a christmas message

too many people seem to find the holidays a chore and i find that sad. to them, i guess, the spirit was lost. perhaps long ago. perhaps when they found out santa claus wasn't real. but he is. he may not be a jolly fat elf in red velvet, but he is a spirit that should live inside your heart. a symbol of the joy of giving. within your reach. why should it matter so much how much money you have, how much you spend? where has the simple joy in giving gone? a handmade gift matters as much as a store-bought X-Box. more if you ask me.

in 2006, as december progressed, i spent every evening in a bentwood rocker as bob lay on the couch, weak from cancer, chemo and radiation. the past summer he had grown birdhouse gourds in the garden and we dried them during the fall, then scooped out the seeds and guts through an inch wide hole to hollow them. i am no painter by schooling (any art i have has come to me naturally), but that winter i took up some brushes and mixed colors as i sat in the rocker. i was my own worst critic as the little gourd paintings took shape, but bob urged me on. and indeed they took shape. a Modigliani lady for jennifer, a buddha for joanne, a sunflower for mom, a little house and white picket fence for bob's sister irene. secretly, as bob slept, i painted his christmas gourd upstairs in my computer room where there was no risk of him waking and seeing my surprise. it was the simplest gourd. all it had was a big red heart surrounding the birdhouse hole and I Love You painted in black script. the hole was the o in love.

on christmas morning it was his best loved gift. he loved that silly and simple gourd more than i ever would have imagined and had to have it on the coffee table so it was in his line of sight at all times. after all, cancer had made the couch his home. he was too weak to celebrate christmas more than our morning together and i was loath to leave him even for a short while to visit with my family, though he insisted. he gave me 2 things, neither home-made, but both from the heart and so special to me. one was a cordless drill and matching kit of bits, something i have used countless times since his death and thanked him inwardly every time. it has literally been a tool of survival many times. a tool that offered me his help as i work alone now. the other present was a necklace, a wave of diamonds that delicately hang in the hollow of my throat. the TV had advertised the design as Forever and that, to me, is what he was saying his love was. i think of him going out to get it, gathering all his strength just to do so. he made sure his gifts to me were meaningful, lasting, and i treasure them. in contrast, i didn't know what to get my dying man. hopeful things like a workshirt, jeans, things he could wear when he returned to work. all the while i knew he never would. but some part of me thought that if i acted like there was a future, i could make it happen. yet they felt so lame as he opened them. until he unwrapped his I Love You gourd. i said "it isn't much....." and he said "are you kidding? i love it!" and it was clear by the shine in his eyes that he did.

when bob died just 3 weeks later i brought his ashes home in a simple plastic and surprisingly heavy black plastic box. i knew of no urn, no box he would choose for his ashes. but then i thought of the christmas gourd he loved so much. an odd final resting place, but then bob was no average guy, and there was no question in my mind that he would have said a hearty YES! when i chose it for his ashes. a simple black rubber stopper from the hardware store is glued in what would have been a bird's entry, the o in I Love You. in his last days bob almost never had it out of his sight and now it sits always in my line of sight as i sit where he once lay. his favorite red electric christmas candle flickers nearby. never unplugged since christmas 2006 and still flickering as if by magic for 2 years. i could not pull the plug and extinguish his light, and it feels as though he's kept it lit long beyond the natural life of any real bulb. i am silly, sentimental, superstitious.

last valentine's day i stood on the back steps where we used to lounge around and shoot the shit together and i released 2 helium balloons into the cold winter sky. both silver, heart-shaped, with a red heart and I Love You on them. ribbons knotted together so they'd stay together wherever they went. yet they only went as far as the giant oak tree in the front yard, caught perhaps 30, 40, 50 feet up. tangled together in branches to bounce off one another in the wind. from my computer room window i could look right out and see them, slowly fading to simple silver over time. they'll never break free, i thought. slowly they deflated but still tossed with the wind together and periodically i'd stand in the yard and look up. still together, still there.

until this christmas morning.

for christmas i gave myself a 'present from bob', a ring with a pink tourmaline in the shape of a heart, hugged by 2 diamonds. it hung in a little gold box in the christmas tree until i opened it christmas morning and slipped it on atop his gold wedding ring which i wear on my left middle finger. then i dressed, fed the cats, then set out into the cold snowy day to feed the bunnies and fill the bird feeder. there, caught in the curlicues of his grape vines, was one of the valentine's balloons. somehow it had broken loose from its mate, from the tangle of branches, and fell right into my path despite the wind that blew. i put the coffee can of seed down in the snow and trudged over to rescue it.

i was filled with wonder on christmas morning. i looked up, and there was the other heart still caught in the tree, but in my hands the other flattened heart balloon still clearly read

I Love You

my pink heart ring paled in comparison to that gift. coincidence, you might say. it just happened to blow out of the tree, happened to catch in the vines. but i am not the most observant person in the world, yet i saw it glinting there. the wind was blowing hard - why hadn't it taken it away? it could have gone anywhere and yet there it was, right where i could find it on christmas morning. whenever i used to doubt something bob used to say "oh ye of little faith." but this, bob, i believe.

my last gift to him on christmas was I Love You and on this new christmas the I Love You was returned. i could not feel sad in the face of such a gift and looked up at his other heart in the winter-bare tree, saying aloud "thank you, bob" with a smile and happy tears.

i'm sorry

i'm sorry. those are the words you find yourself screaming and sobbing sooner or later when you lose someone or some thing precious to you. it may make no sense whatsoever. you may have done nothing to cause their death, you may have done everything to prevent it, you may have taken the very best care of them. somehow, though, deep in your psyche you feel responsible. sometimes. not always. but when it comes it's devastating.

that's how i've felt.

i can't say i'm sorry enough.

when bob first complained of a gagging sensation and inability to swallow i can look back and reassure myself that i did urge him right then to go to the doctor. but he wouldn't. he was TOO BUSY. maybe that's why i hate those words now. they are such bullshit words. i hate people who are too busy. they're too busy running away, whether it be from emotions or illness. if you stay busy enough you can keep pain at bay. so you think. but in the end it will get you. so spare yourself, be brave and make time for it now. while it counts. in bob's case we missed the chance to find out he had cancer 3 months earlier. maybe it would have made a difference. i'll never know now.

i urged him to go to the doctor every time it happened, but he wouldn't go. maybe he was scared to find out why. maybe he knew it was bad and didn't want to know for sure. he used to say "if you go to a doctor they'll find something wrong with you". as if you'd always be fine...as long as you never went to that doctor. why didn't i make him go? i tried, i know i did, but you can't make a grown and stubborn man do anything. and he was, after all, too busy. he had a job he felt responsible for reporting to every day on time, just like he had at every job before that. he never took an extended lunch hour. sometimes he reported back for work before he was even due.

i didn't know it, but he was actually going to lunch that summer more than he ever had before at any time in his history. i know why now. he was trying to eat as much as he could to battle the way the cancer was whittling his body away. candy, potato chips, fried chicken. after his death i found candy wrappers and empty chip bags in his truck. he was battling cancer with junk food. he should have spent one lunch hour in the doctor's office instead of Zee Mart's parking lot, enjoying their fried chicken. the doctor would have sent him in for an endoscopy right then. maybe before the cancer had the chance to network its way down to his liver.

i stupidly waited the marina season out and cancer had that much more feeding time. he would not agree to go until late october, even delaying one appointment by one week. but by then it was too late. i used to yell at him in a rage when he'd be incapable of finishing his dinner. when he'd dart into the bathroom as it came up immediately. i'd yell "do you want to end up talking through a hole in your throat with a computer voice?" obviously, i had the wrong tube, and may have known it, but i wanted to make some impact, however crass. i actually think that was the very thing that got him to finally agree to a doctor. that and the fact that by then his knees and his back hurt too.on halloween eve he told me the doctor didn't seem to care much about his swallowing, she was more concerned with the fact that his liver felt enlarged. "don't tell my daughter", he said. she was heading over to the house with the children for halloween. "she'll worry."

that was our last night of innocence. blissful ignorance.

when his blood test results came in he was impossibly anemic and soon a CT scan showed 3 tumors in his liver, one six inches in diameter. and then an endoscopy showed esophageal cancer. stage four cancer. and ten weeks later bob was dead.

why didn't i take better care of him? i am not sure why we do it, why we blame ourselves sooner or later. i am sure i am not alone. other 'survivors' must feel this way too. i know so. you can't explain it to a shrink much less a friend or family. in fact, i feel certain others must blame me too. as much as i blame myself. why didn't she take better care of him? how did she not notice all the weight he was losing or his abrupt and odd appetite for high calorie food? anybody else would have gotten him to a doctor sooner. he wouldn't have died. i guess it's easier to blame myself than it is to blame bob because he already suffered the ultimate price. and it's hard to comprehend that maybe no one is to blame. doesn't it have to be someone's fault?

but the 'i'm sorry" isn't just for failing to keep him alive. it's for every single wrong i ever committed. it's just that the worst was that i couldnt save him.

sometimes, crying, you need something to say. something that means something, something you can blurt between gasps for air. "i'm sorry" is perfect and, like the tears, relieves some of the pain.

until next time.