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.

Second birthday without celebration

Time marches inexorably on. Today would have been Karen's 38th birthday, but rather than celebrating with her - and James - I spent the day, as I have for so many others, alone and with sadness. This is a difficult time of the year for anyone who has suffered a loss like mine, but with her birthday falling during a season of joy and happiness centered on families only serves to compound the pain and sense of loss.

So today I did the thing that I thought would comfort me most, I drove out to New Jersey to visit her grave. What I forgot to take into account, however, was that our region recently received the first significant (and then some) snow fall of the winter. Normally this wouldn't have made a difference but, as anyone who has been to the cemetery or read my postings about it knows, Karen and James do not have a headstone. Rather, their grave is marked with a bronze plaque in the ground. This has made my prior visits a bit more calming by not standing among the rows and rows of granite stones, but this trip it made it impossible to locate the grave. Even with a map and directions provided by the cemetery staff, I spent about an hour plodding around Section 14 and digging repeatedly into calf-deep snow. All with no success. Instead, I sat for some time on a small stone bench.

Instead of the comfort I thought would come from visiting the cemetery, I felt sadness and a sense of failure for not being able to locate the plaque and grave. I could appreciate it wasn't necessarily a rational feeling - failure, that is - because even with a precise knowledge of the cemetery section, with so much snow it would still be exceedingly difficult to find it. But it was no less rational for me to think like this than it is for me to feel (as I do sometimes) that I in some way failed in my duties and responsibilities as a husband for not protecting her, even though there was nothing I could have done. So there I sat. In the cold. Alone.

When I got back in my car to leave, the radio station was in the middle of a block of Beatles music. Two songs came on back to back (I think, for I was in a bit of a trance), from which I found some of the sought after comfort. They were "In My Life," from Rubber Soul, followed by "The End," which closes Abbey Road. Both have lyrics that resonated very strongly in me and which were only accentuated by where I was and what I had just gone through searching for Karen's grave. Every lyric of "In My Life" struck a chord with me (pardon the pun), but most significant was:

But of all these friends and lovers
there is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

And having the moment punctuated with "The End's" haunting and iconic words, And in the end / The love you take / Is equal to the love you make, nearly brought me to tears but with a slight smile on my face. Though these songs were written decades ago, I heard the words anew. We certainly gave and received equal amounts of love, but for far far to short of time.

So as this second birthday without celebration draws to a conclusion, and I look ahead to tackle tomorrow and the tomorrows to come, I smile knowing Karen is looking over me and that we truly had something special.

Happy Birthday Karen. In my life, I love you more.

Worldwide Candle Lighting 2009

A friend of mine recently emailed me to let me know that December 13 will be the 13th annual Worldwide Candle Lighting in memory of children who have died at any age and of any cause. The event is coordinated by The Compassionate Friends, an organization formed to help provide comfort and support to bereaved parents, siblings, grandparents, and other family members through the grieving process following the death of a child.

According to the press release, candles will be lit at 7 pm local time on Sunday, December 13, so that over the 24-hour period there will be a wave of light moving across the time zones. According to the organizer's site, no service is scheduled for Brooklyn (or anywhere in New York City) but I will be lighting two candles on my own - one in James' memory and another for all children who remain in their parents' hearts - and wanted to invite anyone else to join in the event from wherever you are.

What is there to be thankful for?

A year ago I wouldn't have been able to come up with a single answer to that question.

Last Thanksgiving I was still deeply in a state of shock. Living each day like a spelunker who'd lost his flashlight: terrified, confused, and groping in the darkness that surrounded me hoping without expectation to find a way back out into the light.

While the holidays, especially those that are family-centric, continue to be difficult on me, with the passage of some time I am able nonetheless to find somethings to give thanks for today.

I am thankful that Karen didn't suffer. Someone asked me once whether I believe in God, because they felt if I did it would be natural for me to be angry at God for what happened. Without going into too much detail of my personal beliefs, I said that I do believe in something more powerful than myself and beyond human comprehension. However, I do not believe in an omnipotent or omnipresent "being" watching over the world. Nor that God had any more to do with Karen's death than with Plaxio Burress catching Eli Manning's pass in the end zone with 0:35 left in Superbowl XLII.

If I were to think about God as such a shepherding entity, however, my feelings woudld be of thanks. Obviously this is not thanks for what happened, but thanks for HOW it happened. In the past year I have considered the thousands of ways things could have been worse. Karen could have suffered from a long and painful illness, deteriorating over a long period of time. She could have been "saved" at the hospital, only to exist as a shell of the person she was before. Because none of these things happened and Karen died without pain or suffering, I am thankful

There are also countless ways the actual events played out that would have made continuing in life for me infinitely hard, not to mention effected so many others more detrimentally. If it had happened one day later, I would have been at my office and she in front of her 3rd grade class. If it had happened one week early, we would have been in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains and it would have taken an ambulance upwards of an hour to arrive. Indeed had I just gotten up 30 seconds earlier to go to the bathroom, I would forever be tormented with a myriad of additional pains, regrets, and questions. Because I was there with her at the very last moment, I am thankful.

But more importantly, I am thankful that I shared my life with Karen, albeit for far too little time, and learned what true love is. I was married once before. When that ended, I felt lost and devoid of love. In fact I recall sitting with my brother one evening at a bar and saying to him that I didn't think I would find love in this life, let alone ever remarry. As I talked, I told him that I felt I would never find true companionship, that it wasn't worth even trying and risking more heartache, and that I was accepting that I would be alone. Karen changed all this. For as much as I might have given her at the end of her life, she gave me as much if not more. Through her I experienced unconditional love and learned what it means to find one's soul-mate. She restored my confidence, taught me to trust in others, and how to live life to the fullest. It is hard for me now to find the joy in my day to day, but I know that having had it once it does exist and I can hopefully find it again. Because of all this, which came from my time with Karen, I am thankful.

I've written about many things in the past year and have tried mostly to speak about myself and my own experiences. I've tried not to sound like I'm sermonizing or lecturing others on life. On this Thanksgiving, however, I hope you'll excuse a bit of that for a moment.

We live in a fast paced world in which so much is focused on things like jobs and commercialism. There is a constant effort to look to the next thing, whether that is the next promotion, the next model of car or television, or the next task that must be completed. Because of this, some of us don't appreciate what is right before our eyes and that - as trite as it sounds - the real pleasures are in the moments between things. Those unquantifiable, almost insignificant exchanges and experiences with our loved ones and friends. Those are the things I treasure from our time together. Sure I reminisce about our trip to St. Martin, our wedding, and honeymoon to Canada, but it is the everyday, almost mundane events that stick out so much - and which I miss the most.

So as with everyday, but especially on Thanksgiving when so many are surrounded by family and the stresses that can create, I hope you are able to find happiness and pleasure in having these moments together. That you do not take for granted the loved ones in your life, are able to look past moments of argument or discord, and find joy and contentment in life. I'll be the first to admit that this is a difficult task for me to do given all that I have lost. But if I can pass along one lesson from my experience it is this: I would trade everything for the chance to have Karen back and 'suffer' those things at which I once would have been annoyed - leaving a dirty dish on the counter when the dishwasher is right there, not bothering to replace the toilet paper, or even leaving the window open when it starts to rain - because, in the end, it is her doing all this.

Through Karen I have learned that life is truly too short and that we should be thankful for what we have. Not just once a year, but everyday. I am thankful she was in my life to teach me this lesson and help me to live to the fullest. I hope in some small way, through my own pain and suffering, I'm able to pass that lesson along to others.

One year

Today marks one year since I loss my wife, Karen Rothman Fried, and son, James Alex Fried. Today I have no words of my own. Today I will let the same words by W.H. Auden that I used at her funeral last year speak my thoughts again....

* * *

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message She is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

She was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Funeral Blues
W. H. Auden

* * *

Karen Rothman Fried
12/23/71 - 11/16/08

My love eternal.

My birthday

Today is my thirty-eighth birthday. I feel, however, that I've aged so much more in the past year.

In years past, the days and weeks leading up to my birthday were often times of increased anxiety for me. Not because I was inherently sad or disappointed with turning another year older, but rather I would find myself "taking stock" (as I'm sure so many other people do) of where I was in my life, where I thought I would be, and where I felt myself going. During these years my sleep would be interrupted and I would regularly wake in the middle of the night to contemplate various aspects of my life, often (I'm sorry sad to say) with negative feelings. I had become, in some ways, accustomed to this annual occurrence and expected it.

That was until last year's birthday.

As my thirty-seventh birthday approached, I still woke up in the middle of the night. When I did, however, there was not a negative thought in my mind. Instead I looked over to the woman laying next to me and smiled...broadly. How could I not? Here was a girl I had been attracted to since high school and to whom I never imagined I could be married, let alone date. But married to her was only the start, she was to be the mother of my son and the person with whom I knew I would spend the rest of my life. Looking at her sleeping by side, as I did so many other nights, I couldn't help but consider myself the luckiest man alive. I was so happy and told Karen all of this. Her response? To hug me to her and kiss me deeply.

Last year my birthday was on a Saturday. As we did so many other days, we spent every minute of it together. First was an early brunch at Moutarde, a French bistro on Fifth Avenue, while one of our cats was being cared for at the veterinarian's office. Next we went to Broadway for a matinee of Speed the Plow and then walked over to Hell's Kitchen where we had a snack of Thai food followed by a visit to a baby store to test drive strollers. James had, in the past weeks, begun moving much more and I felt his kicks (or punches) often. Karen and I talked constantly about him and our excitement of becoming parents. After wandering around the neighborhood a little while longer, we headed to the rooftop bar at the Peninsula Hotel before finishing our evening with a fabulous dinner at Aquavit. We were all smiles, each of us feeling like we were on top of the world.



This feeling of happiness and absolute contentment on my birthday, a feeling I'd not had before, lasted a less then forty-eight hours. Joy replaced by pain. Hopes dashed. My future shattered in an instant before my eyes.

How do I celebrate my birthday this year? With tears in my eyes.

18 Heshvan 5770

According to the Hebrew calendar, Karen died on the 18th day of the month of Heshvan in the year 5769. Because the Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar calendar, the dates between it and the Gregorian (or secular) calendar do not match up from year to year. Because of this, the first yahrtzeit of her death falls on today, November 5, 2009, which corresponds to the 18 Heshvan 5770. (Technically, since a day on the Hebrew calendar runs from sundown to sundown, the yahrtzeit began at sundown on the 4th and runs until sundown on the 5th.) As is Jewish custom, last night I said kaddish, lit a candle in her and James' memory, and began a one day fast. While the latter is a custom typically reserved for the yahrtzeit of a parent, just as I have not shaved during the past year - also a custom compulsory only following the passing of a parent - I felt keeping a fast was proper for me to observe the date. In addition, fasting itself is providing me a sense of connection, grounding and focusing me on this day when my mind is awash with so many thoughts and memories - both good and bad.