Richard’s favorite bucket-cap, still hanging on the rocking chair in the bedroom
Yesterday I used the last check from our formerly joint checking account with Richard’s name on it. After he died of brain cancer last November, I scrambled around and shifted all of our accounts to my name only before the year ended.
But I didn’t bother ordering new checks. I’d use up the old ones first, I thought. About a month ago, that time came, and I didn’t think anything of it until I wrote the final check that included both our names.
I walked to the desk in a nook in the hall that holds our household stuff and rooted out book of checks. When I looked at it, I thought at first something was missing. The old checks had his name first, Richard Cabe, and then mine. The new ones just have my name. And then it hit me (again): he’s gone.
I don’t know why something so mundane would bring back my grief at losing the brilliant, vibrant man I lived with and loved for almost 29 years, but that did.
A detail of the dining table, a piece Richard designed to showcase his rock basins in a Denver gallery, but which came home with us after he began treatment for brain cancer.
I pushed away from the dining table, a beautiful trestle-table he designed and febricated of plain black, cold-rolled steel with an “inlaid” middle of galvanized steel, and went outside. I walked through the kitchen garden and out into the wildflowers and native grasses in the front yard.
I sat on the porch and watched hummingbirds zip back and forth between the scarlet gilia flowers and the feeder. I listened to a distant rumble of thunder. I could smell rain on the air. The storm dissipated before any reached us, and its last gusts rang the temple bell in the kitchen garden. The sun came out.
And I realized that my grief was only partly about the loss of my beloved husband.
In the past three weeks, two friends have died of cancer: Elena Linthicum and Sharon Bode-Hempton. Both friendships date to our years in Las Cruces, where Richard was on the faculty at New Mexico State University, and I immersed myself in getting to know and writing about the Chihuahuan Desert. (Four of my twelve books are about the desert.)
Elena, a lawyer and mediator who retained the grace of the dancer she had been during her childhood years in France, was a member of the Saturday women’s breakfast group I belonged to there, a group who became friends, mentors, and confidantes–a true support group that continued even after many of us, Elena included, moved away.
Sharon, an artist who was longtime Director of Museums for the City of Las Cruces, was one of those powerful, visionary women who tick some people off, and also change lives. I met her when I taught a desert class for the Museum of Natural History; she was a crucial supporter in the early years of the Border Book Festival, which author and playwright Denise Chávez and I co-founded.
Elena and Sharon were very different people. But both were 69 years old, both died of cancer, and both were married to the loves of their lives, wonderful, creative men who cared for each to the end.
I wiped my eyes, went back into the house, and finished paying the bills. As I entered the amounts in the computer, I thought about how lucky I am. Not in a pollyannish way, mind you. Losing Richard sucks.
One of Richard’s “ambassadors of the earth,” an ordinary local rock, carved to reveal its inner beauty and brought into our daily life to reconnect us to the earth.
Lucky in that he is not entirely gone, and never will be. His work and spirit live on. This house, which he helped design and build, is full of his sculpture, from the bathroom sink carved from a gneiss boulder picked up on the roadside to the maquettes for large works sitting on the living room window sill.
Still, he’s not physically here, dammit.
Which is why I’m paying the bills and keeping accounts and tending the garden and managing the renovation of the shop and weeding the park and making meals and cleaning the house and going to bed exhausted–by myself. It’s why I’m Woman Alone, struggling to learn a sustainable rhythm for a life that intertwined with my love’s for so long.
I feel the loss of both Elena and Sharon keenly, I also feel for their spouses, as they each walk on alone in this journey of life.
Bless you, Angelojohn Chianese and Carl Coker. My heart goes out to you both.
What great beauty he left in his wake, Susan!
Samantha, Thank you. He did leave great beauty, in many, many ways. His notebooks are peppered with sketches for sculptures he envisioned, and sometimes I wonder how it came to be that he’s not here finishing them. Life is what it is, and sometimes, as they say, reality bites. But here we are, doing our best with whatever comes….
I love this post. I love you Susan J. Tweit, and what you are giving to all of us through your journey, your photographs and your writing.
Bless you, Heather! You are wonderful, and your heart is so huge and generous. I hope all’s well with you and Len, and that life blesses you abundantly.
It seems that in this experience with the checkbook, one of life’s deeply complicated moments began with a simple household matter. Thank you, Susan, for sharing the experience so honestly. Humans are like the garden, grown, bloom, seed, and the mystery is what becomes of the seed. Yes, a metaphorical comment. I wouldn’t dare to say I know the pain of your grief yet my heart is with your sharing the experience. Of course the seed is hope. May you find peaceful days of solace.
Penny, I like your metaphor about the garden. Thank you. Yes, the mystery is what becomes of the seed. As Emerson said, “Our lives are an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle, another can be drawn. That there is no end in nature; every end is a beginning.”
Today is the 3rd month anniversary of Harold’s death and I woke up just awash in grief, as fresh as if it were yesterday. This happens less frequently but usually it is something small and ordinary that just blindsides me–a song he loved, a comment someone makes, the sighting of his beloved huevos rancheros on a menu… Fortunately, I had the company & comfort of some of our dearest friends today, though I did give myself some private grieving time as well. I continue to draw strength & comfort from your sharing of your own journey and I thank you for that. For now, at least, though, I find that my pen continues to be idle and my writing silenced–even my beloved haiku. I feel the loss deeply but have not found a solution. It’s almost as though I fear what might spill out. Does that make any sense? Keep me in your thoughts about this.
Susan I, I was thinking of you yesterday and sending love. I hadn’t thought through the date, but know I know why you were on my mind. I know those moments so well, and I am glad you have company and comfort. The grieving has its own rhythm, and sometimes it is just overwhelming; other times almost sweet, as if a way to remember and celebrate the life and love that is so much a part of who we are. Keep taking good care of you, and following your instincts about what is right for each moment. On writing: I’d guess you’re right that you are afraid to write for fear of the power of the emotions that will spill out. Perhaps you could try starting with private writing, perhaps morning pages where you write first thing in longhand on paper before you even get out of bed, and just write whatever comes with no judgement or expectation. Perhaps you’ve got some grief that will feel overwhelming and some emotions that you won’t “like,” but if you don’t let them out they’ll poison you from within. Or perhaps any writing just feels too hard because you’ve gone through so much. Whatever is blocking you is not really important; it’s the getting back your writing voice. I’m sending writing energy your way, and of course, much love.
last time I checked, your blog took forever to load and there were no new posts – so I took you out of my Reader.
Today it loads promptly, there are fresh posts to catch up on, and your writing moves me, as it always does.
Diana, I’m so glad the blog works again for you now! I’m honored that you’d come back to read it, and feeling glad to have your voice here. Blessings to you and your beautiful South African landscapes and garden.
That’s a whole lot of loss in a very short space and a circle of friends, Susan. My heart goes out to all involved. And what legacies each of those individuals have left!
The reminders of Richard you mention are samples of the way the world is far better for the way in which he walked when he was physically here. Beyond the physical, though, he graced those who knew him with similar non-tangible legacies: ways of looking and thinking and being that are of extreme value.
It is a whole lot of loss, and I’m afraid that’s just the times we’re in. We’re not getting younger and neither are our friends. And cancer seems epidemic in certain age groups at this point. I suspect we have a lot to learn about environmental causes, which we likely have only ourselves to blame for.
Thanks for your words on Richard’s legacy–grace is especially appropriate as a verb in the same sentence with his name and his life. I’m so glad you and he had time to know each other.
Susan, I am sorry for your losses. Heartbreaking, just heartbreaking. My dear friend, Kat, with Lyme and metasticized breast cancer now has the cancer in her brain as well as her bones. I think daily of what Richard went through and find their suffering almost unbearable.
Bobbe, Thank you for your sympathy. I am sorry to hear that your friend Kat’s cancer has spread to her brain and bones. I hope that she has the care she needs both physically and spiritually to live her days in as much grace as she can find. Richard was fortunate that he wasn’t in any pain until his last few days, and even then, he found the grace he needed to be present and gracious in his journey on to whatever’s next. I wish the same ability to stay in the moment and embrace what comes with grace for your friend Kat, and for all of us!
Susan I am so sorry to hear of the loss of your friends. Sadness, loss, time…seems never ending. Your shared checkbook and thoughts of Richard has to be full of emotions. My heart goes out to you. I’m thinking of this as I just sent my brother a medal that was precious to my mom. I decided to part with it because I have my own treasures. He was overwhelmed. I feel her loss, forty years like yesterday. Some days I think of my own survivorship and the wonderful supportive people I’ve met through cancer. So many precious gifts.
Robin, How wonderful that you could send your mom’s favorite medal to your brother! That kind of generosity gives our memories more to feed on, not less. The people we love are never entirely gone when their stories live on in our lives. It’s not the same as having them with us physically, but it beats not having them at all…. I think life itself is the gift, and I celebrate your ability to find your life in your journey with cancer, and to integrate all you’ve experienced, the easy and the difficult, the joyous and the painful. Who we are is in part what we make of what life brings us, and you’re making something that pulls together all you’ve been given.
In your home, you are a Woman Alone, and that is a hard transition no matter how it happens (although total loss to death is probably the worst). But if you look out, you know you have friends all over the world, who are ready to listen to you, be your “crying shoulder” when you need one, and to share the little joys that will still come along. You’re right: it totally sucks that Richard is gone. But what a marvelous legacy he left you. Grief hits at unexpected times, and there may always be surprise triggers. I don’t know if it ever goes away, but in enough years, it gets a little easier to live with. Hang in there, and take care of yourself, too. You know what will happen if you get too tired! Neither of us likes that (I’m being dragged all over the state, and Minnesota, by my sister; I’m so tired I can’t think straight! Laundry? Water the plants? Huh? Good thing most of the bills are on auto-pay!). So be kind to yourself, too. (And that’s advice you gave me!)
Lori
Lori, Thanks for the reminder of this warm and far-flung community. I am fortunate to have so many friends who will listen, care, and help out with understanding and wisdom. You’re right too, that grief is easier as time passes. I don’t think it ever does “go away,” because that would mean that the memories of the ones you love are gone too. I don’t mind keeping the grief if I get to keep the love…. I’m doing my best to be kind to myself; you do the same as you’re dragged all over ND and Minn by your sister-who-knows-best.
Because you’re a writer and research wildlife biologist it doesn’t surprise me that the heading on a check (checks being numbering/counting things) would make Richard’s death real all over again. Of course, knowing why it re-knocks the world askew doesn’t necessarily make the hurt lesser, nor stabilize the vertigo.
Having two more beloveds also taken away by cancer… I’m remembering the bird that ran into your windshield, on your way home from Westcliffe(?); and your breaking down because that one more death had caused the line to be crossed into, “too many deaths to handle, right now.” (Terry Tempest Williams, in her mid-thirties, becoming the matriarch of her family, because cancer had taken away the rightful ones.)
Eduardo, Vertigo is the perfect word for what hit me the other day. But grief is like that. It’s what reminds the me who lives in this new world about the me who lived in the other one, and in tying the two worlds together, yanks me back and forth. I’d rather have the grief and vertigo than not, because they both remind me of what richness I had and still draw on, even without Richard here physically.
Yes, that was the drive back from Westcliffe when I hit the robin and mourned one too many deaths. You brought up Terry then too, and I am struck by how the threshold of what we can manage at any given moment shifts, perhaps as experience shows us what we’re capable of. These latest two deaths were expected, but still…. Both dear women friends, the same age, both vital–and then not. Sigh.
Just a long-distance {{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{hug}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
Thank you, Diana. Hugs are precious, as you know….
So much loss…a heavy load to carry and my heart goes out to you, wishing to lighten it.
I send blessings, hugs and warm thoughts to you on the wings of hummingbirds, butterflies and budding blossoms.
That brought tears. My husband’s favorite hat is a replica of your husband’s. He wears it everywhere. I can’t imagine losing him. I am so sorry for your losses.