It's just not right.

As part of my effort to restore  life to what it was before Gwen died, I supervise two students from NMU who are placed in student-teaching assignments near Ann Arbor.  Yesterday I visited with a young man who gave an excellent lesson on AIDS prevention to a high-school health class.  The lesson included a videotape of young people who were AIDS victims being interviewed.  At the conclusion of the video, in the credits, it was noted that two of the young people had died since the video had been completed.  Of course I cried.  (I'm sure the young man whom I was observing was moved that his teaching performance could bring an old guy to tears.) 

When I arrived home ,  I walked in the front door anxious to tell Gwen all about my interesting morning.  Is it the emptiness of the house, or the quietness that first hits me?   It's kind of like being in a Roadrunner cartoon.  I come toa screeching halt, knowing that all I can do is wait for the rock that Wiley Coyote has alread pried loose to come crashing down on me. And it does.  I've now learned that  it is possible to go through life all flattened out like that. 

The urn with Gwen's ashes is on the mantel.  As I do each time I return to the  house, I take a few minutes to talk with her and tell her about my day.  Next to the urn, there's a picuture of our second wedded kiss.  Now there's a poem waiting to be born:

IT’S JUST NOT RIGHT

Just when I think

thing are getting better

there’s a little reminder

that gets me whimpering

and whispering her name

and asking why.

Today it was

That picture of us

Kissing on the porch

Of the church in Gaastra

Right in front of  God

And everybody

Just the thought  

Of those warm, delicious lips

Excites me yet today

And I feel her wedding lace

Under my hands--

Know again what it celebrated.

The church in Gaastra

Has been moved to

The Iron County Museum

In Caspian.

The picture is on our mantel

Next to the crematorium urn.

The picture and the urn,

It’s still so hard

To comprehend

The meaning

Of those two

Artifacts.

John A. Bayerl, January 28, 2011

I wish I could say I remember that kiss.  I don't, not exactly.  What I do remember is that, after all those month of waiting, it was not a mere peck on the lips.  Also, church or not, it was more than a  kiss for the photographer. Much more.