The Last Year My wife died a year ago, on May 2 of 2002, from complications of breast cancer. Her name was Julie. She would have been 49 on her birthday, May 5. The death certificate records her death as due to "gray vegetative sepsis - ascending cholangitis - metastatic breast cancer." On that day, the woman I loved as friend and soulmate passed out of this world, and I was left to live on my own. Over the course of the following twelve months, I have done that. The following piece is my attempt to record my thoughts, feelings and actions over that period. It is proving to be a difficult task. Thinking about the past year brings to me a collision of memories that challenge any organization. During that time, a period that I recall mostly as a vague memory of dreaming, I acted primarily out of a gut sense of survival. I am keenly aware that not a day or an hour has passed that I have not thought of her. The rest of the time I was intensely concerned with myself. Her departure left me not so much lonely as alone. The death of a loved one does that to you. There is a sense of ending, of abandonment, that surpasses all other emotions one can have. I imagine that it must be like that for someone who has a limb amputated. There is the phenomena of the "phantom limb" where the amputee has sensory impressions though the limb is gone, like an itch on a foot that is no longer there. The person looks down to scratch the itch, and is once again assaulted with the reality of absence. So it was with me. So it was the constant knowledge of her absence that was the worst road to walk. It was as though she was always in the other room, or in the backyard working in the garden, or simply traveling out of town, and would reappear at any moment. This feeling never left me, and so it was the constant sense of temporary absence, and the subsequent failure of her return, that proved to be the most painful. It was not so much a feeling of loneliness, as a feeling of alone-ness. At the end of each day, and of every event of that day, it felt again like the closing of a book that I didn't want to end. Once you've finished the book, as great as it was, you are done. The experience cannot be repeated. Let me begin again. As I said, it is difficult to organize my thoughts. The first days, weeks, and months after her death are now a blur. While I have memories of those times, they seem like a dream vaguely remembered. As time went on, I would have experiences of memory and sorrow. Certain triggers, like the sound or a lyric of a certain song, the sight of one of her paintings, a note found with her handwriting on it, would produce in me unnamable emotions, resulting in tears or deep sorrow. Do you remember slow dancing to the Cocteau Twins "Four Calendar Café," and kissing? Do you remember the banana tree outside your window, and the day we took pictures? Hearing and seeing our world, I would fall into myself as into a deep hole. I became another, no longer aware of myself as I thought I was and feeling emotions that I did not comprehend. No longer capable of observing myself in the obsessive way we watch and define ourselves, I became someone who did not recognize himself. I could not see myself, but only the distant vision of a small human floating, perhaps lost, on the ocean. When I was a child, maybe six, my family went to San Diego. All I remember now is that my brother and I were sitting on an inflatable raft on the water. At some point, I recall looking up and seeing the shore very far away, the Pacific wide and wild and all around us. I wasn't afraid but more astounded at where we were. The world, our family, the earth seemed faraway and unobtainable. There was no way back. Obviously someone swam out to pull us back to the beach. We might have only been yards away, but the feeling has stayed with me all these years. There was no way back across the infinite waters. There were times over the past year when I did not want to return to the shore. I wanted to drift away. I wanted to be anywhere but here. I went to Europe, I went on a road trip up the West Coast. Everytime I went away, I wanted to be back home. When I was home, I wanted to leave. I couldn't go where I really wanted to go, into the past, so I settled for hyperactive activity and traveling. Not that there wasn't much to do: all of her business papers had to be read, the mortgage, the taxes, and the bills. Medical bills, insurance reports, an endless stream of details. Then there were all of her personal effects and papers. I was to learn about her life with the detail of a detective. What would I keep? I looked through it all, in the process learning more about the marvelous woman I had married than I had ever known when she was alive. When we die, we leave behind a great deal of artifacts. Like an archeologist, the survivors can recreate a panorama of a life they have not known. Spending hours sorting through her personal effects, like clothes, her photos and artwork, her personal items like a necklace or a hair clip, became a way of connecting with Julie. It of course was not satisfactory in the long run. Many times, and sometimes even now, I wished it were all over with, so I could get on with my life. That of course was my mistake. My life was happening all the while, continuing without my permission or my interference. As she was dying, I stood over her, my face close to hers. She was sedated, in a state of "active sleep" or some such thing, with a ventilator down her throat. She was connected to a number of monitors. I told her that it was time for her to leave, and that it was alright with me. She had come to the end of her path, and it was OK for her to go. I saw the light go out of her half-closed eyes, and I knew she was gone. I, on the other hand, was still here, on this earth, standing over her, hearing the heart monitor alarm going off, announcing that her heart had stopped. So for the next twelve months, I did my best to live without her. I was a survivor sitting on a pile of rubble, like Jeremiah lamenting for Jerusalem, living on after the end had come. For the next twelve months, I sorted through the rubble, looking for what could not be found. Let me begin again. Thinking about the past year brings to me a collision of memories that challenge any organization. I have had few "visitation" experiences, and friends told me to call to Julie, and she would be there for me in spirit. This has not really happened. I have come to realize that perhaps we have never parted. Her spirit is so much a part of mine that I always have her with me. This is the gift she gave to me, the gift she left with me. I wonder if we all don't live in several states at once? There is the common state of everyday life, which we all know. We may also live in a spiritual state, a non-physical dimension that we find ourselves in after death. I don't believe in Heaven as it is typically represented, but I know that Julie is somewhere, blending into an infinite cosmos, a place unimaginable, or of limitless imagination, as the Tibetans say. My last words to her, just before the doctors administered the sedation, were "See you on the other side." I assumed that she would recover from the latest crisis, wake up, and come home with me again. Those words have another meaning now. I said that I had few visitation experiences, but the most vivid one happened just recently. Dreaming, I found myself in a open courtyard of a business complex, tall glass and steel buildings around me. I knew that I was there to meet Julie, as if I might be picking her up from the airport. I saw her come out of one of the buildings, far across the courtyard. She was well dressed, as she might be for work. She looked up a little, and must have seen me. She pursed her lips in the funny way she always did when she was very happy and trying to remain composed. She rounded a small stand of trees that was between us, and our eyes met. In dream-time motion, she was immediately in front of me. Now she was more casually dressed, in dark blue slacks and a deep purple pullover. Her hair was longer than she usually wore it and it was a dark brown. I could see her face, her eyes and her smile clearly. I had realized by now, in a lucid moment, that Julie was in fact dead and that I was in a dream. We said "Hi" to each other several times, just repeating the words to each other, smiling at each other. Then I hugged her to me. Now I could feel the dream ending, as though I was rising to the surface of a lake. I held her and told her over and again "Don't leave me." Of course, I awoke. However, the best part of that dream was when I held her close to me, and asked her, "How are things going?" and she said, "Things are great." So maybe death is only a transition to another reality, and maybe I'll see her again and maybe I won't. It's good to know that after the horror of the cancer, and of all the difficulties of life, for Julie, things are great. Stephen Micheal Barnes

 

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