Another memorial

Last year, the director of the Alumni Office at Packer Collegiate Institute, Karen's and my alma mater, contacted me about putting a plaque up in the chapel. Packer, which was founded as an all women's school in 1845 and went coed in the early 1970s, uses the chapel for assemblies and other large gatherings. It is a fabulous, Gothic (I think, since I'm not so versed in architectural styles) space with wonderful Tiffany stained glass windows and I was touched by the school's desire to put a remembrance of Karen in it.

It was installed some time ago but until yesterday I had not been back to the school since our 19th reunion weekend, when we got engaged, and had not seen it. Initially, I thought it was merely going to be her name included on a larger plaque of other alumni who had passed away. As it turns out, however, it is a plaque unto itself mounted on one of the southern facing walls next to the stained glass windows. I was quite moved to see it.


(Unfortunately not the best picture, but all I had was my iPhone and it was a bit dark - as usual - in the chapel.)

A trip across the country and (in some ways) back across time

I recently returned from a trip that took me from Brooklyn to south Florida and onward to southern California. The trip was intended to be a break from the cold northeast and a chance to visit with some family and old friends. Unfortunately the former plan fell through since unseasonably cold and wet weather seemed to follow me to both locations. As for the latter, the trip was a success beyond my most optimistic of expectations.

Before Karen died, I'd only met her parents a few times but got along with them very well because in so many ways they remind me of my own parents. In fact I joked, after meeting her mom for the first time, that when our mothers finally meet they would either instantly bond as friends or the combination of their presences and personalities could very well threaten the very fabric of the world we know it -- similar to the near catastrophe caused by bringing together the Key Master and the Gate Keeper in Ghostbusters. Thankfully, proton packs weren't necessary and they became, and remain, close friends. But because we'd only met a couple times, much of our getting to know each other was done in parallel with our mourning. This is, of course, far from the ideal manner to develop bonds and there were a few times where our shared grief was so overpowering as to overshadow the foundations of family we share. These moments, perhaps difficult and uncomfortable at the time, were passing and we nevertheless grew closer and I felt myself becoming more a part of Karen's family, which was an wonderful feeling.

I've been down to visit Karen's parents and brother's family in Florida a few times in the past year and of course saw them when they were in New York during the summer. These were good visits, but the time we spent together on my past trip was different. Perhaps it is because we've had over a year to work through our grief and encounter so many difficult dates. But whatever the reason, the trip was more enjoyable and more helpful for my feelings about what has happened and where I am than any we've had before.

As I explained in my last post, I have been thinking about shaving for the first time since Karen died but I was feeling that there was something missing or needing to happen before I finally did. Well to give a sense of what effect the time I spent with Karen's family - my family - had on me, after my visit I decided the time had come for me to shave. I found a barber and for the first time in over fourteen months saw the skin of my cheeks revealed. I don't want to put too much emphasis on it or ascribe greater importance to the moment, but suddenly I found myself looking at a face I hadn't seen since November 16, 2008. It was the face Karen that feel in love with, said "I do" to in Prospect Park, kissed countless times, and last looked at on that most horrible of days in my life. It was this face...



The eyes are more weary and maybe without some of the youthful innocence that has hardened because of the things they've seen and felt, but the simple altering of my facial hair has made a palpable change in my overall demeanor and I feel as if I've taken a big step on my journey. It is a step I don't think I would have been able to take but for the time I just spent in Florida. It is also a step I feel confident will allow me to take yet others that I have been timidly considering.

415 days

One of the remarkable things about my relationship with Karen is that I can quantify to the day, if not to within an hour, the amount of time we had together. This is, as with so many other aspects of our relationship, both remarkable and painful.

After more than eighteen years since we graduated from Packer, we met again - and, in many ways, for the first time - on September 27, 2008. It was 415 days later, on November 16, 2008, that our time together came to a sudden and tragic conclusion. It was only 415 days, or one year, one month, and nineteen days, that we had with each other. (Because I remember the approximate time that we met, 8:30 PM, and that she collapsed, 3:30 PM, it is possible to estimate that we were together for 9979 hours.) This is a stunningly brief time to have been together, especially when one considers how much we did in that time. It would not be hyperbole to say that we lived a lifetime in those 415 days.

The reason I am mentioning this now is that today represents a strange milestone: today, January 5, 2010, marks 415 days since Karen died. What this means is that I have now been without Karen for longer than the time we had together and every day hence will tilt the scale of time further. How can this be? Could our time together truly have been so short that, in what feels like a blink of the eyes, I am now beyond the time we were a couple? It is difficult to contemplate and wrap my head around this.

Time is indeed an odd thing. On the one hand the past 415 days seem to have flown by in the blink of an eye. When I think about that tragic and horrible moment, as I invariably do so many times a day, I feel like it just happened. That the details and my feelings are as clear as the computer screen I'm looking at now. Other times, however, the time Karen and I shared together feels like a lifetime and a millions years ago. Almost imperceptible and existing as an ethereal memory which I struggle to recapture. How can it be that these seemingly conflicting realities exist contemporaneously with each other? I suppose that is just one more facet of the new world, and life, in which I exist.

The marking of this day has greater significance than others that have come recently. Unlike anniversaries or birthdays, which will repeat for years onward, this is a singular moment that I will face. This marks a boundary that I will never cross again, and of course from which I can never cross back. This does not diminish the importance of things like the first anniversary of her death or her uncelebrated birthdays, but today represents something else entirely than those dates.

In some ways, as this milestone is passed, I feel the icy grip of my grief relax slightly. Since her death, I have not shaved - the tradition in Judaism is that mourners do not shave for a specified amount, typically thirty days but it can be as long as one year depending on your beliefs - but now find myself a step closer to doing so in a way I could not even consider only a few weeks ago. Similarly, while I left so much of our apartment the way it was on the morning of November 16, 2008, I am beginning to feel the moment for me to change that may be approaching. I know it will be a difficult and long process, but whereas I couldn't even contemplate any of it before now I can.

While these are subtle shifts and I still have a long, long way to go with so many things in my life, they are things that I could not have even imagined only a few short months ago. I don't know when I will actually undertake these changes, but that I can even contemplate making them is, for me, an enormous step in my grieving process.

So now as I prepare to count day number 416, and onward, I feel myself starting to look forward a little more each day. Of course I will never, and can never, stop looking back at what was as well.

Tears

I just watched the end of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and was struck by one of the final lines in the movie. As Frodo announced to his friends that he was leaving Middle Earth, Gandolf says: "I will not say: 'do not weep', for not all tears are an evil." This led me to thinking about the power and effect of tears.

I have shed so many tears of sorrow over the past months, but while many of those tears have come from the pain of my loss, many of those same tears have sustained my memories of Karen. Yet while tears may nourish the tree of memory, what happens when the tears no longer come or come less frequently? What happens to the memories? They don't go away. They don't wither. They remain. Perhaps not as vibrant as they once were, but remain they do. Forever. Like the rising of the sun or the movement of the tide, an ever-present part of life.

So it is as time passes by. That while things that were once as clear in my mind may still remain, they are no longer exist with such lucidity. Memories, like her smell, the sound of her voice, and the feeling of her skin are forever in my mind and heart, yet just a little less vivid than they were the day before. How I wish I could freeze in time every memory like it once was, but I know that is as impossible as it is to bring her back to me.

Hence, I cling to the pieces of her I have left. Those that are tangible for all to see and those that exist only where my mind's eye can view them. It is not enough, but it is all I have. She was a life force and a source of life. She brought me indescribable joy, happiness, and pleasure. And while no longer physically here, and drifting gently in the recesses of my life, she remains a part of me as she does for all those who knew her and so many who are only now discovering her in death.

How I wish everything were otherwise; that our expectations and dreams were fulfilled as planned. But that was not to be. Instead my life has become something else: a tribute to her and a passion to live not just for me but for her memory, regardless of its intensity.

To simply say I miss her would be to imply she, and everything she was, is gone. That is not the case. For even as turbidity invades my memories of her, they remain all the same and forever will. Just as she does.