Today is January 12, Gwen died on November 12. Two months since my life was changed forever. Those who know about these things tell me that anniversaries are tough; they are right. November 12, 2010, 11/12/10, an easy date to remember, a day that is so difficult to remember. My daughters and daughters-in-law found a picture of Gwen that became sort of the center piece of remembrances of her at her wake and funeral. Perhaps because it is on the bookmarks that I use in the books I read, I have come to treasure that picture. I wrote a poem about it:

THAT DARN PICTURE

I have many pictures of her
This one is my favorite
I don’t know who snapped it
Or where she was
Or what she was doing
Or whom she was with.

There she is
In all her youthful glory
Head thrown back
Laughing, happy, sassy
Hair big and feathery
Wearing a goofy straw hat.

She was just out of high school then
It would be a year
Before I met her
When she sat on my lap
For the first time
And said she’d see a movie with me.

That picture haunts me now
It was on everything and everywhere
At her funeral
It is far from my idea of her
Yet it is exactly
Who she was.

I spent a lifetime
Getting to know and love
The girl in that picture
Or, was it the one
Not in the picture
That I knew so well?

I miss them both.

John A. Bayerl, January 11, 2011

Especially today, two months later, I miss them both.

On Poetry and Grief

Shortly after Gwen's death a friend sent me an article entitled "To overcome grief after a loss, try to love" written by Fr. Ron Rolheiser. In the article the question is raised concerning what we can say in the face of a deep loss and the attendant inconsolable grief. (I think I've gotten past the inconsolable loss phase, but there are still the moments when waves of grief overwhelm me.) The author of the article posed the question to renowned psychologist,Antoine Vergote, his answer was cautious, words to this effect: "When someone is grieving a deep loss, there is a period of time when psychology finds itself rather helpless. The pain of a death. . . .can trigger a paralysis that is not easy to reach into and dissolve. Psychology admits to limits here. Sometimes I think the poets and novelists are of more use in this than is pyschology. But, even there, they can offers some insight but I am not sure anyone can dc muchto take away the pain. There are some things in life befrore which we simply stand helpless." A psychologist whom I have been seeing put this more simply when he said, "When the grief has you on your knees, there's only one thing to do and that is to find a way to stand up."

Sometimes words come to me, and I write them down in the form of a poem. I have found that happening much more frequently since the death of my perfect partner. I intend to share some of these poems in this blog, but today I offer a poem sent to me by a friend, Fr. Dennis Dillon.

THE WELL OF GRIEF

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief

turning down to its black water
to the place that we cannot breathe

will never know
the source from which we drink
the secret water cold and clear

nor find in the darkness
the small gold coins
thrown by those who wished for something else

~ David Whyte ~

I have tasted a little of the secret water and have found a few small gold coins, but much remains to be discovered in my well of grief.

Hummingbirds.

On Wednesday of this week it will two months since my wife, Gwen, lost her almost five year battle with cancer. More precisely, today is the 59th day I have gotten up to the realization that the one person who was my friend, my lover and my most honest critic is no longer with me. I recently found two packages of letters we had written to each other during the year before we were married and were living 100 miles apart. In my last letter to her, the week before we were married, my final sentence was: "God could not have created a more perrfect mate for me." Her final words in her last letter were: "I love you more." And so it went for 47 years, five month and 12 days. She was my perfect mate, and not a day went by that she didn't try to prove that she loved me more. She kept things that meant a lot to her. A poem she saved began with these lines:

I love you

not only for what you are

but for what I am

when I am with you.

Now, with her gone, I would amend those lines:

I still love you

not only for what you were

but for what I was

when you were with me.

In some ways, our life together was an adventure. No matter what hare-brained scheme I came up with, she was with me all the way. Urging me on, never complaining, always anxious to see what was around the next corner. When we were first married, we postponed our honeymoon so that we could live in Marquette where I took a class in summer school. We never did remember or find time to have a honeymoon. Yet, in a larger sense, our life together was a complete honeymoon. Right up to the end, where it was just the two of us together as she took her last breath. She now knows what lies around the next corner, and I am so sad that she's not here to tell me about it, but also happy that we were given time to, together, prepare for her next adventure.

Gwen loved hummingbirds, some of my best memories of our time together are when we owned our cottage on St. Joseph Island in Canada and would sit on our deck and watch them flit around the hollyhocks and other flowers she had planted. A few years ago we took a cruise, and won a print of any of the pictures that were on display. She picked one of a hummingbird; it hangs in our family room downstairs. I tried all last summer to attract hummingbirds to our back yard, to no avail. I'll try again this year when my family and I establish a "Gwen Garden" in the backyard. I have a hunch the hummingbirds will be there this year. Yesterday morning, just before I awoke, I had a dream where Gwen and I were watching hummingbirds flit about our yard. I had been waiting for a message from her, and I believe that was it.

It is time for me to begin a blog. I dreamed about hummingbirds this morning. I'll explain what that means later. 
For now, I want to comment on a quote a friend sent me: ..."Death is a divorce nobody asked for: to live through it is to find a way to disengage from what you thought you couldn't stand to lose."

I agree with the first part, but do not like the word disengage. I don't ever want to totally disengage from the love of my life for 47 years. No way.