Day 69
There’s no one to care if I sleep until ten
No one to ask how my long day has been.
No one to tell that the birds have flown south,
No one to care what comes out of my mouth.
That being who held me and cared if I cried,
Is where I can’t touch him; believe me, I’ve tried.
How will I go on? He so guided me.
He must have seen something in me I can’t see.
I’ll put on his glasses with no lens for despair,
And wear hope instead; that’s how he’ll still care.
People ask how I am doing and I say that I am “hanging in there” remembering that poster from the 1960s of a cougar hanging from a tree, claws gripping a branch. But it holds on. Those of you who belong to “that club that no one wants to belong to” understand the ups and downs of grieving major loss and how memory reaches up to grab you when you least expect it. I have been blessed with a support system so large and so far-reaching and so full of unconditional love, that I am seeking a phrase more generous than “hanging in there.” I’m not thriving yet, but neither am I immobilized. That is thanks to so many of you with cards and letters and treasures from my neighbors in the cul de sac to our church family to those who may have met Jerry once at a book event and remembered his attention to whatever you might have said, and his devotion to me. To you and to our families and friends who traveled near and far – a huge thank you.
Jerry’s Celebration of Remembrance at Bend’s First Presbyterian Church September 27, was a joyous occasion followed by a few friends and family watching the Oregon Ducks win in double over-time. Jerry would have loved the raucous celebration of life going on. For those interested, you can watch the 1:15 service on Youtube. Watching it myself is when I found out what I said! And Rupie was there and a trooper. He was looked after by the airplane baby (in utero) who is now a professional dog trainer. Rupie loves her. Me too. I treasure your continued prayers as I move through this next stage of a blessed, adventurous life carrying with me Jerry’s absence, so great.
The Little Things
If you know me at all, you know I am not a fashionista. I have a poor color sense lacking those color cones like my cousin has. She sees shades of reds and even whites and blacks that are unknown to me. When we built the ranch, our friend Sherrie and Jerry picked out the wallpaper, the paint, fixtures, etc. (I use the paint chips for ice breakers in my writing workshops). Jerry and his daughter and our friend Sandy often selected my clothes for me and Jerry loved to paw through hanging items, at J.Jill, giving them to the salesclerk to bring back to me in the dressing room. Even when I think I might have chosen something fashionable, my choice was suspect. I once tried on a sweater outfit and asked my then teenage granddaughter (who is a fashionista!) what she thought. She stared at my selection with that pitiful look one gives to the poor animals that Rob Lowe wants us to help feed and said, “You can’t help it, gramma.” She’s right.
So shortly after Jerry and I we were married, I got a job promotion and was super busy adjusting to those demands while Jerry began building a house for us on five acres he owned near Bend, OR. He designed it, built it, picked out the fixtures, tile etc. which was fine with me. Towards the end when he was furnishing our home, he asked if I wouldn’t like to have something to say about it and suggested I pick out the carpet. Pretty risky, as in the 70s, carpet went throughout the house. “Sure,” I said. We went together but I chose a light-colored shag with some variation of gold and desert sand. I thought it looked great.
The day came to install the carpet. Our friend Dennis pushed those lovely fibers into the corners etc. at a carpet-laying party. (I was in my thirties. Parties were a side-effect.) All evening, people commented on what a great choice I’d made, giving me pats on the back, high fives. Especially people who knew I had a poor fashion sense who were there celebrating my big color-related win.
They were proud of me.
I was proud of me.
But something was amiss…
After everyone left, I turned to Jerry and said, “This isn’t the carpet I picked out, is it?”
He dropped his eyes. “No, it isn’t.” When he’d gone to Portland to pick it up, the salesman discouraged him from the choice I’d made. “You have dogs. And you live in Bend where the county puts red cinder on winter roads and all summer long, that red gets tramped into people’s houses. You’d be back in a month complaining about that carpet.”Jerry had replaced it with something that would work better but he didn’t want me to not have the joy of having chosen just the perfect carpet. So he let me have the glory. He wouldn’t have told me at all, I don’t think, except that the accolades were too much for a not-fashionista and I knew I couldn’t have done such a great job.
I savor that memory, his willingness to give me a moment of possibility, that maybe I could do something with color, could express myself through fiber picks or in another way besides words. It also speaks to someone so comfortable with himself that he had no need to claim the spotlight. He enjoyed seeing me beam. It wasn’t the first time nor the last time. He did those little things that speak volumes to the kind of man he was. I miss him so.
Writing Stories
I’m having lunch with a writer’s group in a senior living facility later this morning. People often want to know how I got started in this career, and I usually begin with my love of words, their sounds, their often unique-to-me meanings. My sister and I were often sent up the valley to bring the Holsteins home for milking on our Wisconsin farm. I remember once, maybe when I was about four, asking my sister what those fluttering things skirting around a muddy hole were. “Butterflies,” she said.
I remember laughing. I knew what butter was – we lived on a dairy. And I knew what flies were – we lived on a dairy. And those two entities had nothing to do with those yellow things with wings. I moved from finding words funny to writing what I called wretched little poems. Poetry is a first love because its succinctness is a hope for me, a writer who can go on and on but who knows that less is more.
In my fiction, I slip in poetry and suggest that my characters are the poets. In A Sweetness to the Soul it was the lines “To be so loved/that time stands still when I’m with you/and does not start again until you’ve gone/and I am left to wonder why the hours move so quickly when you’re with me/and so slowly once you’ve gone.” The words speak now to Jerry’s absence in a new way. In What Once we Loved, I slipped in a title poem beginning with “What once we loved is memory now/tangled up with time.” A woman years ago asked for permission to include it in her husband’s memorial. In Across the Crying Sands I have Mary Gerritse, the anchor of the series, writing about how the “Puffins mate for life, you know/for life the puffins mate.”
It’s a little tricky when, as with Mary, I come across an actual poem in the Cannon Beach History and Museum archives that Mary wrote. It’s about Haystack Rock, a landscape formation that plays such an important part in the Women of Cannon Beach trilogy. She signed it “Mary Edwards” which made for a plot point I hadn’t intended. I try to clarify for readers in my author’s notes which poet wrote what. And so far, it’s been rather gratifying to discover people enjoy the poetry whoever has written the piece. Perhaps poetry is that respite in the flow of words that helps us pause and take in meaning at another level, not better than prose, but equal. So to you would-be poets, carry on. We need you and thank you for indulging me in my poetry quests.
By the way, I highly recommend Nebraskan (and first poet laureate west of the Mississippi) Ted Kooser’s book The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets. It’s for seasoned and beginning poets and does the best job ever of explaining why poetry is so powerful.
With Enduring Tides
Speaking of the Women of Cannon Beach, book two With the Enduring Tides, has gone to galleys and will soon be put into print for release April 21, 2026.
I’m now working hard to finish the third book by the end of this year which is as yet untitled but my working title is Beyond the Stormy Seas. I had written Book two while Jerry was still alive and I found it comforting to work on the editorial questions about my words, knowing he’d heard most of them. Toward the end, he couldn’t really focus, and I stopped reading to him. Music comforted him more. But now I have to carry on with the third book, remembering what he told me that led me to write my very first novel: “If you think it’s a great story, you should just write it down. If people don’t like your version, they can write their own.” Please mark your calendars for that date and I’ll be filling you in about where to find me to talk about what happened to Jewell and Mary and Herbie and Olivia and introduce you to some new adventurers as well.
Word Whisperings
Everywhere, Still: A Book about Loss, Grief, and the Way Love Continues
by M.H. Clark, illustrated by Claire Lemp
Compendium, 2023
My former next door neighbor gave me this book. She works in mental health with children. It was perfect. I’ve bought several copies to give to grandchildren, members of “that club,” and others. This Northwest author/poet, captured so much of what we feel when grieving. “I love you and I miss you, and I know I always will” is how she starts the book. I asked our pastor to read it at Jerry’s service, which he did and it ends with the hopefulness of love being everlasting. Good for any ages, any loss. It’s another stepping-stone on the bridge back to living a new life while never forgetting the old one.
The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We learn from Love and Loss
by Mary Francis O’Connor, Ph.D
Harper-One, 2022
A writer friend of mine, Melody Carlson (of more than 200 wonderful books, the most recent being Once Upon a Christmas Carol) who is a member of the club no one wants to belong to following the death of her husband, Chris, last Christmas, suggested I read this book. Jerry and Chris knew each other. They were both in the building trades and at a writer’s event in LA years ago, the two of them disappeared from the writerly activities to find a shooting range. They had shared interests beyond living with a writer. I bet they are enjoying each other’s company once again. I inhaled this book. Partly because it kept me one step back from the overwhelming grief of those first days without Jerry. But also because as I read it, I kept thinking about the science and how Jerry would have loved to read about MRIs and how the brain is trying to make sense of a loved one’s absence in the real world while still being very much present in the grieving person’s memories and sometimes more. I’ve had a couple of “things” happen that reassured me of his presence in another realm while still walking beside me in this one, but in a different form. A dream was quite instructive and I woke up smiling instead of crying. This book helped me understand that discombobulated feeling of loss a little more. The writer used the phrase, “gone and everlasting.” I am holding onto that.
Events
Jane heads to California in late October. She’ll be in Mexico for a month in January with friends and back to Oregon in April. Events will be posted. She also hopes to be in the Midwest – Wisconsin and Minnesota – this summer to visit family and participate in some events.
Flower Power
Every day since Jerry died, fresh flowers have graced our home. Small bouquets and large ones sometimes enough to fill two vases. One arrangement arrived in a special vase with Jerry’s name on it – from a grandson and his wife. Jerry would often make a stop into the grocery stores in Bend, The Dalles and other places while out buying parts for Deere John. He’d get fresh flowers so I didn’t have the trauma of killing off a plant or two, which I was prone to do. Just as I’ve tossed one bouquet out in the past 69+ days, there’d be a new arrangement showing up. And yes, there were also plants and so far, contrary to my nature, they are still alive (although Sherrie took one home yesterday to save it!). I’m thinking of taking them with me to California when I leave next week. Wild flowers were placed on Jerry’s body as he was composted. As Mary Oliver wrote, “Flowers are sweet. They have short, beatific lives. They offer much pleasure.” My plan is to carry on this tradition and have fresh flowers often, letting them remind me of how fleeting life is and yet, how sweet. May you discover ways to nurture you in the months ahead. Thank you for being a part of my support system. It takes some of the pressure off of Rupie, who will touch base with you next time. He’s been nurturing me and needs a nap.
