So had Charlie, but depression got too strong a hold of him.

I was a fortunate person among the bereaved souls of our group. I went home from those meetings to someone. I had my children. I had a part time job. I was younger. This occurred to me then and I did care about those older folks and their life situations. Grief seemed so much lighter, I found, when I walked in others' shoes.

C.S. Lewis refers to the heaviness of grief in his book A Grief Observed. A very dear friend, who herself had experienced the same kind of loss as I, gave me this book and it's quite possible that very act of compassion helped lighten her own sadness.

"It was as if the lifting of the sorrow removed a barrier." Lewis observed how his raw emotions, his deep sadness kept him from remembering his wife in ways he desperately desired. Sorrow can be lifted by directing oneself toward others, by showing them compassion and gratitude.

We three were often invited to spend time with friends whose children were Meg's and Claire's ages. I always appreciated this opportunity for the girls and me to experience one another's company in a context different from that of our own household. It forced us in some ways to behave with greater mindfulness than we did at home. Then again, it sometimes provided the girls a safe environment in which to push boundaries they otherwise would not have dared. It's interesting to look back and observe this.

After a time, though, I began to feel uncomfortable when together with other couples. Indeed, it was my own imaginings, but I worried that I was pictured, even by my dearest friends, as somehow a threat. It was almost as though I perceived myself as having some sort of dread disease that might infect these intact families. Or maybe I attached to myself the Black Widow concept. I especially struggled when I noticed my friends being what I considered unfairly or insensitively treated while kind attention was paid to me. That was extremely awkward.

Not long after Charlie died, one of our close friends made a very generous gesture to our little family. I was deeply touched by this. I was, however, torn. While this was extremely kind, it seemed unfair to the giver's family. I could not accept the gift and approached the situation as sensitively as I could. By the time that talk occurred, I was honestly able to say we were going to be all right financially, so there was no pretense of anything. I always hoped I had expressed enough how deeply that gesture touched me.

In those first months we experienced a tremendous outpouring of support and well-meant words of comfort at church. In my fragile emotional state, however, I tended to read between the lines when I overheard comments during the coffee hour. "Why, it says right there in the Bible that suicide is an unforgivable sin." And woe to anyone who might utter those words "It was God's Will" within in my hearing. Quite obviously, it was Charlie's will! I perceived harsh judgment tangled up with sympathy.

The church is supposed to be a haven of love and compassion, but we are all human beings, there with our own baggage and agendas and ideas of what's right and wrong learned through the interpretations of others' interpretations, ad infinitum. Equanimity, in a way, is encouraged through the admonition "Judge not that ye be not judged" (Matt. 7:1), but this is a conditional directive. If you yourself don't want to be judged, then don't go judging others. Practicing equanimity is simply "Don't judge." Period. Our religion never taught us that it's okay to love ourselves and be so curious about what's deep inside us that we would try to figure out why we think and act as we do. We always handed that job off to a higher power. I understand now that we need to be compassionate with ourselves before we can truly give space and show compassion to others.

I was not keen on outward expressions of pity. I remember feeling that I was holding steady during the Thanksgiving Day service. I was making it through that first major holiday without falling apart, when a woman, returning from communion to her place in the pew behind me, reached over and gently patted my shoulder. I know she meant it with utmost empathy, but it totally undid me. I started to cry and had nothing but my sleeve to wipe the snot from my nose. It was embarrassing. I had been so strong. Well, I had appeared strong, I guess. Thank goodness we always sat at the end of the pew. It was our fast getaway strategy.

I did not on that day understand the therapeutic power of genuinely giving thanks. I was not able to look up out of that deep hole of self-pity and enumerate all for which I, somewhere in my mind and heart, was grateful. That list would have read something like:

Meg and Claire / our family and friends / the love family and friends show us / we did not lose the roof over our heads when Charlie died / a lovely yard and garden / we had plenty to eat / a reliable car / my job / good health / music / books / etc.

The simple exercise of contemplating these bountiful aspects of my life probably would have helped in some way. Perhaps my mind indeed went there, but in looking back, it seems more likely a gray-green smog of depression similar to what Charlie experienced clouded my thinking.

Once again, I must say how laughter helped us tremendously. We had a white board on the kitchen door. One evening at the dinner table the subject of bad words came up. I don't recall if it was Meg or I who jumped us first, but one of us walked over to the board and wrote a word. Meg may have written "shit!" I think I wrote "damn!" Meg and I were really curious what eight-year-old Claire would write. She got up, walked over to the board, with a flourish uncapped the blue marker and wrote "F-U-L-K!" What? She told us she saw it written on the back of the bus seat. We all laughed our heads off. How cathartic!

Meg, Claire, and I moved along, guided by school and work schedules, by appointments or holiday squares highlighted on the calendar. We laughed. We fought. We all did the best we could at the time. Our life together no longer seemed shapeless. We knew our direction was forward, for what else could we do but carry on?

~~~~~

Chapter 9: Random Kindnesses

Random kindnesses made a deep impression on me. I experienced many heart-warming gestures in those months following Charlie's death. Perhaps it is the element of surprise coupled with the people involved that rendered these gestures indelible. In any case, I offer this collage of memories. There is no particular sequence to this sharing.

. . .

During those short weeks until the end of the school year, Claire's elementary school counselor offered group talk sessions for her and other students who had experienced loss. I believe this continued the following school year, as well. I still have a notebook Claire made during that time in an effort to help her process her grief. The pictures she drew and her words helped me understand better what was in her young heart and mind. The group also assembled a booklet of individual expressions, each child taking home a copy to share with parents. I was so grateful to that school counselor for helping these children in this way. With this mention I thank her and the school's kind support.

Okay, this may not strike many as a random kindness. Schools nowadays are very conscientious about the effects of trauma on children and automatically offer such help. All the same, it was a tremendous relief to me that someone with a keener understanding of the psychological implications of this loss to so young a child offered Claire an empathetic atmosphere during her school day.

. . .

On June 21, 1994 I recorded in my journal that a ferocious storm had blown through North Olmsted the night before. Meg and her school friends were leaving early that morning to go to Cedar Point with the youth group from church, so the girls had stayed the night at our house.

Our pizza arrived shortly before the storm hit. We decided to make a picnic dinner of it in the basement on the wooden platform Charlie had constructed years before. The thunder and lightning passed through by bedtime. The older girls decided to camp out on the platform. Claire and I slept upstairs on the couch.

In the morning, we found that our large green ash tree in the front yard had broken in half and had fallen across the driveway. After the girls left, I figured I'd just start working away at the tree. It was a crystal clear morning and I was happy to be outside. I didn't think about how I would handle the heavy logs. I had sharp tree loppers and a mini chain saw! I was tough! I was going in! By the time I had put four good-sized bundles out by the street, a city tree trimming truck pulled up. Two men jumped out and came over to me.

The tall, burly, red-haired fellow with a little ponytail at the back (which I found attractive –really!) said to me, "We saw you earlier struggling with this and right now we're between jobs, so we'll give you a hand."

I was so moved by this. They just took over! It was great! Here's what I wrote in my journal:

In about fifteen minutes they had the whole tree down and in chips in the back of their truck. "Red" said their names were Steve and John, but I don't know who was who. I gave them each $10 and suggested a good lunch at Manhattan Deli. In my heart I felt so grateful, but I didn't want to let on that I was 'alone.'

Around the corner from us lived Jim Peterson, a schoolmate of Charlie's. Jim worked for the city and I believe he knew Charlie had died, so I always wondered if he had been instrumental in those fellows stopping by to take care of the fallen tree. In any case, I was grateful to them for their kindness.

. . .

While I'm on the subject of kind-hearted men, I'll note this brief encounter. On our way to almost everywhere in town, we passed a corner gas station owned and operated by the Zeffilini Brothers. It's located kitty-corner to the big park. We, all of us, were always walking by or stopping in for gas. Charlie passed it on his way to catch the bus to work. Meg interviewed one of the brothers when she was interested, as a teen, in auto mechanics. They knew us and we appreciated them.

A little over a year after Charlie died, I stopped in to have them check the level of steering and transmission fluids in my car. It was a morning darkening with storm. Marcus, the brother who helped me, said, "So, where's your husband been? I haven't seen him around in a while." I told him briefly what happened. He said he and his brothers suspected that might have been the case. By that point Telly was also standing there. I told them it bothered me that people might think we divorced, because Charlie and I had enjoyed a very good marriage. It was hard to keep the quiver out of my voice as we stood there.

Then one of them said, "Do you want a cup of coffee?" This struck me as so kind, one human being showing compassion in such a simple, spontaneous gesture. There was something profound about it that I can barely describe. Of course, to keep this light, I will say that it was a cup of coffee with powdered creamer in a Styrofoam cup in a gas station. The point here, of course, is the gesture, one which touched me deeply.

. . .

Here's another gesture I will always remember. A little background first. One day after lunch, when Meg was four years old and I was could-give-birth-any-day-now pregnant with Claire, we walked to the library. We sat and read several books and chose a few more to take home. When we were thinking of leaving we noticed the light in the library suddenly grow dim. Out the window we saw that a strong wind was kicking up.

Well aware of my condition, and that we had walked to the library, a member of the children's staff offered to drive us home. She and Meg had the fun connection of having the same middle name; they always joked about it. I was ever so grateful to her for that kindness.

Several years later I had the privilege of becoming a staff member of the children's department at that library and this kind woman was now a colleague. And mentor, I might add. Those were wonderful years.

One autumn afternoon, the year Charlie died, I was working at the library, busy with something in the Folk and Fairy Tale section. The shelving faced the play area which included a low table for little ones, a couch, and of course toys. It was a fairly congested corner of the children's room.

A familiar patron came over to me as I was pulling books off the shelf. She asked how I was doing. I replied automatically that I was fine and in turn asked how she was. She shared something and then went on to ask me about Charlie. I'd had the impression she worked in the field of psychology and so was not entirely surprised by some of her questions, but very soon I started to feel uncomfortable. This was no place for this conversation. It was none of her business. But I also didn't know how to fend for myself in this kind of situation. I was now trying to get away, gracefully, from this woman and all her questions. I moved toys and pushed in chairs in the effort. She totally had me cornered.

Suddenly, over the loudspeaker, came the voice of an angel.

"Mrs. Heath, you're wanted in the delivery room. Mrs. Heath, please come to the delivery room."

I excused myself from the nosy patron and hurried back to answer the call believing I was legitimately needed for something in the back. It was my dear friend and colleague. She had noticed what was going on in the Folk and Fairy Tale section. She had seen the look on my face. She knew how to rescue me without causing any scenes. She showed not only sheer genius, but even more so, true compassion. I will always remember her quick thinking and loving kindness.

. . .

Another kindness my colleagues extended to me in that first year following Charlie's death was a surprise fortieth birthday celebration. I was totally clueless, so clever and quiet they were in their planning. Memory of this and other such gestures of love and support sustained me through many dark moments.

. . .

As I described earlier in the book, I was feeling defeated trying to get another children's story published. Encouragement was to me a gift. It was a gesture of compassion that, if absorbed, I could act upon. Often it just didn't make it through that haze of self-pity, perhaps one could even call it depression, and remained only muffled words of kindness. But sometimes, if extended from a more persuasive angle, BING! it would shake away that haze and get me going.

One such successful encouragement was Barbara Barstow's urging me to apply for the Highlights for Children week-long workshop for writers at Chautauqua, New York. This took place the summer of 1995. At first I balked at the idea. Summer is the busiest programming time for children's library staff. My supervisor Karen, however, was equally enthusiastic about this opportunity.

Meg and Claire flew west to spend that week with their Colorado cousins and I drove east with a couple I knew, who had already planned to be in Chautauqua for that week.

Those were magical days of hearing talks given by well-known children's authors and illustrators, of getting to speak with them informally, of feeling inspired and renewed. The hotel room assigned to me was one that George Gershwin had occupied, according to the owners. I loved that fact! I felt almost as I did back in college in this casual, yet orchestrated center of learning. The journal I kept during that week, however, remained unopened for many years due to the subject matter of the next section of this book.

~~~~~

Chapter 10: Post-Charlie Craziness

Grief can cause craziness. In my case, it seems to have disabled on many occasions some essential wiring between my brain and my mouth.

I'm not offering grief as an excuse for thoughtlessness, but it certainly can mess with the thinking/doing connections of an otherwise healthy mind. I know three women, whom I hold dear, who have experienced the same kind of loss. They all strike me as having had a greater self-assuredness and more intact wiring following their devastating experiences. I never observed them wallowing in self-pity. To me they seemed amazingly strong. But then, perhaps they, too, were so determined to get through life that their inner struggles weren't apparent.

I got off easy. By this I mean that I was spared any imprint of horrific images regarding Charlie's suicide. Many people are suffering unspeakably at this very moment from the impact of coming upon someone they knew. My heart breaks for them and all I can do is send them a telepathic embrace of empathy. I also send these traumatized people wishes for total erasure of that searing memory and/or peace of heart and mind. New coping methods are being developed all the time. I hope that those struggling with this level of trauma and consequent stress and physical ailments are getting the help they need.

Returning to the misfiring of my neural impulses, I believe grief seemed to bring on increased self-pity, self-loathing, low self-esteem, etc.

Of course, in retrospect, no matter the distance in time, the instances described below caused feelings of embarrassment and remorse. In the previous chapter, I mentioned the journal I kept during that wonderful week I spent at Chautauqua. All these years I have not dared to reread those pages; I could not face the 'me' of that time period. I wasn't brave enough. Until now.

Imagine what happens to a box of lovely ripe strawberries stuffed into the back of the fridge and forgotten. The tiniest bit of mold on one berry eventually contaminates the entire lot. Embarrassment and guilt were spots of mold that overpowered the truly sweet and inspiring days I reported in my Chautauqua journal. In an effort not to allow that magical time to be ruined entirely, and to illustrate how the pain of grief made me crazy, I offer these anecdotes.

The year Charlie died I read a poignant teen novel about a young woman betrothed to an older childhood acquaintance newly returned from the Crusades, and somewhat broken from his experiences. She is not happy about the idea of actually marrying the man, a move necessary for the unification of the region. The religious leader of the village believes sending the two on a pilgrimage would help them come to a better understanding of, and devotion to one another. It is a beautifully written historical fiction that takes the reader on foot through France and Spain of the early 1300s.

I had only just composed a letter to the author of this novel when I learned she had suddenly died. This struck me as particularly sad. It was such a shame. I had enjoyed her other books and really wanted to express my admiration of her work. It may have been on a listserv that I read an announcement about her death written by her husband. Here I saw an opportunity not only to voice my admiration of his wife's writing, but also to express my empathy for him. We had both lost our dearest friends. I wrote to him; he appreciated my sentiments.

During that week at Chautauqua I attended many talks given by conference staff, all well-known figures in the world of children's literature. I always came away from them fired up and ready to write. Well, in one case, I left feeling very ill at ease. The speaker had mentioned the writer whose work I so admired, describing her as a warm-hearted, generous spirit. When it came time for questions I was like a kindergartner inclined to make associations, eagerly wanting to share a story instead of asking a question. To be fair, my statement may have been in conjunction with a question, but that part I don't remember at all.

I told the speaker that this author had unfortunately died. That poor, gentle soul up behind the podium, facing all those people, was speechless. If memory serves, he actually turned pale. After a brief hesitation, he said how sorry he was to hear it, and went on to the heart of whatever else I had brought up.

I could feel my own soul slipping down my body like polyester off a cold metal folding chair, struggling to detach itself so it could slither away quietly out of the room. Upon seeing his face, I knew what a horrible, thoughtless thing I had done to this man. When the session ended and the audience was leaving the room, I went up to him. Oh, how I chafed standing in that little cluster of writers waiting to speak with him. I attempted to apologize, but I don't think I was very effective. Even if he forgave me, even if he managed somehow to give me space for such a thoughtless act, I could not forgive myself. I felt awful knowing I could not undo this madness. It's unlikely this gentle author/ editor will ever read this, but by telling the tale here and now, I finally can forgive myself.

Looking more closely at the concept of a healthy mind, consider "emotional intelligence." Behavioral psychologists and neuroscientists have discussed the theory of EI for several decades. Daniel Goleman describes it this way in his 1995 book Emotional Intelligence: "...managing feelings so that they are expressed appropriately and effectively, enabling people to work together smoothly toward their common goal." This business-sounding context can be expanded to mean the entire human race, for is not our common goal to live peacefully together? Emotional intelligence involves self-awareness, self-management, self-motivation, the ability to empathize with others, and the ability to handle relationships with others.

I realize now that eighteen years ago I would have scored miserably on the emotional intelligence test! I carried a lot of baggage from childhood, my sense of unfairness having morphed into self-pity, as one example. This reared its ugly head when I received rejection slips from publishing companies. Unfortunately, those reactions did not translate into resolve and improved self-discipline. Low marks for me on the self-motivation part of the emotional intelligence test!

It is true that working at the library and being a published writer did a lot to boost my self-esteem. My self-confidence increased as I successfully guided patrons to the materials they needed and wanted; as I jumped hurdle after hurdle learning, sometimes baptism-by-fire, new technologies; being asked to help with special children's literature projects. But these were external factors that contributed to my self-image. Why was I so unable to find the intrinsic affirmation I needed for my writing?

The answer is I was an A+ student in Self-Defeatism 101:

I want to feel better about myself;

I feel I need someone/something to convince me I am worthy;

I expect/hope for someone/something to tell me I am worthy;

I cannot compel someone/something to tell me I am worthy;

I become frustrated and sad because no one/nothing tells me I am worthy;

I continue to question my worth.

Another incident of grief-related craziness involved yet another author. Are you seeing a pattern here? I was frustrated about getting nothing else published, taking it personally as though being told no one believed in my abilities, and by extension, didn't like me. My husband, my moral support, was gone. I was just plain crazy and felt out of control. Subconsciously recognizing this, it's likely I didn't like me either.

This time I was reading a post on a listserv for children's writers and illustrators. A very prolific author listed his books, many of which were retellings of traditional tales, in response to a question about this genre. My low self-esteem clashed with what I perceived as his high self-esteem.

I wrote him the message, "So, Mr. ________, what size hat do you wear?"

Can you believe I actually sent that to him? OH-MY-GOSH, I have to laugh at the insanity! At the time I'm sure I felt justified in doing so. Even clever perhaps. Hat size...big head. YIKES! And of course, I felt somewhat anonymous and protected by cyber distance.

He responded very calmly, with dignity and decorum, if I remember correctly. Of course, I sent him an apology, explaining my state of mind and heart. He wrote back that he understood. He was unimaginably kind about the whole thing. All the same, I hoped never to run into him at any literature or writers' conferences.

While I'm in true confessions mode, I also uttered something very insensitive to the wonderful woman who illustrated my book. We learned that Sofie's Role was going out of print after only five years. This was a blow to me. Again, I had made no more progress in getting any stories accepted. Let me add here that this was 99% owing to my own lack of determination, self-esteem, and self-discipline as a writer. I did not send manuscripts back out when they were returned with rejections. I was taking all of it too personally and too seriously. Worst of all, I was in that self-pity rut.

When I called her and we spoke about the book going out of print, I made an extremely thoughtless comment. Sofie's Role was my only book. I was so fortunate to have been paired with this excellent illustrator of many children's books, but this had been her book, too. I can only imagine what she thought of me. Why, oh why is there no delete key in conversations?

My dad had always reminded me, "Think before you speak." Be mindful. Be aware. Give space to thoughts and words. "Be impeccable with your word" as Don Miguel Ruiz advises in The Four Agreements. None of this was activated during that conversation. All I knew was that I was hurt by this whole turn of events regarding our book. Yes, it is extremely embarrassing to think back on this incident. I do hope she would grant me space. She struck me as a sensitive woman who has been through her own difficulties in life. I always loved how she brought her world into that of my story, combining the vivacity of a colorful, diverse community with all the rich aromas and sights of a small town bakery. I am forever grateful to her.

So, you know that snowball effect? You recognize an error in judgment, whatever the cause, you feel awful about it, you analyze it, you imagine how you could fix it, and oh, how you wish you could take back what you said or did. The whole thing reminds you of other assumptions you made, of rash conclusions, of other acts of thoughtlessness, and you're really on a roll grinding yourself down feeling bad. Remorse in the mind of an already broken person is fuel on a big bonfire of self-loathing.

At such times, my crazy mind took me as far back as junior high school. And of course, since so much of my darker thoughts were generated by a suspicion that I was indeed unfit to partner successfully with anyone of the opposite sex, I flung myself on the coals of thoughtless interactions with boys.

I remember innocently laughing with a boy in seventh grade math class. He had a great sense of humor. I recall envying him his freckles. At some point that year I received first a box of chocolates and the next week, flowers at home from a secret admirer. This was really exciting for a bespectacled girl who had just transferred from a dreary parochial school to the 'big time' public junior high school. And then the note came: "Meet me on the foot bridge at 1 o'clock Saturday."

My mother made me wear boots! Okay, the snow was melting. It was slushy. She had a point, but these were no stylish Go-Go boots. They were those old white rubber ones. I tried to ignore them as I walked to the bridge just down the block. Who could it be? Was it one of the 'cool' football players? I couldn't imagine who might be interested in me.

Now, we do need to cut ourselves some slack once in awhile. This whole boy/girl thing was totally new to me. My previous forays included my 'pal' Brad from my childhood in Michigan; we were innocent Lutheran school chums. And the other was a crush I had on a boy whose initials I inscribed in ink on my wooden classroom desk. He got in trouble. I guess I learned a lesson there. If you ever want to get someone else in trouble, write his or her initials on school property. You can see I had very little practice in the world of romance.

When I saw on the foot bridge the young, freckle-faced boy with whom I had laughed so much, so innocently in math class, I was speechless. He was a really cute boy. And very sweet. And fun. But seeing him there was a total surprise; he was not who I had in mind.

So, who did I think I was going to meet on that bridge? Illya Kuryakin, (David McCallum) from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., or James West played by Robert Conrad on The Wild, Wild West?

Well, I know I must have said something. I am sure I was honest, but did I express myself about preferring to be 'just friends' in a sensitive enough manner? In any case, my response wasn't what that boy hoped for. Egos can be so fragile. I don't think we laughed together in class very much after that. He might have even asked to change desks with someone.

This makes me think of that whole messed up question of who chooses whom in a relationship. How do people pair up? In online dating sites I feel like I'm standing in some sort of auction line-up. Well let's see, she's fairly well-educated, her children are grown, she's interested in indoor and outdoor activities, she sounds like she has a great sense of humor, and she has nice eyes, but oh, she does wear glasses – maybe I could get her to send me a photo of her face without those glasses. And maybe she could post a picture of her whole body. And she does indicate she's interested in gender equality issues. Oh...could be trouble. Click. Delete.

And then there's that whole business of 'type.' Is it sour grapes on my part to say "WhatEHvuh!"? For a while I have bemoaned that I am evidently not a particular someone's type. I resisted this, though, and kept thinking, If only he would get real! If only he could see that I would be absolutely perfect for him. If only... It finally struck me that, wonder of wonders, he's not my type! I finally woke up and saw that the ball is in my court. I am the one who must get real, be kinder to myself, and accept what is.

Certainly I am not the only one who sees it this way. We have come a long way from the boys and girls lined up on opposite sides of the dance floor. I look at that auction line-up of men the same way. And it's frightening. And depressing. Indeed there are so many people out there looking for the 'right' person. The women's movement was under way in the late 1960s. We could take things into our own hands. We didn't have to stand by the wall waiting for someone to ask us to dance. We could walk right up to a guy. I could write a note to that eighth grade boy, the tallish one with the sparkling brown eyes and nice smile!

Well, write to him I did. And he wrote back! We smiled at each other as we passed in the hall. We walked places and talked. We went skating. I will never forget the thrill of that first kiss, as thick snowflakes drifted down around us. We danced together. We were an 'item.' At some point, though, all this walking to and from school together and being in many of the same classes, all of it started to make me feel suffocated, like I couldn't talk to or spend time with anyone else. And I had no idea how to talk to him about this! I really cared a lot about this young man, but I needed space. What did I do? I simply stopped talking to him. Can you believe it? I treated him "abominably ill." I wasn't creative enough to figure out how to deal with this.

Well, I got my comeuppance, which I won't go into here.

Again, to be fair, I must add that during those months spent with that young man a lot of turmoil rocked our family, messing with my emotions, not to mention the effects of hormones on my moods. Meanwhile, this boy was dealing with his own angst at home. I remember composing in my mind a number of times throughout the following years how I might say I was sorry. Finally, very recently, via a social media site I was able to convey an apology. I didn't go into any details about something that happened so long ago; he didn't remember anything for which I needed to apologize. Doesn't it always seem to happen that way? The other person thinks you're nuts!

None of us is perfect. We all, from time to time, say or do thoughtless things by which we unintentionally hurt others. Some classmates may have been a bit more mature, more mindful, certainly more experienced relationship-wise than I, but for the most part, we were and are all in the same boat.

The lesson here is the concept of giving space. I had to grope around a bit in that pit of smoldering coals, feeling really awful about my behavior, recognizing I couldn't fix any of it before deciding enough was enough. Becoming ash myself was not going to change anything. It would not undo hurts. It would not bring Charlie back to life. How appropriate are these words of the German poet Goethe:

Und so lang du das nicht hast,

Dieses: Stirb und Werde!

Bist du nur ein trüber Gast

Auf der dunklen Erde.

Roughly translated it means that if throughout your life you don't have any 'near-death' emotional experiences from which you rise up to become a renewed spirit, you're only a dull visitor on this dark earth. You're a zombie. This seems rather melodramatic, to be sure. But in a more general sense, I think Goethe might be speaking here about awareness and wakefulness to one's experiences.

Eventually I woke up to the reality of the moment and climbed out of that hot pit. I had to! I was accountable to others. In order to be there for my daughters I had to turn on that light of compassion for myself, be renewed in spirit, and carry on. Crazy or not.

~~~~~

Chapter 11: The Dear Tim Letters

While Charlie was still alive, I wrote a picture book manuscript about a two-story house being moved. With its brown asphalt-shingled exterior and its front door only a few steps up from the sidewalk on a very busy street, the house seemed shabby and worn out. We passed it numerous times on our way to stores, the library, to friends' houses. It had been built around 1831!

One day when Meg and I were walking home from the library with Claire in the stroller, we noticed a sign in the side yard of this house. A young man happened to be outside, so I asked him what was going on. When he told us how old the house was and that it was going to be moved to the Frostville Museum of the Olmsted Historical Society in the Cleveland Metroparks, I immediately asked if we could look inside. I was my curious kid self. He was actually quite proud showing us around. The house was almost 160 years old. At one point in its history it had served as a way station. Lorain Road, the street on which we lived, had been an east-west wagon trail.

I thought the process of moving an antique two-story house might fascinate children, so I wrote a simple step-by-step explanation about it. Even though I intended this to be a non-fiction book I included a little girl selling lemonade to people watching the celebratory parade of the house in two pieces moving down the street.

When she returned the manuscript to me, my editor asked that I flesh out the young entrepreneur and involve her more in the process, thus making it more of a story. She was interested in it, because during her childhood her own house had been moved. This was a tremendous opportunity. She really did like the idea.

I received this encouragement, however, shortly after Charlie died and unfortunately all I heard in it was rejection. My emotions were so screwy I couldn't imagine how, within the scope of a picture book, which averages fewer than 1,000 words, I could add anything. Of course, it snowballed into a personal thing. Those mean little voices in my mind whispered, "She doesn't like you! She thinks you're a high-maintenance kind of writer." And of course, the months that passed during which I didn't respond with any revisions made me feel worse, for I imagined her totally writing me off.

Losing someone you love skews your perceptions, makes you crazy, as I have explained in the previous chapter. Reality is out the door in a flash! You think and say and do some of the most uncharacteristic things. Things that you regret. This makes you feel worse. If you're not careful this can spiral you into a really deep, dark hole. Not good.

For about a decade my slogan had been "there are no rejection slips in knitting." But then something woke up my sleeping wordsmith. I got the idea to compose a series of letters. Ever since Charlie died I had heard people talk about writing a letter to their deceased loved one in the context of closure. I didn't really want to close anything, but I got thinking about the whole process of writing. I thought about all those black and white composition notebooks I had filled over the years, trying to work out what had happened to my beloved Charlie. I had also written about daily happenings, about Meg and Claire, about what I was reading, learning, figuring out. Writing. Writing. Writing. The pages resemble seersucker, so vigorously I pressed pen to paper.

So I wondered what if a boy's best childhood buddy has died? The boy had moved to a different town the year before, has just endured his first year as the new kid in school (something I experienced), and the summer, that carefree time during which buddies spend lots of time together, lay as a blank page before him. The house he and his mother had been renting is destined to be moved to a village managed by the Historical Society on the outskirts of town. The boy, a sensitive and curious 11-year-old, observes the moving process and relates it to his deceased friend. Conveniently enough, his mother has found them an apartment in the building directly across from the historic house.

In essence, he spends the summer with his buddy, talking about times they shared growing up, about the progress of the house being moved, what he's doing, what he's wondering, all of it through writing.

Skerry Sheridan, the young boy who writes to his best buddy Tim, is processing the loss of his friend as I did through my journals. I include here several Dear Tim letters:

June 14, 2006

Dear Tim,

Hope you're doing okay.

I'm okay. I found my marbles the same day I wrote the last letter. The bag was in a shoe. When we moved I just threw everything into the closet. It's dark in there!

Remember how you weren't afraid of the dark? And you were always having the craziest dreams! Well, I've been having crazy dreams. And I have noticed that stuff that happens during the day sometimes gets into my dreams. It's weird.

Like last night I dreamed Nazis were chasing me. I knew what they planned to do with me and the other people I was with. Suddenly I turned and ran. I was almost flying I ran so fast down a long hall of curtained doorways, then up a spiral of stone steps. The door at the top opened out to a sidewalk. It was packed with people carrying shopping bags and brief cases. And the street was a blur of busses and taxis. It was like trying to swim through mud, trying to get through that mess.

Just when one of the Nazis grabbed my arm, I turned into a cobalt blue marble, like the one you gave me last year. I bounced over the traffic and landed in a sidewalk crack on the other side. Then this kid picked me up. It was YOU, Tim! Your face was all round and stretched out funny like on the back of a spoon. It was great seeing you again! I woke up happy. And even though it was the middle of the night, I dug out your marble and decided to keep it always in my pocket.

I couldn't go back to sleep right way, so I looked out at the old house. The boarded-up windows were liked closed eyes. I imagined a house dreaming. That sounds crazy. But people talk about walls having ears. Think of all the stories that old place could tell!

I wish I could find out what the plumbers were doing there the other day. Mom wouldn't let me go over. She was probably afraid they'd drop a wrench on my head or something.

I wish she would quit her job at the hospital. Seeing sick kids all the time makes her worry too much. She's out in left field about something, too, and we're not talking baseball.

Your weird pal,

Skerry

June 30, 2006

Dear Tim,

How in the Universe are you?

I sure wish we could think ourselves from one place to another. This guy on a TV showed how electrons in an atom can disappear from one orbit and then come back in a different one. They're moving through different dimensions. Wish I could do that!
Like the other day on my way to the bakery. I road past the Braine-less brothers, Ray, Roger, and Rudy. They were coming out of the hardware store. They yelled at me to stop. I wasn't about to and besides I was on the steep hill down to Water Street. They like to call me "Scaredy Sheridan."

When I got close to the bottom of the hill I had to get off my bike. It was the weirdest thing, but even though I knew they were right behind me, I turned the corner calmly and kept walking my bike towards the bakery.

In no time they caught up to me. Ray and Roger blocked my way. Rudy was behind me. "What's your big hurry, Scaredy?" "Where're you going, Scaredy?" "We don't like being ignored!" they were all shouting.

"Sorry, guys. I'm late for work. Could we do this another time maybe?" I couldn't believe it was me talking. Couldn't believe how calm I felt. I remember kind of looking over at the river and thinking how I could draw the way the sun was hitting the water. It was so weird! I didn't even feel annoyed. But then I sort of woke up and realized what time it was. I just wanted them to get out of my way so I could go wash cookie pans.

"Hey, Scaredy, I'm talking to you! How about you draw me a picture sometime?" That was Ray and he was elbowing Roger and winking.

Then Roger said, "Yeah, he likes naked ladies."

These guys were sick. My face started to feel like I'd been eating red chili peppers. Then all of a sudden, I noticed a look on Ray's face as he thumped Roger on the back. "C'mon, Rudy! Let's go!" he barked. They got on their bikes and sped past the bakery and disappeared around the corner.

I felt like I was in some kind of weird movie. I walked my bike to the tall wood gate that leads to the alley where I lock my bike. When I pushed it open, I noticed this big guy pass behind me and then stop in front of the display window. He didn't look like the kuchen and danish type. More like the two pound rare steak type.

"Nice bike, kid!"

I told him thanks, then headed down the alley.

What a weird day it was. I stepped inside the walk-in cooler to calm down. Yikes! There was a pig on a pan up on one of the shelves ready for roasting. With an apple in its mouth! Freaky!

I sure had a lot on my mind while I washed pans that day!

Your now calm buddy,

Skerry

August 4, 2006

Dear Tim,

Happy would-have-been 12th Birthday! Are you having Angel Food cake?

Your goofy friend,

Skerry

August 24, 2006

Dear Tim,

Are you messing with me? Okay, so you probably know what happened last night. I'm going to write it anyway.

I was having this dream about us building a fort in the woods. You were inside stuffing the chinks between the boards and I was covering the walls with old newspapers. On one was a picture of a little house smooshed between skyscrapers just like that book my mom read to us when we were little. I was just about to say something about it when we heard voices outside. We went out and hid behind the trees. Whoever was coming was shaking spray paint cans. They were getting close. That rattling sound got louder and louder. I saw your mouth move, but no sound was coming out. In my mind I could heard you yelling, "Skerry, open your eyes! The Braine-less brothers! They're wrecking it!"

Even though we were sure they couldn't see us, that rattling sound was like they were standing right in front of us.

I woke up then and my heart was pounding crazy fast. I jumped out of bed and for some reason looked out the window. I could see lights moving around inside the first floor of the old house. Something told me I should call 9-1-1.

I told the lady what I saw and where the house is. After I hung up I was afraid the sirens would scare the bad guys away. What the heck were they doing anyway?

When my mom came into the kitchen I told her what was going on. She grabbed the phone and called Mr. Wright. At first I thought maybe I'd been wrong to call 9-1-1. Maybe some workers were doing some last minute stuff for the move. But when my mom hung up, she said Mr. Wright was on his way over. She hugged me and told me she was proud of me for acting so fast.

We got dressed, but my mom said we were staying put. At first I was mad about that, but then it made sense. We had a good view of what was going on. A few minutes later we saw a police car pull into the deli parking lot with the headlights off. Two officers got out and walked over to the house. We could see flashlight beams bouncing around inside.

Pretty soon Mr. Wright pulled into the lot. As he was walking over to the house, the two policemen came out of the first floor. Each had a shorter guy by the arm. After they shoved the thugs into the patrol car, they stood talking to Mr. Wright. After the police left, Mr. Wright came up to our place. Tim, would you believe it, those two thugs were Ray and Roger Raine! They'd been spraying graffiti in the Carpenter house!

That was some dream! Way to go, Tim! You helped save the day!

Your sleeping-like-a-baby friend,

Skerry

August 29, 2006

Dear Tim,

How are you?

I just found out that school starts in a week. You're lucky! You don't have to go to school. Do you go on learning stuff where you are? I guess that's a stupid question. A brain can learn, but can a person's spirit?

I think there must be some part of us that keeps going. That's why I'm writing these letters. But does your soul just stay the same or can it grow? I like to think that when people die their souls are picked up by this mondo clump of souls rolling around the universe. You know, the way we used to pick up all the play dough crumbs when we had to clean up. The souls smoosh and mix into this huge wad and then little bits are pulled off and put into new people. So, maybe part of you is in another little kid somewhere and you are growing and learning. I wonder if you remember being Tim. It's all weird to think about, but cool, too.

Remember when we slept in your new tent last summer just before my mom and I moved away? You had your birthday at that sports place and then later I got to stay over. I couldn't fall asleep. You said we should pretend we were in a spaceship with big windows. We flew out into the universe and you named all the planets and constellations. We got deeper and deeper into space and you said the stars were getting farther and farther apart. Then it was totally dark! And you talked about how quiet it was way out there. Your voice got farther and farther away. I must have fallen asleep. It boggled my mind thinking of space and being so far out there, but you helped me feel calm the way you talked. That's how it is thinking about you now, Tim. My thoughts are all tangled up, but calm at the same time.

So back to the school thing. The good thing is that I don't think we'll be seeing much of the older Raine brothers. Mr. Wright said they're going to a private school in New Hampshire. I'm glad they won't be around. Maybe Rudy will end up okay.

Mr. Frei said I could keep working at the bakery a couple of days after school and a few hours on Saturday. I have to let him know soon, if I can do this. He's really busy now. Sofie and her mom drive his stuff to county fairs and festivals on weekends. Sofie is really good at selling!

The other day he had me and Sofie dipping lots of extra pig's ears in chocolate. Pig's ears are two connected spirals of flaky dough. They're crispy and not real sugary. Anyway, we were dipping them in the cellar where it's a lot cooler.

Sofie's been acting kind of weird lately. I don't know what's going on. Maybe she's embarrassed about kissing me on the cheek that time. I want to tell her I thought it was nice, but I don't know how. Maybe she feels weird that I didn't kiss her back? Who knows?

Talk about embarrassing. Every time the older woman Edith came downstairs for boxes or whatever, she yelled, "I'm going down to the cellar now!" She acted like Sofie and I might be doing something other than dipping pig's ears.

Anyway, Tim, I hope you know somehow that I'm thinking about you. That was you waking me up that night in time to catch those jerks the Raine brothers. Thanks for that!

Your eternally grateful pal,

Skerry

This is only a sample of what Skerry shares with his friend. In some of his letters he simply wonders. In others, he tells about the various activities that fill his summer days. His job washing pans at the bakery is a small town way he can earn a little money to become a member of the Historical Society. The Frei family owns the bakery and is also involved in the town's heritage. Sofie Frei and Skerry were in some of the same classes at school. As he becomes more immersed in his summer art classes and swimming, better acquainted with Sofie, and particularly more invested in the house moving project, his letters to Tim seem more light-hearted. In the end, Skerry bundles up all this writing and secrets it beneath a loose floor board in his old room, now destined to be a museum exhibit.

When this manuscript came back, I still lacked the discipline and perhaps simply the will to send out subsequent queries. I had also started writing a novel for adults about a young woman losing her husband the same why I did.

I was totally in recycle mode, too, at that point. I'm not talking cans, glass, and soup made from all the leftovers in the fridge. I'm talking re-purposing sweaters, t-shirts, Christmas tree trunks. And I am talking writing!

What if, I thought to myself, ten years after Skerry has hidden his letters in what is now a popular historical venue, a young woman who volunteers as a docent finds them? Lily's husband has died and she's trying to rebuild her life. The following is an excerpt from the beginning:

Why am I doing this to myself? Lily wondered as she climbed the steep, winding back steps of the old Carpenter House. Stopping halfway up, she looked out the small square window and considered the log cabin out in the field. The Carpenter family had occupied that tiny structure while building this grander residence in the then dense forest high above the river.

The town of Erley Falls sprang up closer to the water as more folks sought land out this way and found the river perfect for commerce. The town prospered. Word spread. Benedict Erley thought it a great location for a school of higher learning. As happens with many small college towns, Erley Falls eventually sprawled to the point of pinching the 170-yr-old Carpenter House between a convenience store and a fast food restaurant. Ten years ago it was moved to the Erley Falls Historic Village on the outskirts of town.

Lily needed to speak to Molly down at the cabin, which currently served as the Historical Society office. Sunday afternoons, especially at the beginning of summer would be a difficult time to catch her. Lily had volunteered only twice before with Caroline, who guided visitors around the first floor of the Carpenter House. She felt annoyed that this older woman breezed in to take up her post only moments before people were allowed to enter. There was so much to do in advance.

All Lily wanted was a calm, anxiety-free afternoon. That rustic cabin in its original form, the rough-hewn logs, the spaces between, spoke to her. Calm. She imagined herself inside, in the dark, stuffing the chinks in an effort to keep out the light. The dark, these days, she found more comforting. Brilliant sunlight taunted her.

Upstairs she began her routine of opening all the bedroom doors and windows before people arrived. The floors creaked under her feet. The subtle mustiness in the walls, floors, ceilings, the lingering wood smoke aroma that seemed never to dissipate entirely, despite the fresh air, despite the bouquet of human scents-- all of this wafted through the buildings of the village. Room by room she observed the familiar objects she would explain to visitors. Each item was in its proper place. They all brought her back to her usual enthusiasm for this volunteer position. Her mind and soul blurred into the history of the old house and the stories of those who had lived in it. Was it in the orderliness of the meaningful realia, lamp, hairbrush, hand-tooled knitting needles, the collection of miniature books, the small silver spoon, was it in the chronology of what had transpired here, the black on white laying out of details that she found comfort, especially now?

In the front room at the end of the hall Lily did notice something different. Something out of context. A lone indigo marble balanced on the floor. In a split second the entire scene of a visitor slipping on it, falling, breaking a hip, suing the Historical Society, the house permanently closed, cobwebs engulfing it, flashed through her mind. She immediately bent down to pick it up. Just as she touched the innocent child's toy, a door down the hall slammed shut. She stood up, stepped on an edge of the stanchion holding the scarlet rope. It fell sideways, the heavy top hitting the wood floor with a THUNK, barely missing the room's little fireplace.

Lily crouched down to examine any possible damage to the polished wood. The heavy balled top had dented the wood ever so mildly, a concave mark visible only from a nose-to-floor angle. The floorboard had loosened, however. The gap between it and neighboring planks seemed a hair wider. Out of curiosity she knocked on it, the hollow sound of the stanchion striking it, fresh in her mind. It indeed sounded hollow.

Was there anything in the dresser drawers upstairs with which she could pry up the board? She felt sure something was hidden inside the floor. She knew the story about a young girl named Annalisa who had lived in the house in the 1920s. Lily looked up to the framed Erley Falls newspaper clipping, the headline reading, Hand Knit Garb Grabs Girl's Life.

Annalisa Brent, age fourteen, was presumed dead when her body was not found following an exhaustive search of Erley Falls River last Friday evening. "She was very proud," said friend Ellen McFitz, "of a garment she knitted for swimming. Annalisa loved the water and wanted to be able to enjoy the river like the boys." Ellen did not witness the drowning. David Moorhouse, 10, and Matthew Rhoads, 9, were at the scene that day. "She was wading in the shallows down river from us," said Moorhouse. Rhoads offered, "Girls can't swim, but we figured she'd be all right staying close to shore. And we couldn't see anything. Just her head," he added. The two said they suddenly looked up from baiting their hooks to find her gone. "We just thought she went home," said Rhoads. Moorhouse added, "But later we noticed a dress folded on the rock and got worried. We walked along the river looking for her, but didn't see anything. That's when we went for help." Pastor Brent, Annalisa's father and pastor of St. Paul Church, only stated, "She had no business being down at the river. It is God's will." Her grief-stricken mother made no comment.

How many times had Lily read that brief article, yellowed in its small frame, which hung on the wall? How many times had she screamed in her mind at that horrible father and chided the mother for not standing up to such a man? She always held out hope that Annalisa had not in fact drowned, but had run, swum away from an oppressive family. Here was a fourteen-year-old girl who wanted to experience the same joys in life as her male counterparts.

Rumor suggested that Annalisa had hidden knitting patterns in the walls of the Carpenter house, patterns for daring garments considered sinful in the Brent household. Lily suspected, or maybe just wanted to believe, that Annalisa was a creative young woman with a feisty spirit and strong will. When the Carpenter house was moved to the Historic Village ten years earlier, no traces of hidden patterns had been discovered. At this thought Lily's heart began thumping. What if it was not in the walls, but in the floor, right here where she crouched down, that Annalisa had secreted those "dangerous" patterns?

Lily stood up, her mind racing, intent to find something that would help her gently pry up the floorboard. No one knew with certainty that this had been Annalisa's room, but Lily felt very strongly she would find something. She hastily tucked the tatted handkerchiefs, the pocket-sized leather bound book of poetry, the lace shawl, all of the top drawer display, down inside, closed it, and opened those below. In the bottom dresser drawer, under a patchwork quilt sticky-noted with the words "needs repairs", she found an old paint-splattered screwdriver, stored there for opening winter-swollen windows.

She held a "Become a Member of Erley Falls Historical Society" pamphlet behind the screwdriver blade and began working on the board. Even though it was not a fine hardwood floor, she was careful not to press too hard and checked beneath the pamphlet several times to make sure she wasn't marring the wood. She didn't want to leave any traces of what she was doing.

One more push loosened the plank enough that she could lift it off. She couldn't see anything. She reached her hand into the dark space. Gingerly she swam her fingers lightly around beneath the adjoining plank. Soon they touched something soft and cylindrical. She slid them along the surface, certain it was what she'd hoped to find. Her heart was beating fast now and she could hardly breathe, bent double as she was. Just as she wrapped her fingers around the roll of papers, she heard the creak of the front door opening.

She jerked her hand back. She felt a sharp sting. Renewing a good grasp on her treasure, she pulled it out.

The front door slammed shut.

"Lily! Hello-o! Are you up there?"

It was not until I read an author's account of a personal experience that I realized I could do the same. For too long I had been dealing with the subject of loss through writing fiction. Well, and my own private world of journaling. But why, I finally asked myself, should I not share my journey? I hope this collage of anecdotes and reflections on books that have helped me (see especially the chapter titled "The Quest") will at the very least let readers know someone else is walking along beside them; will help them be comforted by the interconnectedness of us all; will help them feel peace in their hearts and minds. That is the goal of my writing this book.

~~~~~

Chapter 12: The Message

On Sunday, November 13th, almost six months after Charlie died I was in the hallway at church on my way out. A woman I knew from the library, whose young daughters attended story time, was on her way in. She was bright and positive, tall, and her face, framed by long wavy hair, always prompted me to picture Greece with its blue skies and life-loving people. Indeed she loved life. That day, however, the look on her face revealed some kind of uneasiness. Still, she smiled when she stopped me to talk.

"Would it be all right if I came over later this afternoon to talk to you?" she asked, as we scooted off to the side. She seemed a little nervous.

"Is everything okay?" I asked.

"Oh yes. Everything is fine. Sort of. Something extraordinary happened. I can't talk to you about it here."

I was a bit baffled, but then remembered the letter she had sent several weeks earlier. I told her how much I appreciated it. I found this journal entry about her kindness:

Just before October 27th (Charlie's and my anniversary), a week during which I was very low emotionally, Lydia sent me a beautiful letter relating how she and Heather had read Sofie's Role when it was brand new and how it made them feel they were right there in the bakery and how they'd returned it before copying the recipes on the end papers. Lydia told me that Heather loves to hear/read about the authors on the jacket copy and when they saw that we lived in North Olmsted, and they were from Lakewood, Heather wanted to come meet me. I'm not exactly sure when they found out that I was the one who had written Sofie's Role, but Lydia sent me this most uplifting letter at such a good time. And I was very weepy throughout. I felt like any paragraph now she was going to say something about hearing of Charlie's death and offer condolences or something...Lydia's letter came at such a perfect time.

Aware of Lydia's love of children's literature and her sense of creativity, I figured she herself had written a story and wanted me to read it. Or maybe she had written one and it had been accepted by a publishing company and she needed some advice.

Her uneasiness, though, wasn't consistent with happy excitement. She had used the word extraordinary to describe what she wanted to discuss. I had never spoken with her about Charlie, but I considered the possibility that she had heard the story from someone. Perhaps a close friend or even family member had experienced a struggle similar to what Charlie had endured and she needed to connect with someone? Well, I would find out soon enough. We decided she would come over around 2 p.m.

It was a beautiful afternoon. Through the kitchen window I saw her emerge and straighten up from her little car. I smile now in my heart to think of her and her concern and openness. That afternoon was a gift.

We sat down at the kitchen table and I offered her coffee or tea. I probably placed a plate of crackers and cheese or cookies on the table between us. Such ceremonial gestures help put people at ease.

"I'm not quite sure if I should have come," she began. "When I saw you this morning in the hall at church, I almost turned right around so I wouldn't have to talk to you."

Now I was really curious. This didn't fit at all with her possibly wanting to talk about writing children's stories.

"I'm glad you came," I reassured her. "I always enjoy talking to you."

Her concerned face reminded me of a Renaissance masterpiece of the Madonna. She was really grappling with something tough here and I wanted to ease her mind.

"You strike me as an open-minded person," she began.

"Yes, I like to think I am."

"Are you open to supernatural happenings? I should say extraordinary. I prefer that word."

"Very much so," I answered. "There's so much out there we don't know about. And in here," I pointed to my head, "that we don't understand."

"I agree."

She was silent for a moment, took a sip from her cup, looking straight at me over the rim. She put it down and proceeded to explain her visit.

"This happened very early Saturday morning. I got out of bed to nurse Ruthy. She wasn't terribly hungry, so I wasn't up long, but I was wide awake. When I climbed back into bed, I couldn't fall asleep right away. I closed my eyes and suddenly felt a distinctly strong presence in the room. I felt nervous. This has happened to me before and each time it turned out okay. But it's always a little startling at first, you know? So I calmed myself and just listened."

I had always wanted to experience this kind of visitation. Actually I sometimes imagined a presence in my room of the Lakewood century home in which I lived while working at the bakery. Indeed, decades later I learned some people thought the house to be occupied by the spirit of Captain Erastus Day who had built the house in the 1800s.

"Nothing seemed to happen, though," she continued, "which was disturbing and not the way it usually works. But then, just as I was about to wake my husband up, I heard my grandmother's voice. It seemed to come from the foot of our bed. She said she had messages from two people that I was to pass on to two others. Her presence was almost palpable as she asked me to wish Jon happy birthday from his grandfather. I told her I would. Jon understands all of this. It's happened before. He's really good about comforting me, too, if it becomes upsetting.

"Then she asked if I knew someone named Amy. I said yes. She said, 'I have a message for her from Charlie.'"

Lydia grabbed my two hands across the table. She looked me straight in the eye. As calmly as she could, she spoke these words:

"'Tell her I love her. That she's doing a great job. And that everything will be okay.'"

She squeezed my hands. We were both quietly crying. We got up simultaneously and hugged and I thanked her for sharing this, for having the courage to share it with me. We sat back down in silence for a moment.

And then I laughed, slapped my palms on the table and said, "DAMN! I wish he had come directly to me and said all that. Do you suppose he's afraid of me? That I would start yelling at him or something?"

The whole idea of a spirit afraid of a living being was so absurd we both started cackling our heads off.

She was visibly relieved that I took this as well as I did. She had told Jon what had happened as soon as he woke up, but she was terribly conflicted about sharing it all with me. He said it was important that she tell me. And her mother concurred.

We ended up talking for a long time about Charlie and his illness. We talked about Lakewood and her life and writing. Again, that afternoon was a tremendous gift.

Never for a moment did I think she contrived this story. I don't think she had ever spoken to Charlie. She and her family had only recently become members of that church. Of course, Lydia would know Charlie's name from the dedication I wrote for Sofie's Role, but other than that she didn't know him.

I recall writing down those phrases on a slip of paper, the back of a receipt or some odd bit that was close at hand. I needed to capture those words. I needed to cling to those words. Believe them. They truly were straight from Charlie. Well, via a very interesting version of the telephone game, anyway.

We hugged again before she left. As I look back on those years following Charlie's death, I wonder if I paid as much attention to gifts less obvious than this as they came along. Probably not. I was distracted. I was busy stuffing the chinks.

Charlie was really getting around those days, because I noted in my journal several days later, on the 15th, a similar encounter. Quite late at night, as my mind was emerging from the world of Northern Exposure, the phone rang. It was Charlie's old high school friend Sam. I had met him only several times, but recognized his voice. He sounded agitated. He spoke rapidly. He wanted to share with me a paranormal experience he'd had.

He told me that at one point during the day he suddenly felt such an amazing and pure sense of peace he cried like a baby. He told me he heard a voice say, "I'm okay"; he knew immediately it was Charlie. He wanted me to know this. Another gift to cherish.

Something else added a dimension to Sam's extraordinary experience and his sharing it with me. According to my journal, I recognized I possessed that very day a level of energy reminiscent of the Charlie I knew before depression took hold of him. I cleared the garden of long unproductive vegetable plants, turned over the soil, weeded an area in front of the house, planting bulbs in that space for the following spring, added more bricks to a walkway in progress, and ended the day mowing the front lawn by the in-your-face lights of the car dealership across our busy street. I remember the look of satisfaction on Charlie's face after a full day of such effort. He always felt great. And so did I.

Another coincidence is that when I found the journal entry about Sam's call, I was determined to find him, to send him thanks again, 17 years later, for telling me of his experience. On the Internet I found a snail mail address for him and promptly composed a letter to him. He called in response and we talked a long time. The coincidence lay in what had been swirling around in his head days prior to receiving my letter. He had purchased a long-desired National Lampoon compilation, a great source of satire and humor to which Charlie had originally introduced him. Sam's mother had told him about his childhood home being for sale and where on the Internet he could view a picture of it. And then there was my letter in his mailbox.

These two extraordinary experiences were gifts from people I barely knew at the time. I since have had dreams about Charlie, most of them pleasant, one in particular which I include as a chapter in this book. I do want to mention an interesting phenomenon. Occasionally in the last years, as I drift off to sleep at night, I experience a sort of tingle on the tip of my nose. One voice in me explains it away as actually being a physiological effect of the room's cool air swirling around while the rest of my body gets warm under the blankets. But a stronger voice prefers the notion that this is perhaps Charlie reaching through the dimensions with a kiss or a little tap. The latter perception is a form of self-compassion.

~~~~~

Chapter 13: Poor Me?

Sometimes, much more often than I would like to admit, I hunkered down into self-pity, wallowing in that thick emotional muck, convinced I was somehow comforting myself. In some ways it was a place I had to visit. I find it funny and absurd, in retrospect, that I believed I held the monopoly on recognizing I was feeling sorry for myself. Woe to anyone else who accused me of self-pity. I could have been a poster child for double standards.

Part of my self-pity shtick involved keeping a keen eye on the movie industry. It struck me that Hollywood cared more about men losing their wives through death than women losing their husbands. Society, as I viewed it then, expressed more pity for men. It became even more confusing and frustrating as I considered the fact that so much pointed to women as being nurturers and caregivers, therefore being responsible in some way for convincing men they couldn't take care of themselves. Is it the female element of our society that actually enables men to get back on their emotional feet more quickly? Well, DUH! Indeed, after becoming widowed or divorced, men remarry within a shorter time, or at least find a love interest. Or so it seemed to me during those first fragile years.

Who couldn't feel, and fall for Tom Hanks's character Sam Baldwin in Sleepless in Seattle (1993)? In the movie Casper (1995) gentle, sensitive James Harvey (Bill Pullman) searches for his dead wife's spirit. An unusually dashing widower president played by Michael Douglas, with the blessing of his daughter, begins to date, and falls in love in The American President (1995). Even in the 1996 movie Independence Day the president's wife dies, leaving him with their young daughter. Message in a Bottle (1999) is just plain too sad, period! But, beginning the new millennium on a more positive note, the 2000 movie Return to Me portrays depressed widower Tom Rueland (David Ducovny) falling in love with Grace (Minnie Driver), a young waitress, who had received Tom's late wife's heart as a transplant patient.

And then there were those movies about widows and how they processed their loss. In 1994, the year Charlie died, Guarding Tess came out. The story line was really about Secret Service agent Doug Chesnic (Nicolas Cage) coming to terms with his assignment to provide security to Tess Carlisle (Shirley MacLaine), the often cranky, certainly demanding widow of a former U.S. President. She is a mature widow, one of means. And there is a perfectly healthy young man going to waste!

Moonlight and Valentino, about a poetry teacher whose husband is killed while jogging, appeared in theaters in 1995. Rebecca Lott (Elizabeth Perkins) is beautiful, young, and a professional. An even younger man enters her life.

1996 brought out Ghosts of Mississippi, a poignant film about long overdue justice and closure. Myrlie Evers, played by Whoopi Goldberg, lost her husband Medgar in 1963. Based on the 1994 trial of Byron De La Beckwith, the white supremacist is finally convicted of murdering civil rights activist Medgar Evers. I can't imagine losing my husband this way, further burdened by the maddening frustration associated with the injustice of his killer walking free all those years.

1997 offered a story involving an alcoholic widow. She owns a ranch, lassos herself a handsome young hand, not knowing he's already in love with a young gal in town. I did not see The Locusts. Imagine a cougar managing cattle!

In the 1998 movie Practical Magic, Sandra Bullock as Sandy, one of a long line of Owens girls, loses her beloved due to an ancestral curse. When her sister accidentally kills her abusive boyfriend, the two women conjure him back to life with dreadful results. The handsome detective investigating the boyfriend's disappearance falls in love with Sandy and helps her and her sister vanquish the evil spirit once and for all.

Tea with Mussolini came out in 1999 and concerns a group of worldly British women under house arrest in Italy during WWII. Many of them show disdain for the wealthy and vibrant American widow Elsa Morganthal (Cher). After she is betrayed by her new love, she helps make their confinement much more tolerable than it otherwise would have been.

Grace Trevethyn, played by Brenda Blethyn in the 2000 movie Saving Grace, faces not only her husband's death, but also that he left her penniless, compounded by a huge tax debt and the news that he had been having an affair. Determined to retain her house, she, with the help of her gardener Matthew, fearlessly cultivates a hothouse full of cannabis. Grace sells it to a dealer and eventually they fall blissfully in love.

Ah...

Okay, so there may have been an equal-ish number of widow and widower movies. I suppose one of the points I want to make here is that grief can easily mess with rationality. All that mucking around in self-pity doesn't help either. Perhaps the biggest problem was that I just couldn't let go of what I perceived to be unfairness. It was totally unfair that Charlie became so depressed he killed himself. It was unfair that Meg and Claire lost their dad, and I, my best friend.

My perception of unfairness, I'm pretty sure, got a strong foothold during my youth.

What I perceived to be a favoring of men, a stronger caring about men in our society reflected what I had experienced growing up. Of course, now I wonder if I wasn't just adding onto my grief my baggage from childhood delivered by my father's comment about pitying the man who would end up marrying me. I was definitely mad at him for saying that! It was so...unfair!

Our parents did seem to favor the boys. My mother dutifully took care of my father, the busy executive, in true June Cleaver style. She strongly encouraged us to keep the noise down when he was home. Also, my mom's nerves were frayed. Years later, when I read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, I found my mother perfectly described in the early 1960s.

Looking back to childhood from my fragile, early post-Charlie perspective, it seemed I got into more trouble and was reprimanded more strongly than my younger brother Dan, and often for fights involving him. I was louder. He was cleverer and quieter in his mischief. I took everything literally. He had perhaps a healthier perspective and certainly more courage or chutzpah or something than I did. So in a huge overall way, I perceived my childhood as saturated with unfairness, although I also look back on it as having been happy. Ironic that Dan was the one to inform me about Charlie's death. Finding his body must have been a terrible trauma for my sweet younger brother, but all I could think of at the time was how Charlie's leaving us reflected on me as a woman, wife, and mother.

And as I write this, thinking about this whole boys-were-favored view, I wonder if it could have been one single incident that initiated and fed this perception.

When I was four, possibly five years old, and Dan was a toddler two years younger, we played a game we called Foodchopper. Like a monkey, one of us would shimmy up a door frame, one hand and one foot on each side tightly holding our position, while the other crawled back and forth underneath. Endurance was the game's objective for the climber and number of passes below for the crawler. In any case, one time, probably the last time we ever played Foodchopper, I slipped and fell on Dan. Remember I was only four or five and certainly no heavyweight, but somehow I managed to break his foot. I hurt my little brother! I caused him pain! I didn't mean to!

Actually, he doesn't recall crying about it or making a big fuss. My parents noticed he couldn't get a good footing to climb up into his chair at the table. Perhaps the big giveaway was that he reverted to crawling everywhere. They finally took him in to see what was wrong with their otherwise healthy toddler.

Going to the doctor was a huge event in our family! It meant something seriously wrong! It meant pain! When they returned home and I saw that huge white cast on his little leg I felt awful. I had caused that! I'm not sure if older siblings helped emphasize my role in the damage, even if it was in a teasing way, but I knew I could not enjoy, let alone swallow one spoonful of the ice-cream my parents brought home. I hid behind the big chair in my father's den.

My little mind knew it was an accident, that I had not intentionally fallen on his foot, but that didn't erase the hurt I felt knowing or suspecting I had caused him pain. That big cast meant pain. Yet I didn't realize he wasn't crying about it. Nor did anyone realize that this incident hurt me, too. They often referred to me as being overly sensitive, thin-skinned, melodramatic. Looking back, it seems no one really tried to help me feel better about the situation. What four-year-old knows how to process such an event?

Of course, a broken foot protected by a huge cast meant lots of attention and special care and warnings from our parents not to be rambunctious around him. When he managed to crack the cast himself and had to go back to the doctor's office for a new one fitted with a walkable bottom piece, even more attention was paid to him and his situation. For some reason I continued to feel bad about it all.

Time passed. My mother had two more children. That meant seven of us in all. The attention my parents could give each child was obviously spread very thin. Perhaps it was only natural that my father would turn to the boys, my mother to the girls. It was the 1960s after all. But I was a bit of a tomboy. I asked lots of questions, I loved climbing trees, exploring the woods, riding my bike, building snow forts with Mark and Dan and hurling snowballs. Mark even let me drive the go-cart he built. The boys were just more fun to hang out with. So I suppose I figured that my dad should pay the same attention to me as he did the boys. I wanted him to be proud of me, too.

When this was not forthcoming, at least as far as I could tell, I lumped it together with other messages I received as a kid, namely 1) children should be seen and not heard, 2) "pride goeth before the fall!", and 3) according to our religion, it was good to suffer. Crazy! I was one seriously messed up little kid. My being a really sensitive little person with an over-active conscience and imagination didn't do me much good either. Izzy was able to block out the negative and positive goings-on, living in her world of books as she did. Dan was in the "in" crowd. Our older siblings were dealing with their own angst and the younger ones hadn't a clue what they were in for.

When Izzy, Dan, and I were teens our mother, who did not endure her Christian suffering quietly, lectured us, quite often while 'under the influence.' I was all about fairness and justice and when she blurted out untruths and misperceptions, I felt it my duty to set her straight with as much respect as I could muster. I couldn't help myself.

Izzy and Dan thought I was nuts! I didn't understand at the time the concepts of "don't make eye contact" and "don't talk back because it only fuels the fire." But I had a horrible time trying to reconcile my mother's two disparate mental conditions. The unfairness of it all rendered me wacky!

Had I understood the practice of equanimity and compassion back then, I would have been more awake and more understanding of all that my mother was experiencing during those years. The same with my father and all that he faced. I was sensitive, but not compassionate.

I look back and suddenly it occurs to me that maybe my father, 50 years old in the early 1970s, with three teens and two elementary school children, was going through a lot, not the least of which was recognizing how fragile his wife's self-esteem was and her problems related to that. He could spread himself only so thin among so many people needing him at home and at work.

Social mores were different during the time my parents raised us. They did the best they knew how in a conservative climate in which mental or emotional malfunction was considered shameful, the existence of which in a family was to be denied or hidden. The girls had their place in the family and the boys theirs. Situations were to be met with a stiff upper lip. One must buck up and be tough. Indeed, several times when Meg was little, I caught myself spewing out this same load of manure. I changed that pattern post-haste. I would not have her growing up thinking she could not express emotion.

We all of us have our own place in the universe, our own perceptions, our own ways of coping. We need to give space. Through this thinking out on paper, I give my parents space. I give space to past events, to hurtful things uttered. Nothing can be changed except my perception of the past with the realization that there is no point in thinking any more of old hurts. I mention them here because sometimes you can't move on until you understand a little more about what happened.

I'm not sharing this because I want pity. I had not managed to change this part of my make-up throughout the years, so it was this part of me thinking about Charlie's suicide and the role I played in his life and death.

This mid-1990s perception about our society, and going back, about how my parents viewed their place in society, and ours as children, during the 1960s and 1970s, all of this prompted me finally to question.

My dad's unfair declaration, "I pity the man who marries you" was the single phrase that catapulted me into all that I have read over the years. It PISSED ME OFF! It pushed me over the edge! I laughed my head off recently when I finally realized the irony of its ultimate effect on me. Those few words compelled me to question the religion in which I had grown up. I questioned the validity of the book on which that dogma was based. I questioned the fairness of placing into the lap of one single woman, a mythological one no less, the responsibility of all the world's ills. My childhood religion impressed upon me the absolute importance of faith. To question was to lack faith. To lack faith meant no ticket to heaven. No ticket to heaven meant a ticket to the other place. It all boiled down to instilling fear. YIKES!

I read books about the history of women in my quest to understand why, oh why it was that when I walked down the Dewey 700s, 800s, 900s aisles of the public library only male names jumped out at me. I read about the social climate of the 1950s, '60s, '70s. And I read about the history of the Bible. I needed to know!

It all goes back to my perception of unfairness.

At that time I also read about the Tao concept of yin yang as the cyclical nature of life, of the balance of ups and downs we all face, each side possessing glimpses of the other. This was part of it, but only recently did I come to a deeper understanding of it. Sharon Salzberg explains it this way in her book Lovingkindness: the Revolutionary Art of Happiness:

"Life is just as it is, despite our protests. For all of us there is a constant succession of pleasurable and painful experiences...The unrelenting flux of life's changing conditions is inevitable, yet we labor to hold on to pleasure, and we labor equally hard to avoid pain. So many images from our world tell us that it is wrong to suffer...Underlying these messages is an expectation that somehow we should be able to control pain or loss."

Yes, we cannot control what happens in life, but we do have choices in how we perceive experiences and respond to them. Whether we greet a situation with a 'stiff upper lip' or allow it to stop us in our tracks or accept that it is what it is, is entirely up to us as individuals.

Acceptance does not mean we should not be curious. We naturally want to know why and how. We need to pause long enough really to think. Investigating and experimenting can lead to learning; learning can lead to creative expression. Creativity for the most part moves one in a positive direction. Isn't it more productive, doesn't it make us happier to be positive?

While walking through those library stacks in my old frame of mind the dominance of men saddened me immensely, maddened me tremendously. Life struck me as being a competition with a fixed winner. I often screamed, "Foul!" Indeed, I sank into that muck of self-pity, crying over the unfairness of having been born a girl. Our perceptions, of course, are all relative; I cannot begin to imagine the full impact of gender inequality that many women of this world experience.

But does this gulf still exist in this country to the extent I perceived it in the 1990s? Women have made some progress in the political and business realms, but the 'glass ceiling' still exists. And this government composed mainly of men still wants to control women regarding their reproductive decisions. Thankfully, some men have become so enlightened as to see the need and consequent benefits of bringing both genders into greater balance.

Life is so much more complex than even just fifteen years ago. Technology has increased and enhanced communication. It has made us more aware of being a global community. We are all interconnected. The notion of black and white, this side or that side, male or female are encouraged mainly by those who most desire control. Both genders embody both sides of the coin. If I practice equanimity in looking at this, I see that it is what it is. We are all playing our roles in this universe. The complexity lies in us as thinking individuals as much as in our interconnectedness.

I laugh when I think how it once upset me to read that the black 'yin' side of the symbol represented the negative, female aspect of life, while the white 'yang' side stood for the masculine, the positive. Indeed, these attributes were probably established and then encouraged by men. It is what it is.

But balance is the point.

Not taking it all so personally is the point.

Not assuming men also do not question the wrongness of male dominance in our modern age is the point.

Doing our best as thinking and loving individuals is the point.

"Life is just as it is, despite our protests."

~~~~~

Chapter 14: The Quest

Never did I set out to write this book. That is, not until I learned to show myself compassion. Over the years since May of 1994 I wrinkled the lined pages of one composition notebook after another with my nearly manic scribbling, started numerous prettier journals with positive intentions, jotted thoughts and quotes on scraps of paper stuffed into pockets or purses or stuck to the fridge. I read books that have brought me to a greater understanding of humanity. I learned to laugh. All of this has led me to a place of peace. And, a continued love of learning.

Through much of this writing and reading I was attempting, whether consciously or not, to understand what my role had been in what happened to Charlie and why it had happened. I did not realize the answer was right there all the time: that's just the way it IS. Knowing the what's, why's, and how's would not change anything. Was I even seeking the ultimate goal of peace? I wonder now.

After Charlie died I continued for a time trying to create my niche in children's writing. But rejection slips were salt in the wound. What was the point of being published again? In the grand scheme of things did any of it matter? It was a game I was playing and losing very badly. Why persevere? Would getting another children's book published take away the pain? Would it make me feel better about myself? Would it make life raising my daughters without Charlie any better, any easier?

Again, my mind frequently returned to my father's declaration, each time fueling my 'unfair' fire, when I happened to watch a NOVA special. Archaeologist Jeannine Davis-Kimball, along with a forensic anthropologist and scholars of Chinese culture and archaeology, shared their research of a 3,800-yr-old female skeleton found in the Takla Makan Desert of Central Asia. I was impressed not only by these women undertaking such a challenging task in that part of the world, but also by their discovery of what this long-deceased female meant to her ancient society. I bought Davis-Kimball's book Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines and consumed it hungrily. Throughout all of my formal education I had never read anything written entirely about women, ancient or otherwise.

This led me to other books that took me to locations and eras of the world's history about which I knew very little. Many archaeological finds indicated that women held high and honorable positions. The very idea of an egalitarian, non-patriarchal community was totally foreign to me.

Merlin Stone's When God was a Woman was first published in 1976. In this wonderful exposé of ancient goddess worship, as evidenced by archaeological finds, Stone offers support for her theory of when and how patriarchal society gradually emerged. Through her summary of the saga of the Babylonian king Gilgamesh, and several other translations I have read about him, I was able to observe the birth of the man-made religion so ingrained in my early life. Gilgamesh was all about immortality. The Goddess Ishtar, with whom Gilgamesh refused to consort, as was customary, was all about the cyclical character of life, about the laws of Nature. The Christian church, a patriarchal institution that emerged millennia later, is very much about eternal life. Pagans, a pejorative term that simply means 'country dwellers,' on the other hand, were mindful of the rhythms of the earth.

In her book The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler adds to the discussion about patriarchal society by recognizing that within the chaos of today's social movements lies a "thrust for the transformation of a dominator to a partnership system." Change is possible; it certainly is inevitable. Spiritual leaders and thoughtful writers, artists, people from all walks of life are encouraging compassion among people, encouraging people to transcend their differences and work together. This energy could lead to a society in which "diversity is not equated with either inferiority or superiority."

How refreshing it would be not to boil everything down to us-versus-them, the believers against the non-believers, men against women, a two-party electoral system, etc. What happened to the notion of "divided we fall?"

Daniel Goleman states in his book Social Intelligence that "The relationship between one of Us and one of Them by definition lacks empathy, let alone attunement. Should one of Them presume to speak to one of Us, the voice would not be heard as fully or openly as would that of one of Us---if at all."

Our world is richly varied with philosophies and religious culture, ways of thinking considered by many different kinds of people. It's incredible! Considering this great swirl of belief systems and consequent behavior, it is absolutely mind-boggling that at the heart of it all is our common desire to be happy. Have we forgotten that?

When we're young, family and friends influence us with their ideas, their views, their opinions. As we mature and are exposed to people outside our familiar circle, some of us notice variations in how others live and see life. Some of us appreciate and are even attracted to those differences. Some of us can't understand them. Some of us have been taught to dislike those differences; that dislike often stems from lack of understanding. People tend to fear what they don't understand. And we all know down which path this brand of fear leads.

We slip into a comfort zone of habitual thinking and don't bother to question. Or we consider it disrespectful to question the traditions in which we were raised. Or perhaps we fear the wolf at the door, which we perceive as challenging our beliefs. We join with others who share the same beliefs and build shelters to show the rest of the world the depth, wealth, and power of our devotion. And perhaps subconsciously to shut out that threat of differing views. We manage thereby to separate ourselves from other people with whom we share the same planet, let alone the same community.

It's possible we might not bother trying to make sense of life, because in many world religions a mighty head does that for us. The teachers interpret the word and admonish us to follow their lead. Faith is all that is required. Abide by the laws they have established and all will be well. That is what we are told.

Interestingly enough, most of the world religions share the same fundamental precept: treat others as you yourself want to be treated. The Golden Rule. Don't most people want to be loved, to be understood, to be respected? Love, understanding, and respect all lead to happiness. Who doesn't desire a happy life?

Something else that can lead to happiness is curiosity. Consider the term "all walks of life." How refreshing, though perhaps frightening to some people, to step outside of one's habitual comfort zone. How daring! Try taking one step sideways and viewing someone from that new angle. Try walking all the way around that someone. Imagine stepping into that person's shoes. See the world through his or her eyes. Hear the sounds, taste the flavors, smell the air that person shares with all of us on this planet. Feel that same earth beneath your feet. Think how much richer we all would be if we could show others the same care we show ourselves. Think how much more compassionate we could become. Attempting to understand another person's experience is enriching not only for us as individuals, but for everyone else, as well.

The books I have mentioned are fascinating and informative, but I felt all the more agitated after reading them. This imbalance of power had gone on for millennia! Greed and pride, it seems, will always be with us. How could things ever possibly change, I wondered. I have to admit that my own father did seem to mellow a bit with time, so perhaps there is hope. Not long before he died too early at fifty-one years of age, he started wearing pastel colored shirts with his dark suits. He still wore his signature bow ties, but his shirts were no longer strictly white. Change is possible.

A book that in some measure helped me shift from burning all of my energy in righteous indignation to using that energy constructively was The Tao of Womanhood by Diane Dreher. Her whole discussion was new and refreshing to me. She offered practical exercises for calming oneself and creating internal harmony. I had never really considered searching inside myself for this. The religion in which I grew up promoted exercising faith that a higher power would grant me peace. If it was "His Will." That I could attain it through my own efforts was inconceivable. I'd always been somewhat introspective and reflective, but my mind contained many dark corners blocked by thick cobwebs of habitual thought and reaction.

Gender inequality issues and the control organized religion still holds over mankind continued to depress me, when I allowed myself to think about it. Our 'modern' society had not changed one iota in the new millennium with the flipping of the calendar from all those nines to all those zeroes. This country's politics maintained the air of a sporting event with its us-versus-them mentality, particularly following the events of September 11, 2001. Even though people came together to help one another for a time, an inky ooze of suspicion bloomed into full-blown hatred via the fear-mongering of many politicians and their corporate backers. And now, those same forces are yanking us backwards by debating personal issues that were decided long ago, totally forgetting the concept of separation of church and state.

Thankfully, several books written by Alan Watts during the 1960s popped up on my reading horizon in the wake of that disaster. I will always remember in particular an image his words set in my mind regarding the interconnectedness of everybody, everything, and if I may stretch it to fit here, every event.

"Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum."

This is how Watts described the universe as he saw it. Here I found a perception of inclusivity rather than exclusivity, of equality rather than inequality. The sound of that comforted me.

Other authors' works came into view. At one point my dear friend Molly, a woman devoted to her family and to her religion, the same in which I had been raised, introduced me to Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. As a teacher of English, she appreciated well-written, thought-provoking tales. As I read this novel I realized that the missionary father was the embodiment of all that had deeply enraged me for so long, namely the arrogance of patriarchal religiosity. The imposition of one man's thinking on that of all others is the sort of despotic control I absolutely abhorred. I found it particularly poignant that Kingsolver tells the story entirely from the perspective of the women of the family.

Kingsolver's writing style impressed me so much I went on to read more of her novels and especially enjoyed her collections of essays. Her concern with the environment was a natural segue to the books Ishmael and My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I recall feeling a bit fragile as I read the latter of these in May of 2003. It was shortly after Molly died, just shy of her 49th birthday, and several weeks before the ninth anniversary of Charlie's death. Charlie and Molly, and Molly's husband Luke, had been high school classmates. Our children grew up celebrating birthdays and holidays together. Just as the Quinn novels offered perspectives about our society and world cultures that were somewhat new to me, so too had Molly opened my eyes to different approaches in life. Her generosity of spirit prompted me to think more broadly.

I read many more books in hopes of quenching my seeming insatiable thirst to understand where our society came from and where we are all headed. I saw the difficulties my mother faced in the early sixties as I read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. This would be a good read for all high school students, not just young women, for it offers insights about the changes in societal attitudes towards women following WWII. Men were returning from war and needed jobs. Women, who had been working in the manufacturing sector, for example, were encouraged to return to the kitchen. The world of television showed perfect families in which each member played his or her proper role; commercials touted new household appliances that provided such amazing conveniences that women wouldn't mind spending their lives at home or out shopping.

I mentioned to a library colleague that I had read books by Alan Watts. Imagine my surprise, knowing that her husband was a minister, when she suggested I read Elaine Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels! What a fascinating look at something to which the pastor of my church referred as 'heretical texts.' There's another word that became a negative term in the mouths of those who held power. Heresy traces back to the Greek word meaning to take, to hold, to grasp. Those who 'held' beliefs other than those dictated by the established Christian Church were considered heretics, and consequently punished. The heretics were bad, because they didn't hold the 'right' beliefs.

I also read other books about the history of the Bible. Although considered definitively the divine Word of God, it was written by men, that is, human beings. Fallible human beings. Which letters, narratives, and written sermons would be included in that book was the decision of men. Throughout the last millennia men have translated, interpreted, and rewritten this book. It is not unlike the telephone game. Everyone has a different point of view. The message changes slightly with each telling, quietly reflecting new agendas and/or new trends in society. Look at the many versions of this book in existence. Look at the many different interpretations of even the same version of it! When people take quite literally very specific points in a version they prefer, or when they take them out of context and then act on those directives, it is no longer a book meant for all people. Worst of all, it has become a weapon.

Why have we not yet arrived to the point of honestly recognizing or accepting that this is what we are doing? Ardent believers become aggressive in sharing their faith. Actually, anyone who feels strongly about their thinking can become excited to the point of agitation. I recently realized that I am doing the same thing in my enthusiasm about what I have come to understand. I expected others to see the same logic. Expectation is a dangerous game. We all have our different perceptions and our own circumstances. I caused myself problems believing, expecting that others should see this the way I do.

In any case, all of this reading was amazing. Anger and frustration had catapulted me into positive endeavors without my even realizing it at the time. I read, I learned, I chewed on ideas, I threw my creative energies into other applications. Life is what happens when you're planning something else. So in answer to my question "why bother?" I realize now I had been dragged kicking and screaming to a point at which further resistance to the inevitable would be my total undoing. Back then I didn't recognize 1) the afflicted thinking of wanting something so badly, something so out of my own direct control that I was banging my head against a wall, and 2) that life was telling me which season my writing-for-children effort I was experiencing. It was time to go dormant.

"If you find yourself in a season of challenge and change, then it's time to decide what to keep, what to release, what seeds to save for another spring...A process of mindful change is an ongoing discovery. One step leads to the next, revealing where to go and what to do."

Diane Dreher offers this approach in her book The Tao of Womanhood, which, of course, applies to all human beings. Her words resonate with me even more in the present than they did when I first read her book in 2003. At that time I was still on that hamster wheel of life, getting through the day, running past the rest areas which offered time to stop and reflect. Yep, yep, yep her writing made perfect sense, but nope, nope, nope I didn't have time, had to keep going, had to work, had to, had to, had to...

Well, I have camped out a long time at that rest area these past years, finally showing myself some compassion. I try not to love myself conditionally as in feeling more confident if I succeed at something. I am who I am. I have caught my breath. I am listening more closely to that breath that is with me in steady rhythm throughout the day and night. I have experienced both quiet and turbulent mind. I have learned to see differently. I am comforted by the fact that change is constant. I have learned new techniques for living more peacefully with myself and consequently with others. And I remain curious.

It's the season for moving on...

~~~~~

Chapter 15: Numerology

I almost got us killed. Remember that pea soup green Dodge station wagon Charlie sold me for $100, snow tires included? When his mom learned that he had sold his old car to a young woman who intended to drive it clear across the country in the dead of winter by herself, well, she felt he should throw more into the deal than snow tires. Charlie had never been out West, she asserted, and did he really want to be a baker, after all? Why not go on an adventure while he was still young?

Well, Charlie had been on his own adventures. Several years before I met him, he had bought himself an excursion fare bus ticket that enabled him to travel around the eastern states, stopping anywhere and pretty much for as long as he wanted. He told me tales of really dangerous places he'd stayed on his tight budget. Most of his stories, however, were about the very interesting and/or kind and helpful people he had met, either on the bus or in the cities he visited. He had read about Peter Jenkins in National Geographic Magazine in 1977. I clearly recall the sparkle in his voice when Walk Across America was published in 1979. That journey spoke to him, reminded him of his own adventures and the people he met along the way. He, too, had been disillusioned with our society in the 1970s. In any case, what Charlie learned about humanity while on his own trips he could never have absorbed in a college sociology class.

Let me interject that I fight the If-Only syndrome as I write this passage.

IF ONLY...

If only I had listened to what Charlie really wanted to do in 1979.

If only I had really stopped to observe what Charlie was all about.

If only I hadn't been so focused on myself and my own plans.

If only...

The problem here, I realize, is that I'm looking back through the eyes of our subsequent relationship. In early1979 we were still only pals. Just pals.

Fast forward to 2010.

When my life felt precarious prior to Christmas, I comforted myself by focusing on gift-shopping. I drove to the artists' co-op in town. I was looking that day for something to send Tutu, Charlie's mother, who is still an important part of my life. I asked the woman who managed the gallery that morning to show me her work. In watercolor she had painted beautiful skies over beaches, behind pointy walls of pines, highlighting the loveliness of fishing boats. I bought a print of one of her paintings and we got talking about numerology after the price came up as a numeric palindrome. She was a very interesting woman and this encounter was refreshing. She suggested a book, the title of which fascinated me so much I ordered it online as soon as I got back to my computer. The library didn't own a copy, and the quaint house/shop full of second-hand books had no copies for sale.

The book, published in 1931, is titled Your Days Are Numbered, written by Florence Campbell. This play on the rather lugubrious, prophetic phrase is a clever introduction to its being "A Manual of Numerology for Everybody." Oddly enough, I associated it almost immediately with Charlie's Aunt Mae, a woman who, though domineering and somewhat of a meddler, was actually quite an interesting woman. It also reminded me of the ladies of the "Psychic Occult Society of Rachael" in the 1966 Don Knotts movie The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

According to the book, the numeric value of the vowels in Charlie's full name given at birth determines that his "Soul Urge" was a Five. The first characteristic of the Fives is "wants personal freedom in every direction."

A huge wrecking ball swung right through me when I read that. I read that as "not to be tied down." Remember, this is my 2010 self looking back at my 1979 self and shaking her head.

Here are several other characteristics listed for the Soul Urge of Fives:

Wants change, variety and constant new opportunity.

Wants to learn about life in all its phases.

Will not be hampered by convention or the ideas of others.

Hates to wait and hates to stick.

Is progressive, intellectual, emotional, versatile—often spiritual.

Injects new life into all that he touches—then passes quickly on.

Needs many and varied interests, sunshine and crowds.

All Fives need to cultivate---Loyalty, Patience and Steadiness of Purpose.

Charlie had indeed cultivated patience. He was an easy-going man. When he became depressed it was with himself he showed the least amount of patience. He wanted so badly to feel his normal self again! And he was loyal. He was most loving. Looking at the characteristic about needing sunshine, I wonder now if he had a seasonal disorder. He was curious and spiritual. My mind drifts off to many aspects of his character and to different circumstances under which I observed them. It feels right to regard the above tendencies in the light of Charlie's life. It's a healthful mental exercise.

I think of how, as much as I wanted to protest his aunt's overbearing, coercive behavior toward our daughters, I held back. I didn't want to upset him, upset the family loyalty balance I sensed he held as important.

The numeric value of the consonants of a person's name indicates the "individual at rest," that is, who the person is deep inside, with no external influences. Charlie's consonants added up to six. Here is the description of Charlie's "quiescent self":

"You are the center of an adoring family. You have a beautiful, artistic home and keep its hospitable gates wide open. You have flowers and music around you and love the responsibility of running a perfectly ordered ménage. Your picture of the future is yourself and your lover walking arm in arm in your lovely garden or, hand in hand, with white heads close together, sitting by your own fireside. Your higher "6" causes you to see yourself as the Cosmic comforter and adjuster."

So this peaceful vision was possibly Charlie's quiet dream, according to this book. This was not his reality as a child. His parents divorced when he was two years old and often when it was his father's weekend to look after Charlie and his sister, he took them to his sister Mae's house.

The dark story about this woman and her interference between Charlie's parents in their early years together I had heard many times. I was aware of how she raked Charlie's mother over verbal coals in front of Charlie and his sister. She seemed to be a troubled soul, frustrated with her life, though finding joy in simple things. She seemed to know what appealed to children; she took Charlie and his sister on some wonderful adventures, perhaps instilling in him his sense of curiosity about science and nature.

In his adult life Charlie's dream image was a bit more accurate. His daughters absolutely adored him. He said yes to everything, after all. Well, not to everything, but he was his easy-going, fun-loving, playful self with them. They are so lucky for that. And he loved his garden and being outdoors. He loved sharing this joy with Meg and Claire.

He did seem a very universal spirit, open to so much, feeling so much, sometimes believing he belonged in a different century. During his illness, he absorbed everything, every ill, all that was wrong with the world. It seemed his soul might burst with sadness and frustration. I wrote this poem five years after his death:

An insidious whisper

Licked your spirit;

Tongue jabbed,

She went Hollywood on you, man!

Tongue quivered,

So what if you're good-hearted.

You're skinny!

Tongue slobbered,

That guy at work WANTS you!

It sucked all the world's ills

Through the frayed strings of your heart;

It spat at your dream,

A jot

On the horizon

Of a white-hot desert.

The whisper tongued,

NOTHING!

Then dangled you,

CRACK!

It broke your spirit.

It broke my heart.

As far as his spirituality was concerned, I tried to understand what he expressed about it, but I was still so grossly steeped in the religion of my childhood I could not open myself to some of the ideas Charlie expressed. Or was my thinking impairment more a matter of worrying what family and fellow church members might think. I was stuck in old behaviors.

He talked of feeling closer to God while skiing or running in the Metroparks. At times in my life I, too had felt that same bursting joy while in a natural setting, that oneness with creation. How I regret being so myopic when he needed me to see clearly. The timing issue rears its ugly head once more.

I believe, I fear, that I was also so absorbed with my own frustrations at the time that I did not listen enough, nor compassionately enough, that I did not consider enough what he was going through with this depression. Perhaps I was even in denial he had a serious problem.

We had been a happy couple bumping along, doing our best raising our two beautiful daughters in the house in which he grew up, on the same land with the same trees, now grown larger, showing our firstborn Meggie the wonders of the garden. He loved being outdoors. He was into organic gardening. Our kitchen scraps made awesome soil. He worked so hard out there. It was his delight.

Of course, he grew so much we had an abundance of vegetables to can or preserve and that was labor-intensive. I remember feeling there had to be more to life I could do. The girls were growing and prices were going up and we were trying to be financially responsible. I wanted to feel appreciated. I wanted to feel like the kind of work I engaged in every day was worth something. I must interject here that it was certainly worth a great deal, only I didn't see it that way then.

I wanted to use my mind. Working at the library was a perfect opportunity for that. I started that job not long after Sofie's Role was accepted for publication. I continued writing children's stories, hoping to get another one published. In retrospect, I see clearly how I managed to fall into that trap of grasping for more of what made me feel good about myself. Or what I imagined made me feel good. Rejection slips were stone walls. I am sure my reactions to them didn't help whatever frustration Charlie was feeling in his world.

It seems so evident to me now that my own problems might well have contributed to Charlie's. He was not particularly happy with his work. He also felt underappreciated and overworked. At the time, the big department store that employed him as a maintenance engineer changed hands, leased another building in the same mall, and laid off what they considered excess employees. For Charlie this meant more responsibility with less help. In addition, the new owners decided to remodel. The contractors working with paint and drywall materials would not comply with Charlie's request that they use certain sinks for cleaning their tools. They clogged up plumbing over and over again, causing him even more headaches.

The worst indignation, however, was how they treated him as a man. He said they frequently bumped into him as they passed. Purposely, he believed, with mean-spirited intention. Charlie, being of medium build and svelte, felt these macho men were deliberately baiting him. This was not good for his already fragile self-esteem.

Because of patient confidentiality, in addition to Charlie's own reticence about his discussions with the psychologist, I had no idea whether he was making any progress. I could only guess what the problem was. Charlie maintained for such a long time that his illness was purely physiological in nature, that he was not depressed. A nasty little voice loves to whisper in my ear that a large part of the problem was me.

One afternoon during that last year, we all sat around a picnic table at the lake, enjoying family togetherness, when Charlie suddenly asked, describing our little circle with his hand, "Isn't this enough for you?" I jumped to the conclusion that he didn't want me to work outside our home. But we couldn't do without my income. He himself was not working. Perhaps he was a bit more conventional in his thinking than I had believed. Perhaps he thought I had 'gone Hollywood.' I enjoyed my work at the library. I was proud of what I did there. It made me feel good about myself. Was this all just an ego trip for me, I wonder now?

But I think Charlie was proud, too, and perhaps he feared for our relationship.

Of course this is all speculation. Some might call it a waste of energy. My propensity to get to the bottom of things sometimes does me a disservice. Still, I think writing it all out has been therapeutic.

In the book Destructive Emotions, Matthieu Ricard comments on suicide from a Buddhist perspective. He states, "One is not escaping anything, because death is just a transition to another state of existence. So it would be better to try to avoid the suffering either by endeavoring to solve the problem in the here and now or, when that is not possible, by changing one's attitude toward this same problem."

This makes sense to me now, but it was not a way Charlie perceived his situation nineteen years ago. Or maybe it was and he simply decided to hop the transition train.

According to Your Days are Numbered "Your expression is found from the sum of all the letters of your given name—the Essence of the vibrations that make up the grand total of YOU."

Charlie's number was a Two. Here is part of the list of the sort of work in which he might eventually have been involved:

"Diplomat, statesman or politician." Charlie seemed to be a fair-minded man.

"Psychologist, student, teacher." Charlie loved explaining nature to Meg and Claire.

"Companion or Home-maker." Charlie was a great husband and father.

"Artist (chorus singing or group dancing)." Charlie loved to draw.

"Psychic or medium." Charlie was a sensitive soul.

But at the end of 1978, he had been ready to give higher learning another chance. Knowing he didn't want to become a baker for life, he had matriculated into Cleveland State University around the time he sold me his old Dodge. He had his associate degree from Cuyahoga County Community College. I don't know if he had already signed up for any winter quarter classes at CSU. He seemed very excited about traveling out West with me and willing to assume the role of knight in shining armor, but not in the usual male ego trip way.

I had a driver's license, but had never owned a car. Highway driving was such a scary and unknown world to me that I fizzled out of a post-Christmas visit to a friend in Columbus. I made it about halfway, but turned back, because the snowy road conditions totally freaked me out. Imagine my relief, then, to know I wouldn't be driving alone across the country.

After the holidays, on January 5th to be precise, I drove the pea soup green Dodge station wagon to Toledo. There I stayed several days with a friend I had met in college. The plan was that I would meet Charlie at the Toledo Greyhound station at noon the following Monday.

He was truly a sight for sore eyes. I was experiencing a whole spectrum of emotion that morning. This I had recorded in my journal, albeit in retrospect, but I so clearly recall the utter relief I felt upon seeing him again. I wrote, "He was such a wonderful pal." There he sat on the long bench in that big terminal next to his single duffle bag stuffed with clothes. Together we had packed the car before I left Cleveland; most of Charlie's belongings were already in the back. We were ready to roll.

We were on a quiet residential avenue wending our way to I-75 when I came to a much busier street. Naturally I stopped and looked left for oncoming traffic. I failed to realize, however, that this was a one-way east-bound road. I didn't expect to see to my right in that first lane a huge semi barreling down on us. Charlie did. He yelled "Stop!" just in time.

What went through his mind at that moment I can only guess. He was a calm, reticent young man. He didn't berate me for being an idiot. He didn't jump out of the car. He didn't ask that we return to the bus station.

I almost got us killed before we had even begun!

~~~~~

Chapter 16: The Dream

The sandwich board outside the door read "Cake Decorating Seminar." I stepped into the plush carpeted conference room, considering in a blink the consequences of this rash move. I was supposed to be entering a different room in a different part of the century old campus building for an entirely different sort of seminar.

I found myself at the tail end of a long line of bubbly registrants. For a split second I nostalgically indulged in that thrill of escaping for an afternoon, or a whole day, my domestic world of children, laundry, and meals, and getting to mingle with other ladies also in pursuit of a temporary venture into things intellectual. Okay, cake-decorating techniques are in a different realm. Why was I here anyway? Did I now need to escape that intellectual world for something simple and aesthetic? I did that once. Long ago.

Up ahead, along the movable wall to our left stood the box pleat-draped table where we would pay, receive materials, nametags, and such, and behind that table, talking to each lady in turn, sat my late husband.

When I reached the table, the woman who stood by his side handed me a folder containing "recipes, illustrated instructions, coupons, and MORE!" That's how she stated it. She looked like a Victorian doll, her tight curls bouncing when she moved her head, her rosy cheeks shining with excitement, or fever, her delicate bisque fingers reaching the folder over to me as though it were a silver platter filled with delights. She pointed out the nametags at the end of table, instructing me to make my own once they had my name, and my money.

So there I stood before my late husband. I thought my heart would explode, or my mind, or something in me.

"So, this is where you've been?" I asked in a steady voice.

He looked rather sheepish, sort of sliding down in his seat, his eyes not meeting mine. "You haven't been with anyone?" was all he said.

"No."

"I'll sit with you as soon as I finish here."

I wanted to spare us embarrassment and I certainly didn't want to cause any disruption in this smooth operation at the registration table. I nodded an okay, moved down the table to write my name on the tag as best I could, given the state of my nerves, and found an empty seat at the far end of a row within good view of the stage. I laid my packet of seminar delights—seminal delights?— on the cushy conference chair to my left.

What a circus this seemed when he got up on that stage and gave his spiel about the wonderful treat that was in store for us all. Obviously a low budget business, the Victorian doll floated up to stand beside him, thanked him for such a lovely introduction and began in mellifluous tones to share her secrets of cake decorating.

Somewhat tentatively he came down the side aisle and seated himself to my left. Making him have to climb past me to his chair seemed symbolic. Made me feel I had the upper hand. We sat there in the semi dark, for part of this sideshow included a slide show. Despite all my anger, bitterness, extreme sadness over what separated us, I wanted him to show me one last tenderness. Several times I sensed his hand about to reach out to my own, lying still, beckoning, in my lap. He moved his leg towards mine, which sent a tidal wave quivering through my body very much like when we first knew one another. But this time, we didn't touch. We couldn't.

I learned nothing about cake decorating and actually felt repulsed by the sight of frosting saturated bright with blue, yellow, and red food coloring. I could just taste the bite of it trying to be sweet, feel the lardy slipperiness of it between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, followed by that heart-quickening nausea when all the sugar hits the bloodstream. Bad combination, this almost physical memory and the emotional state I was already in.

He must have sensed this, because he quickly whispered that he had to take care of something and would return if he could before the end of the demonstration. I can't possibly relate all the thoughts and arguments and questions that screamed through my head like spirits loosed from some ancient chest as I sat there waiting. The numbness of my body belied this tempest.

How long I sat there I cannot say, but when I stood up to leave, before the show was over, I saw him sitting several rows back next to a woman clad entirely in black, a woman who exuded some dimension of caring. I couldn't see her face, but I could hear her gentle voice. Quietly in my mind. She said this was his new life and I had to accept it.

Every pore of my body seemed to have absorbed the unearthly sweetness from that stage. I merely nodded, zombie-like, as I passed them.

Out in the parking lot I felt so liberated, so light. A bite of spinach fresh from the garden after sugary cake. At last, questions had been answered, anxieties purged. I was at peace.

I opened the trunk of my car to find clothing scattered all over, as though the bags of my daughters' outgrown clothes, bound for the donation shop, had erupted in protest.

Suddenly Charlie was by my side. "Do you have any spare change?"

I dove both hands into the clothes, flinging aside little flowered jumpers, red sweaters, striped breeches with patched knees, pastel dresses, and found on the trunk floor a baby fistful of quarters. I placed these into his hand and he walked away.

All of this I dreamed, just as vividly as I wrote it here, about a year after Charlie died. Indeed, I felt enormous peace upon waking. I also recognized the humor of it all. Charlie, my buddy from the bakery in the late 1970s, who had taken a ten-week cake decorating class when the girls were little, was now facilitating seminars on the subject in another dimension! Perhaps parallel universes truly exist!

The black-clad woman might have been my mind conjuring the 'Black Madonna,' with whose image miracles are associated. This wise and gentle motherly figure worked a miracle within me. She helped me accept the situation, encouraging me to move on. She was certainly a stark contrast to the bubbly doll, whose charm was as sickeningly sweet as her frosting.

This dream was a gift of truly sensing peace of heart and mind in the acceptance of what is. I needed to embrace that acceptance and practice it.

Interestingly enough, the next day, the girls and I took a walk to the myrtle patch. Along the way, as I was explaining my thoughts about the dream to them, we spotted three quarters on the path. Charlie was communicating with us, I like to think.

~~~~~

Chapter 17: Reducing my baggage to carry on...

My recent growth spurt has helped me see my wrong-mindedness throughout all these years since Charlie died. In many areas. But perhaps the most telling is in that of relationships. I knew how I felt about myself when I was with Charlie. I knew our kind of relationship. Rock solid. We fit perfectly together in so many ways. We were best friends, spouses, lovers, and at the level of basic humanity, brother and sister. We were kindred spirits. I treasure the feeling of that depth of our companionship. The problem lies in my expecting to find that with anyone else. Expectation is dangerous. Expectation implies the desire for a particular outcome over which one frequently has no control. As wonderful as our relationship was, my attachment to it, my desire to repeat that wonderfulness, is 'baggage.'

It strikes me now that I became interested in rocks after Charlie died. In the last decade or so I have packed countless geological treasures in my luggage. Souvenirs. I think of a bird going out into the world to gather nesting material, carrying grass, twigs, bits of string and other finds back to the home base. Well, I didn't build anything with my rocks, but they did comfort me. Wherever I was in the house I found rocks to look at, to touch, to pick up and enjoy the heft and remember where I found them, what I was doing. Many of them traversed the country a number of times.

Several years ago I visited Meg on the East Coast and found a perfectly round granite rock near Gloucester. The next leg of that big triangle journey, which had begun in Washington State, I spent in Arizona with Claire. After that stay I had to pack as efficiently as possible, so I stuck the Gloucester rock in a shoe in the bottom of the deep backpack I was carrying onto the plane.

"Could you please step aside, Ma'am," the TSA agent said.

"Why?"

"There's something in your bag we can't identify."

In a flash I thought my way through that bag. Was it the vitamin capsules in the zip lock? Or the loose-leaf tea I'd bought in bulk? Shoot! I hope they're not going to take away my knitting needles. I can't drop any stitches in that pattern!

"Follow me over to the cubicle."

The woman, who had a bad cough, opened the top of my backpack and proceeded to pull out clothes, books, etc. and plop them onto the table. It's a very deep bag.

"Is there any other way to get to the bottom of this?"

Literally or figuratively? was on the tip of my tongue. I only shook my head, afraid to open my mouth.

This poor woman, coughing and sneezing, took her job very seriously. I felt bad for her having to work when she wasn't well. But the job itself struck me as a huge farce. It's interesting that it takes the atrocious behavior of only a few fellow human beings for rules governing the rest of the population to be established. What's downright sinister, though, is when those regulations are designed to instill fear in people in the guise of protecting them. The implications of those rules throw up walls of suspicion. Constant suspicion is not healthy for mankind.

My cynicism regarding these practices was undoubtedly colored by a particularly disturbing report of a recent incident in that very airport. Indeed, I felt nervous and then worried that my nervousness would show and make me look suspicious. But deep down, I just wanted to laugh. It was all so absurd.

When she pulled the rock out of my shoe, I tried to explain to her where I found it and that it was a special memento. She took it over to another table and using a long-handled tool, picked up a disposable pad soaked with some chemical, swabbed my rock with it, and then held it under a light. She repeated this on the other side of my rock. By then I was trying really hard not to laugh. The whole show struck me as some sort of comedy skit. Where were the hidden cameras? When would someone jump out and yell, "Smile! You're on..."?

The TSA agent allowed me to repack my bag, including my rock. She would have to pass it back through security, but then I would be good to go. I told her I hoped she would feel better soon. She thanked me.

I felt like a shaken bottle of soda. So many different emotions had been bubbling up inside and mixing together. I knew that I needed to hold the cap on tight while still in the security area. Once I was out of there, I had a good, but quiet chuckle in a bathroom stall.

So what's my point? Rocks. And baggage. As a very dear friend pointed out to me, "You have to reduce your baggage to carry-on."

Charlie and I respected one another. He didn't exhibit any tendencies towards male chauvinism. I wasn't really a 'women's libber.' He loved me as I was, as I did him. We didn't try to change one another. For the most part we treated one another kindly. I can recall a few instances, and if he were here to tell it, it might be more than a few, when I was less than kind. I was not patient with his sometimes seeming molasses response to situations I deemed needing immediate attention. I also, bad form on my part, sometimes compared what we had, where we were in life, to what others our age owned or had achieved. But to be fair, we both stepped into that snare from time to time. I know I was not always easy to live with. Perhaps I do look at my relationship with Charlie through rose-colored glasses.

I know he was not perfect. Nor was I. Nor was our union, but it seems we worked together to overcome our struggles. We discussed things. We did not act condescendingly towards one another. We were growing a family and we were part of a larger family. The dynamic can be challenging.

I recall being surprised when other women voiced peeves about their husbands. Charlie was so good about helping with the kids and washing his own running and cross country ski clothes. He spent time playing with and reading to Meg and Claire. He grew wonderful vegetables. He was a great cook. He was much more involved in the household that any man I had ever known.

Did his problems begin with my working at the library? Did Charlie secretly prefer a stay-at-home mother for his children? Did he not really want me to be so involved with activities outside our home? Was I getting more opportunities than he to expand my horizons? Was he really all right with my taking that class in writing for children at the community college? Of course, none of these questions can be answered. Any discussion would be speculation.

Honesty and communication are key ingredients in relationships. How honest have I been in my perceptions? How honest have I been with myself?

Charlie told me, after we were settled in Seattle, that he had been quite taken with me for a long time. He had realized this on our road trip across the country. What a time that was. We grew closer as friends on that long trek out West in the dead of winter.

After having spent one night trying to sleep in the car at a truck stop in Tennessee, we drove into one of the most beautiful scenes. An incredible ice-storm had struck the area south of where we had stopped. The trees, grasses, everything sparkled in the rising sun. We knew this had to be devastating for farmers, but we couldn't help but feel awe for the glistening spectacle all around us. And we were grateful that we had not been caught in it.

We stopped at a 24-hour diner for breakfast and saw several cars covered with ice. We felt for the poor soul trying to open his frozen car doors and chipping away at his windows. Thank-fully his co-workers and others were helping him with buckets of water. Inside, we were met with kindness and the best breakfast ever!

By the next night we reached Ft. Smith, Arkansas, where we stayed at a Hotel 6 adjacent to a Sheraton Inn that boasted a restaurant. We needed a good rest after a long day of white knuckle driving. That same storm had iced over a long bridge crossing the Mississippi River. Our top speed was 5mph. We sang our way across and because we were thirsty, but had no water with us, we sipped a little of the plum wine Klaus had given us as a parting gift. We were silly, but not impaired.

We skated across the parking lot to the restaurant that evening. The cozy warmth of the fireplace and the decent meal were just what we needed. We lingered there, not wanting to go back out into the January night. As we were walking back across the parking lot to our hotel, Charlie said he needed to buy more toothpaste and that he'd noticed a drug store down the street.

I really didn't think anything of this, didn't question it, though I did worry about his going down there alone in the dark. But he was an adult after all; he would turn twenty-six in April and I would turn twenty-five in March. He'd been many places alone. And I wasn't afraid of being left in the hotel by myself.

He wasn't gone long. I'm pretty sure this was the hotel stay when I asked him to turn off the lights so I could emerge from the bathroom in my pajamas unseen. I was such a prude! My gosh! Then again, I didn't sense the chemistry that drove him so urgently to the drug store. Toothpaste indeed!

Once I was safely under the covers, I asked him, still in the dark, if he wanted to look at some photos I happened to have along. Heaven only knows why I would have had envelopes full of pictures in my suitcase, but they seemed to offer a happy diversion.

So imagine an extremely horny young man, the blankets on his bed serving as a very good camouflage, only feet away from a puritan woman offering a slide show of her life. OH-MY-DAWG! His responses to some of them seemed odd, but I just figured he was tired. Bored, maybe? Crazy with frustration? Poor guy!

I had no clue whatsoever that he was falling for me. It sounds horrible to say, but I did not consider this possibility at all. I just thought he was being a nice guy, a fellow adventurer who wanted to see a naïve young woman safely across the country to Seattle. We were buddies. Again, I was clueless.

I jump to our first days together at my place in Seattle's University District. The floor of my little efficiency was suddenly strewn with white crew socks, crumbs...and I was not used to this disorder. A man had invaded!

Charlie was so good to me. He was such a good man. What were a few socks? Vacuum cleaners had been invented by then so it wouldn't be difficult to clean up a few crumbs. Still, I was a crazy, hormonal, recovering-from-failed-relationships woman and I COULDN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!

I'm fairly sure I broached with tact the idea of his finding his own place. I didn't like the idea of his having driven all this way with me only to kick him out. Being the sort of easy-going guy he was, he mentioned an earlier idea of continuing on down the coast and getting a job as cook or something on a cruise liner out of Los Angeles. That might have been great for him. It might have been the very kind of searching he needed. Dang! I had to go and tell him how sad it made me to think of his going off on his own. Somehow I sensed a vulnerability about him and it scared me to think of his venturing into a strange big city, and going off into the world alone. It made me lonesome on his behalf. Does that make any sense?

Very soon thereafter he found a room to rent down the street, in the house of a woman named Mrs. P. It was on the second floor and he shared a fridge with the other upstairs renters, as well as the bathroom. She was instrumental in his landing a job cooking for the Seattle Public Schools. I was glad he was so close by in his own space. And he enjoyed his work.

Of course, after the elaborate spaghetti dinner he cooked up special on his hotplate that one night, and subsequent times spent together, we realized that we really clicked, cared about one another, loved one another. We couldn't say precisely why we felt the way we did. We only knew that it was what it was. If we had any expectations, it was a continued interest in and devotion to one another. It made sense for us to live together and eventually to marry.

So back to the initial point of this chapter: baggage. I have managed to reduce mine somewhat to carry on by recognizing the dangers inherent in expectation. And it's important to remember flexibility in perceptions. Life is fluid. People change. It is what it is moment to moment.

Expectation might cause me to miss something. If I'm looking into the future, I will miss what's right in front of me. Dr. Sood's advice "Do not postpone joy."

~~~~~

Chapter 18: Now

When I started writing this collage of experiences, I considered following chapter one with the words "Into our lives dropped a huge clump of hard, gray clay. What to make of it?" Well, I chipped away at that clump as I looked back through the lens of my evolving self, thought, read, thought some more, wrote. I cannot say I found a magic word or token at the center. I can say that the process of making something of that clump is the treasure.

So where am I now? Here. In the oh-so-fluid present. I have dug deeper into my under-standing of the effects of this loss than I had in years. Indeed, had I ever before had the time or presence of mind to bother? Getting here is what the Good Witch of the North told Dorothy. She'd been able all along to return home. She just hadn't realized it. I had only to look into myself, to dig there, to realize what was hidden beneath layers of habitual thinking and not be afraid of what I might learn about myself. Lessons of self-discovery are so valuable to the individual. I emphasize individual. Everyone learns in different ways and at different rates.

The urban myth about men's unwillingness to ask for directions reflects my penchant to find my own way. My dafter-dears used to tease me about how I consistently refused to ask a sales clerk where I might find something in a large store. I have always loved to explore, to discover, to learn. To find my own way.

In part, too, I was stubborn. I strongly believed professionals had not helped Charlie at all. If they couldn't help this gentle man, who was seriously troubled, how could they possibly help this feisty woman who was seriously troubled, though not in the same way? Who knows? Perhaps I was depressed all those years and just didn't realize it and/or was in total denial about it? Or perhaps I sent it to a deep, dark solitary confinement somewhere in my mind?

Perhaps, for the most part, my positive attitude was only a mask even I was unaware I was wearing? Perhaps all of the above?

None of this is to say that I didn't falter. I said "for the most part" positive. Oh yes, there were many times I was so weary of being in charge and holding my head above water and appearing optimistic I just wanted to climb under the blankets and not come out. Ever. Indeed, that sounds very much like television ads about depression, the ones pushing medications, a side effect of which, ironically enough, could be death!

The thing is, somehow I had the ability to rein in dark thoughts. Whether it was my innate responsibility to, and overwhelming love for Meg and Claire shouting in my ear, or a natural leaning toward survival, or simply being weary of being weary, I forged ahead. One day at a time.

Or maybe it was a sense of gratitude somewhere inside me, a quiet voice of love that helped me along the road.

Thank you, Universe, for wonderful family and friends! Thank you, Universe, for books written by thinking and thoughtful people! Thank you, Universe, for music and art! Thank you, Universe, for knitting! Thank you, Universe, for creative impulses! Thank you, Universe, for this mind in this body! Thank you, Universe, for adversity! Thank you, Universe, for icy mochas and wine and Spanish Coffees!

I know String Theory is not just a theory. All of the above are threads the Universe, at its cosmic and microcosmic best, has woven into the fabric of who I am now, each with its own vibration, color, sound, wrapping comfort around and through me, in an energy that continues beyond my being.

This reminds me of very good advice I heard during my years working in a yarn shop. I had asked a weaver why the sides of my fabric pulled in, causing it to look like an hourglass on the loom. She said, "You have to bubble your weft." Having only dabbled in this textile art form, I asked her to explain. She drew a wonderful illustration. Light bulb!

Bubble your weft! Allow extra length. Loosen up! These three words translate so well to how we could bring greater peace into our lives. We could give more space to others' thinking. We could take life, and ourselves, not so seriously.

All too seriously, though, is how I had been taking life since Charlie's death.

I was attached to Charlie, body, mind, and soul. When he took his life, he took half of me, too, in a way. If I think about it logically and take into account that we are all in many ways on our own in the end, my being so attached to Charlie was a problem of my own making. For these many years after, I have been attached not to Charlie, but to the idea of Charlie, the kind of man he was, how I felt being loved by him, partnering with him, growing a family with him. This attachment caused me pain. It has caused me to think unclearly. It was not going to bring him back! The attachment was mine; I was causing my own suffering.

I am not at all saying that we should not love, not attach ourselves to others. Such a relationship as I had with Charlie is what I now sometimes figure was a once in a lifetime gift. What I am saying is I needed to be more mindful of how this attachment to his memory was affecting my mental and emotional clarity. I needed to let go.

This epiphany reminds me of an encounter I had the first Thanksgiving after my father died, the year I started college. Our family had been invited to share Thanksgiving dinner with a pastor and his family. It was a strange time for us all. I felt lost. I also felt like it was a huge fraud to go through the motions of a happy family time. I was also quite likely sulking because I had not been allowed to join my boyfriend's family for this holiday, which would have been...like... so much more fun...hello!

When the pastor's wife found me sitting on the steps alone, looking forlorn, she asked me what was wrong. I think "duh!" was still only a single-cell phoneme at that time, but I was astounded this supposedly loving, Christian woman didn't seem to get it. I told her simply that I was sad about my dad dying and that I missed him.

Her response was, "You're only feeling sorry for yourself."

Verbal slap in the face! Where was this woman's compassion? I recall actually feeling as though she zinged poison darts straight into my heart. For decades I held this in my cell labeled "hurtful comments", as well as another similar incident involving a different "good, Christian woman" after my young brother fell to his death. This reaction did not reconcile with the loving ideals of the religion these women espoused, the religion I defended when Charlie challenged my beliefs.

But what she said was so absolutely true! Her delivery certainly seemed to lack compassion, but word for word she spoke the truth. And to be fair, at that time she was, I was recently reminded, processing her own grief in the loss of her young daughter. This wife of a Lutheran pastor didn't realize how Buddhist was her thinking. Amazing! Lo, these many years later, the "duh!" was on me! It makes me laugh. A good laugh.

I was indeed feeling bad for myself. I had loved my dad greatly. I had been attached to him and this attachment was causing me to suffer. I was doing this to myself without realizing it. According to our religion, my dad was no longer suffering. I should have been glad for that, yet there I sat feeling awful.

As I said before, all of this is not to say that we should not form such attachments to others, that we shouldn't love profoundly and unconditionally. Certainly not. The recognition here is that inherent in love is suffering. We cannot afford to avoid something because it might hurt. That is not living.

Charlie's decision to end his own suffering was not a malicious act on his part. He was a man in charge of his own destiny. Yes, certainly a man confused by what was happening to him, frustrated that he lost control of his thinking and his body. His decision was about him. He had been bumping around in an absolute darkness of his own. He could not find a way out. He could not change his attitude towards it. He had no energy. He was stuck.

None of us will ever completely understand why this happened to him or how this happened. Analyzing it is all speculation. Blaming someone or something for what happened accomplishes nothing. And no amount of any of this could bring him back. Still, there lingers some odd desire for control. Therein lies the mischief in life.

A friend recently shared what her mother once told her when she expressed concern about what someone else thought of something she did. Her mother admonished, "Don't worry about what other people think. It's none of YOUR goddamn business!" That was certainly a different spin on what I'd always understood, convinced that whatever I did was none of their business. But her mother's take on it connects so well with what I read in Destructive Emotions. We have no business going into someone else's mind and projecting onto their thoughts our own speculations. How many times have I got myself into trouble anticipating, for example, someone's reaction to something I was about to do or say? Again, it's a desire for control.

The main idea to remember in all of this is compassion. Compassion for oneself and for others. And compassion, I believe, involves letting go of that desire to control.

One of the most difficult aspects in the process of writing this book has been my tendency to look at past events through an understanding formed in the present. I have experienced that syndrome of if-only-I-knew-then-what-I-know-now. It is a cruel mental game. It goes along with regret. Interestingly, it involves compassion, but for the wrong person. It's like pouring yourself a refreshing drink of water in a glass full of holes.

For a long time I have been at peace with Charlie's decision to end his misery as he chose. Making peace with myself has been a different matter.

It has been a long road. Figuratively and literally. I have criss-crossed the county several times in my little car since starting this book. And I have learned and read a great deal more.

Daniel Amen's book Magnificent Mind at Any Age, together with other books recently published on neuroscience, has helped clarify for me how worrying about the future, for example, obscures our thinking and renders us unproductive and even destructive. When we worry, an amazing physiological phenomenon is at work. It involves diverting energy away from the rational part of the brain to a more reactive area, one which can send us off the deep end, so to speak. If we can recognize anxiety as an irrational desire to control, we can counter its harmful effects by redirecting our thoughts. The possibility of peace is within our grasp.

One last book I must mention is another that was first published in the 1990s , another one that might have helped me earlier on the road had I simply picked it up and started reading it. Again, it's also possible I wouldn't have been ready any sooner than this to comprehend fully its message. The Four Agreements by Miguel Angel Ruiz seems to bring together so much of what I have read these recent years about mindfulness and compassion. The agreement "Don't take anything personally" really hit home. For way too long I had been taking Charlie's suicide personally. It was hard not to. Throughout the writing of this book, however, I have come to realize my grief has been not so much about his depression and death as about what I was missing in myself.

Again, so much seems to boil down to this desire for control. When we regret, we want to go back and change what happened. When we worry, we reach into the future wanting to make things go our way. When we insist our beliefs are the right and only path, we want to control how others see life. And all of this desire to control fires up that reactive part of our minds where we get ourselves into big trouble.

But I think it is a different kind of control when we direct it inward. We are complex beings, we humans, full of baggage and desiring control. It takes time and energy to concentrate and really look into ourselves. But it also takes a tremendous sense of humor. We have to be able to laugh at ourselves. We have to bubble our wefts, loosen up, give ourselves space. And we must do this all with compassion.

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Chapter 19: Many Thanks...

I would not be here were it not for my dafter-dears, Meg and Claire. Through the years after their dad died they taught me the absolute importance of laughter, the power of not taking everything so seriously. Daughters. Laughter. The interesting quirks of English spelling prompt me to refer to these awesome, now grown women, as my dafter-dears. They rode the roller coaster with me. We screamed, we cried, we laughed. We shopped. Without their unconditional love and moral, emotional, and material support, I would not have been able to complete this book. I can only hope that my words will help them with their own quiet understanding.

I sit here at Claire's table, wrapping up my thoughts. I came here for Christmas and stayed on to take a course in teaching English as a foreign language. This particular time of mental and geographical meandering is coming to a close. We have laughed a lot and enjoyed many games of Scrabble. We have engaged in wonderful conversations, both light and serious. Of course, I have earned my keep by cooking delicious meals and scooping the kitty boxes and picking up after her dog in the backyard. It's important to feel useful. I am indeed grateful to Claire and her lovely family for letting me be here.

My relationship with my parents was quite different from that which I enjoy with Meg and Claire. The era of growing families following WWII seemed to have a tentative quality about it. People back then, I think, needed to feel in control of their lives, which meant adhering to stricter, perhaps narrower guidelines. At least that is what I observed of their parenting techniques in the context of what I learned about the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Life still seemed uncertain. My father worked hard during his life, making various sacrifices for the benefit of our family. My mother, having also experienced the hardships of the Great Depression at an impressionable age, and being appreciative and respectful of my father's efforts, was careful with his financial legacy. Were it not for this, I would not have been able to embark on this road of self-discovery. Well, perhaps I would have, being a naturally introspective person, but a totally self-sustaining life can make taking time for such learning and reasoning very difficult. It is time- and energy-consuming. I look back on these past two years, therefore, as a gift. And I am grateful.

Izzy and Dan were certainly there for my dafter-dears and me. During our childhood our mother referred to us as "The Three Musketeers," reminding us to stick together when we went off to the park. These two siblings stuck by me and my little family in our loss. No words could ever thank them enough.

Life is an interesting chain of events. Each link has a purpose.

For many years Izzy and her husband Bill had devoted themselves to helping their family. They decided to take a road trip around the country, just the two of them, to be alone, to talk, to experience many out-of-the-way places at their own pace. Their beautiful flower beds, their fish ponds, their tropical fish, and their three cats would all need daily attention. Enter the gypsy sister. Beyond the house sitting gig in June I was invited to stay until the end of summer. We had wonderful times together. Izzy is an absolute shark with Scrabble!

Before that, my dear friend and former library supervisor allowed me to extend my stay at her house following a brief house sitting gig there. That sojourn allowed me not only time and space to work on this book, but also opportunities to learn new perspectives. I am ever grateful to her for her warm and sparkling friendship.

I started to write this book in earnest while staying with Meg in Minnesota. That winter proved to be the most productive writing time I have ever experienced. Shoveling snow was exhilarating, too! It was a balm for my spirit to know I could concentrate on this project. It was also interesting for us to see one another now in our different roles, as people different from who we were when we last lived under the same roof. I thank her and her husband for their generous love and support.

Following a tumultuous live-and-learn experience, my very dear Canadian friends Sheila and Grant provided me a haven, space to think and to work. Sheila called it a sabbatical. They shared with me many perspectives about which I knew little until with their encouragement and generous sharing I began to read more. I always appreciate opportunities to open my mind a bit wider. Their loving-kindness provided that.

Many other friends and family have been there for Meg, Claire, and me, and I am grateful to them all. They know who they are and how much I love them. An eleventh hour use of the Internet I particularly appreciated. Thank you!

I also appreciate greatly the more difficult times I have experienced with various people in my life. Through those relationships I have grown emotionally and intellectually. Live and learn. And through it all, love.

Many, many thanks to those kind souls who read this manuscript at various stages and offered encouragement and constructive comments: Lila, Erin, Eric, Annie, Lynn, Shelly, Martha, Kate, Kim, Leah Beth, Laurel, Sandie, Emma, Becky, and Wiley.

Finally, I thank with all my heart Charlie. I thank him for all the love, support, and encouragement he gave me during our life together. And what a wonderful father he was! He helped our daughters along in their love of nature, of reading, of playfulness. He helped us all to stay fit. He cut cross country ski trails in our backyard after the first big snowfall. And in the summer, set up a target for archery and built hurdles of various sizes for the girls to leap over. He encouraged me in my artwork and in my writing. One birthday when Meg and Claire were young he gave me a zippered portfolio and a large set of topnotch colored pencils. I am grateful most of all for the unconditional love he showed Meg, Claire, and me.

###

And thank YOU for reading this. I wish you peace of body, mind, and soul.

Connect with me online:

My blog: http://unravelingY.blogspot.com/

~~~~~

Appendix: authors and book titles mentioned

Amen, Daniel. Magnificent Mind at Any Age: Natural Ways to Unleash Your Brain's Maximum Potential.

Bstan-dzin-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama XIV, translated by Jeffrey Hopkins. How to Practice: the Way to a Meaningful Life.

Burns, David D. The Feeling Good Handbook.

Campbell, Florence. Your Days Are Numbered: A Manual of Numerology for Everybody.

Chödrön, Pema. Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living.

Davis-Kimball, Jeannine, and Mona Behan. Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines.

Dreher, Diane. The Tao of Womanhood: Ten Lessons for Power and Peace.

Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future.

Emberley, Ed. Klippity Klop.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique.

Gardner, John, translator, and John R. Maier; with the assistance of Richard A. Henshaw. Gilgamesh: translated from the Sin-leqi-unninni version.

Goleman, Daniel, narrated by. Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them?: a Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence.

Goleman, Daniel. Social Intelligence: the New Science of Human Relationships.

Hanson, Rick, PhD, and Richard Mendius. Buddha's Brain: the Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom.

Heath, Amy. Sofie's Role.

Jenkins, Peter. A Walk Across America.

Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible.

Lappé, Frances Moore. Diet for a Small Planet.

Lewis, C.S. A Grief Observed.

Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels.

Quinn, Daniel. Ishmael.

Quinn, Daniel. My Ishmael.

Ruiz, Don Miguel. The Four Agreements: a Practical Guide to Personal Freedom.

Salzberg, Sharon. A Heart as Wide as the World: Living with Mindfulness, Wisdom, and Compassion.

Salzberg, Sharon. Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness.

Stone, Merlin. When God was a Woman.

Waechter, Philip. Rosie and the Nightmares.

Watts, Alan. Buddhism, the Religion of No-Religion: the Edited Transcripts.

Watts, Alan. The Way of Zen.
