Laurie Anderson tells this story about the day she married her best friend, Lou Reed:
“It was spring in 2008 when I was walking down a road in California feeling sorry for myself and talking on my cell with Lou. “There are so many things I’ve never done that I wanted to do,” I said.
“Like what?”
“You know, I never learned German, I never studied physics, I never got married.”
“Why don’t we get married?” he asked. “I’ll meet you halfway. I’ll come to Colorado. How about tomorrow?”
“Um – don’t you think tomorrow is too soon?”
“No, I don’t.”
And so the next day, we met in Boulder, Colorado, and got married in a friend’s backyard on a Saturday, wearing our old Saturday clothes, and when I had to do a show right after the ceremony, it was OK with Lou.”
Like many couples, we each constructed ways to be – strategies, and sometimes compromises, that would enable us to be part of a pair. Sometimes we lost a bit more than we were able to give, or gave up way too much, or felt abandoned. Sometimes we got really angry. But even when I was mad, I was never bored. We learned to forgive each other. And somehow, for 21 years, we tangled our minds and hearts together.
Photo: Annie Leibowitz
The day Ken married me was like any other. We were just watching TV when I suggested it. “OK,” he said, and he put on his boots.
I dug out the yellow pages, where I found a wedding chapel in an old west Phoenix neighborhood. The preacher there reminded me of the blue-eyed old man in Field of Dreams, who regaled Kevin Costner’s, Ray Kinsella, with a story about Moonlight (Doc) Graham and all the blue hats he never got around to giving his wife, Alicia.
In our everyday clothes and without a ring, we asked a stranger to officially witness the ceremony, and we vowed to each other that we would stay together in sickness and health, till death us do part. Easy to say and to mean to say. Madly in love, we had no reason to suspect that cancer (mine) or aneurysms (his) would move in and turn things upside down more than once and make us resent our own bodies and our selves. Oblivious to any hint of dark days ahead, we filled up that ordinary November morning with a time-honored stream of extraordinary promises. We couldn’t stop smiling, and we didn’t even tell anyone. Young and wild, it was as though we had eloped to Gretna Green. And with this secret, we even went to work afterwards. Along with all the other rituals we performed every day, the act of getting married was as casual as it was important. Without fanfare or hoopla, it was ours. Completely ours. Private.
For a long time, we were answerable only to each other and did as we wished without having to worry much about other people. One hot Friday afternoon, when I was desperate to smell the sea, Ken just told me to get in the car. Off we went. No map. No GPS. No bottles of water. No phone. No specific destination other than “ocean.” That night, we were in Los Angeles inhaling the salty air. The next evening, we were in Pismo Beach, strolling along the pier. As if to put America’s vastness to the test, I asked him to keep driving. Eventually, we stopped by a lighthouse where we balanced the camera on the car, set the self-timer, and took a picture of ourselves, windswept and clinging to each other, completely unaware that a decade later, we would stand again on that very same spot on the road to Monterey, smiling for a picture that would be taken by our little girl. Then, for a decade, San Luis Obispo County – Morro Bay – would be our family’s vacation spot.
We created hundreds of lovely little rituals and routines over the years. It was easy because, as my mother still reminds me, I could set my watch by Ken. I always knew where he was, what he was doing, how much he loved me, how much I exasperated him, how proud he was of things I did in my professional life and how much he hated the bullshit I brought into our home from that same profession. He was my supporter, once telling the young me who used to get her feelings hurt easily and who cared too much about what other people thought, that she needed to grow some hard bark, because she would need it one day. Well, Ken, I need it now. I know you didn’t want me to harden; you wanted me to be tough. But it is tough some days to fully absorb the blow of your death, to anticipate your empty seat at our girl’s upcoming milestones – college, her first paycheck, perhaps her wedding – or to look up and expect you to walk in with another mug of coffee or a glass of wine for me, to inquire what I’m blogging about, to wonder aloud – with a wry and worried smile – if the woman I once was would be coming back any time soon.
No doubt – each of us wrestled with the truth that the cancer changed me, as a brush with mortality would. It wasn’t bad or good. It just was.
It was not a perfect marriage, but it was an honest marriage. We argued about little things but rarely about the big stuff. One of our first arguments was over what it was he was thinking about. We never argued about that again. It went something like this:
What’s wrong?
Nothing.
Are you sure?
Yup.
So what are you thinking about?
Nothing.
Well, it must be something. I can tell. Did I do something wrong? Is it about me? (I mean, isn’t it always about me?) Can you at least tell me what it begins with? Just the first letter? Does it begin with a “Y”?
No baby. Just private thoughts. Private thoughts, my honey”.
Private thoughts.
An unsatisfactory response for someone who has to know the inner details, the finer points, the “how are you really feeling” liner notes. But he never told me. Growing up and old by his side, I suppose I figured out that we all have private thoughts, secrets never to be told, things that stay deep within us – not bad, necessarily, just private thoughts. Most people just wouldn’t say that out loud. But Ken did.
He said it the same way he once told the cashier at a Pep Boys, after he’d paid in cash for new windshield wipers, that she couldn’t have his address. Not that he was a conspiracy theorist, he resented the notion of his name and address being placed on a list perhaps to be sold to someone who would profit from it. When he detected that she was annoyed because he was not cooperating the way a good customer should, Ken looked at her, deadpan, and with a twinkle in his eye, said quietly, “I just can’t do it. I can’t tell you where I live. The cops are after me.” And I had to walk out of the store because I was laughing so hard.
That’s how it was, except when it wasn’t, when he would insist that I had somehow lost my sense of humor. My retort would be that he had lost his ability to be funny. It would maybe turn into an argument about some other thing, a trifling thing, or nothing at all. Then it would pass, like every other storm in a teacup. And we would be certain again. Fearless.
Twelve days after Ken died, I wrote this post. I haven’t read it since, and I’m not going to read it tonight. Somewhere in the middle of the grief-stricken ramblings, I remember is a pure – and good – memory of this day twenty five years ago – January 13, 1990 – the day when Ken and I embarked on what we both knew was one hell of a love story.
So, I’ll raise a great big whiskey to you tonight, Ken, and tell you that I’d do it all again.
x
11/27/2013
A friend, one who knows, told me the other day that it will take at least a year before the sharp stone of grief will shift from the very center of my being. She told me not to make any big decisions until I make it through all the “firsts” – the first Thanksgiving without him, Sophie’s first birthday without her dad, Christmas and decorating the tree, New Year’s Eve and not-quite-legal fireworks at the end of our street, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, my birthday, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, the Fourth of July and fireworks over Morro Bay, summer vacation (will I ever be able to face Morro Bay again?), his birthday, Halloween and pumpkin carving, our Wedding Anniversary, and finally, the first anniversary of his death. His death.
My. Husband. Is. Dead.
And then she said, well, she texted me, which is a good thing because if it’s written down, I’m less likely to forget it:
. . . after a while that pain will feel like a friend. And you will be afraid to lose it because that will mean you are better and over it and not missing Ken any more.
~ just one of the mind games that Grief plays.
This grieving business has brought out the best in people who care about me, beautiful expressions of sheer humanity. It has also brought out the worst – albeit unintentional – in people who don’t know me and don’t love me but who are paid to deal with me, to deal with death for a living, to know what to say to new widows, to know not to say stupid things. (Recent days have brought me back to when I first landed in cancer country, but if you’ve visited this blog before, you know I have beaten that horse to death).
From the people at the mortuary, those with years of experience in the funeral industry, who called me with the first-time-I’d-ever-heard-it-details of Kenneth H‘s last wishes as opposed to Kenneth M’s which I knew like the back of my hand, to the automated email telling me about the online obituary and memorial page even though my husband, a very private man, had been adamant about no obituary and no fuss; to the doctor whose office assistant left a voice-mail telling me that there was nothing else she could do for me because I take four medications already; and then, my husband’s primary care doctor who wanted me to place myself in his position, to take a minute and see where he was coming from, regarding the whole debacle over who should sign the death certificate – hisposition, if you don’t mind – and then my oncologist (whose assistant didn’t return my call for help until after it was too late to call my primary care physician) who wouldn’t prescribe anything for me because, you know, the physical pain of grief has nothing to do with cancer, now does it?
I wanted to scream that if we were still in South Derry, there would be a very nice doctor on the other end of the line, telling my mother he was sorry for my trouble and that he would sort us all out with enough Diazepam to help cope with the shock, the journey back to America, the jet lag, the grief, the pain, the immeasurable sadness. The same doctor didn’t know my mother or me; he was merely the doctor on call, a kind stranger, and he had a heart of gold.
In the twelve days since my husband died – my husband died – can you hear me now? – I have cried and cursed and ranted and raged. I have been irreverent and exhausted and delirious and despondent. I have even laughed about things that should make me cry. I went out today and bought lipstick. Honest to God. I actually got up, showered, put make-up on a haggard face and drove to a store the way I have done thousands of times before, and I bought a cheery lipstick called ninety-nine red balloons. Just like the song.
Floating in the summer sky
Ninety-nine red balloons go by
I also bought a too-expensive-even-though-I-should-be-watching-my-finances-now-that-I’m-a-widow autumnal centerpiece for a Thanksgiving table that will be missing a place-setting. At some point, I noticed I had already changed my Facebook status to “widowed.” I don’t like the ring of it one bit.
Some of these trifling things are great distractions – wondering who will show me how to back-flush the swimming pool or tell me what that even means, or set the timer on the sprinklers or develop that intuition my husband seemed to have about knowing when to change the oil, or rotate tires, or change air filters, or get gas (I always forget to get gas, usually I’m on “E” with the light on. I used to joke about how running on empty is my last stab at living dangerously). It may actually not be that funny.
In the past twelve days, I have learned how to comfort people whose husbands are still alive. I held in my arms the neighbor I don’t know but who brought cheery chrysanthemums to my door. She couldn’t stop crying about the tragedy that has befallen my daughter and me, and I had to get some Kleenex for her and nod that time will ease the pain. Hell, I even consoled the discomfited doctor after she realized that my situation was sort of “urgent” and that, yes, Xanax might help.
Of course Xanax helps. Just ask any of my family members back home, who have endured incredible pain and loss in recent years. At every wake, there’s always some kindly soul passing around the Diazepam the way we used to pass around a pack of cigarettes at the pub. No. I’m not saying that Xanax, Diazepam, or Ativan numbs the grief or takes it away or helps me avoid the reality of loss. It just dulls – briefly – the excruciating physical pain of the sharp stone of grief that’s stuck somewhere in the vicinity of my heart.
Here’s the thing. I was Ken’s wife for one day shy of twenty-two years. That’s a lifetime. When we met, we both knew something special was happening. I used to think we would have fit in rather handily on the cast of Cheers. Ken wasn’t Norm or Cliff, but he was a regular. When he came in to the bar where I was a bartender, I always had a beer ready for him. I would position myself behind the bar, right across from him and nonchalantly wrap silver-ware in paper napkins, exchanging quips and innuendoes with him without making eye-contact, because when I did, I blushed.
A bit of a cliché I was a twenty-something Irish immigrant who had over-stayed her welcome in America and still had a broad Antrim accent. As such, I was the main source of entertainment for the men who had just come off the day-shift; they were easily enchanted by what they considered an Irish brogue, and the more alcohol I served up, the more they wanted to tell me all about their Irish roots. I often dismissed them as “Plastic Paddys,” which they considered a compliment. Now, this was before microbreweries were de rigueur, but I was still overwhelmed by the variety of beer in variously colored cans – yellow for Coors, the Silver Bullet Lite version, blue and white Miller Lite etc The regulars indulged me, “Hey Irish,” they’d beckon and to help me out, they ordered rounds of beer by color: “Gimme three silver bullets, one red and blue, two white and blue, and two yellow.” Ken said I always charged $11.50 a round, but none of them minded.
Ken wasn’t fictional Sam Malone, Cheers owner erstwhile recovering alcoholic and former Red Sox player with a little black book full of women’s names and numbers. Ken didn’t need a team of writers, and I never met a woman who didn’t love him; and, I wasn’t Diane Chambers (well, maybe just a little) but the chemistry between us was undeniable and made up for the lack of compatibility. For almost two years, we denied what was so obvious to everyone else. He loved that I loved music and that I could give as good as I got. I remember he was very impressed when I sneaked some of his favorite tunes on to the bar’s jukebox, a contraption that could be described as “country thunder.” When the bar-owner wasn’t paying attention, I added Neil Young’s “Ohio,” and The Rolling Stones “Sympathy for the Devil,” Bob Seger’s “Night Moves,” Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” the Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” LA Woman by The Doors and, well, anything by The Moody Blues. Admittedly, I was a bit thrown when Ken told me one of his favorite songs was “All in the Game” by Tommy Edwards. Now, it was easy for me to hijack the jukebox, because I had the flat-out awesome job of going with the other bartender to a wonderful warehouse, somewhere in Phoenix, that was loaded with row after row of 45-inch singles. It was my job – a job – every other week, to replace some of the records in the jukebox, to keep it somewhat “current.” To stay on the owner’s good side, I’d throw in some Hank Williams, and I never interfered with Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” – nobody in her right mind would get rid of “Crazy” – but every new record I added was for Ken. And he knew it. Bob Seger’s “Sunspot Baby” would start up, he’d wink at me and then complain to the owner about how the new Irish waitress was ruining the jukebox.
The banter and badinage flew like electrical sparks between us, and we made those around us laugh and wink knowingly. We were the entertainment, and everybody knew we belonged together. Even before we did. I imagine had Dr. Frasier Crane been a regular, he would have had this to say about our performance:
“I know, I know. Now you’re going to deny it. Even though it’s ludicrously obvious to everyone around you, you two will go on pretending it’s not true because you’re EMOTIONAL INFANTS. You’re in a living HELL. You love each other, and you hate each other, and you hate yourselves for loving each other. Well, my dear friends, I want no part of it. It’s time I just picked up where I left off. It’s time to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. So I’ll get out of here so you can just get on with your denial fest.”
And then one day, Ken folded. I always loved that he broke first. It was January 13, 1990, which thereafter we considered our official anniversary. I ran outside to give him his change. After all, $11.50 for one beer was a bit much, even by my standards. When he had me outside and alone, he looked right at me, told me he was crazy about me, that he always knew I had been out there, and that he had almost given up waiting for me. Quite a pick-up line, but it worked. Then he asked me to plant a kiss on his lips, and I reverted to being coy and strategic. But that didn’t last.
Within a matter of months – one month – we had moved in together. He brought nothing from his previous life, just a lot of love for me, and I dragged the collected Shakespeare, my Seamus Heaney poetry books, my collection of Life and Rolling Stone magazines, and a whole lot of crazy love for him. Crazy love – like the kind Van Morrison sings about, especially with Ray Charles:
Yes it makes me feel righteous, makes me feel whole
Makes me feel mellow down into my soul
While I never convinced him that Van Morrison was, in fact, God, I managed to turn Ken on to tennis, and we watched Wimbledon and the US Open on a tiny black and white TV-radio-alarm clock combo in a tiny apartment that amounted to a shack in the back of an old ranch house in central Phoenix. Then one day when we were watching TV, I said, “Let’s go get married.” He said, “OK,” and put his boots on.
I remembering digging out a big fat phone book – the yellow pages – and found a wedding chapel in an old neighborhood in west Phoenix. The preacher there reminded me of a lovely blue-eyed old man in Field of Dreams, earnest and patient, as he told Kevin Costner’s, Ray Kinsella about Moonlight Graham and all the blue hats he never got around to giving his wife, Alicia.
We asked a stranger to officially witness the ceremony, and we vowed to each other that we would stay together in sickness and health, till death us do part. Health is easy, but sickness is a bitch. Madly in love, we had no reason to suspect that breast cancer (mine) or aneurysms (his) would move in and turn things upside down more than once and make us resent our own bodies. Thus, we filled up that ordinary November morning with a time-honored succession of extraordinary promises. We couldn’t stop smiling. We didn’t even tell anyone. Young and wild, it was as though we had eloped to Gretna Green. I think we probably even went to work afterwards. Along with all the other rituals we performed every day, the getting married was just something we could have done any day, at any time. No fanfare. No hoopla. Completely ours. Private.
We loved being answerable to only one another, doing whatever we wanted to without having to worry too much about other people. I remember one night when I was homesick for the smell of the sea. I just wanted to stare out at the ocean which seemed another world away from the desert southwest. It was a Friday afternoon, and we had nothing else to do. Still years before Sophie was born, we got in the car and started driving. No map. No GPS. No specific destination. Just ocean. That night, we were in Los Angeles, and I was inhaling the sea air. The next evening, we were in Pismo Beach, strolling along the pier. As if to put America’s vastness to the test, I asked him to keep driving. Eventually, we stopped by a lighthouse where we balanced the camera on the car, set the self-timer, and took a picture of ourselves, windswept and clinging to each other, completely unaware that a decade later, we would stand again on that very same spot on the road to Monterey, smiling for a picture that would be taken by our little girl. Then, for a decade, San Luis Obispo County – Morro Bay – became our family’s vacation spot.
We created hundreds of lovely little rituals and routines over the years. My mother always said I could set my watch by Ken. True. I always knew where he was, what he was doing, how much he loved me, how proud he was of things I had done professionally. He was my greatest cheerleader and the person who once told the young me who used to get her feelings hurt easily and who cared too much about what other people thought, that she needed to grow some hard bark, because she would need it. Well, Ken, I need it now. I know you didn’t want me to harden; you wanted me to be tough. But, it is just so hard to be tough enough to fully absorb the blow of your death, to look up and expect you to walk in with another cup of coffee for me and ask what I’m blogging about and then wonder aloud – with a wry smile – if the woman I once was would be coming back any time soon. Each of us wrestled with the truth that cancer changed me, as a brush with mortality would. It wasn’t bad or good. It just was.
It was not a perfect marriage, but it was an honest marriage. We argued about little things but never about the big stuff. One of our first arguments was over what it was he was thinking about. We never argued about that again. It went something like this:
What’s wrong?
Nothing.
Are you sure?
Yup.
So what are you thinking about?
Nothing.
Well, it must be something. I can tell. Are you mad at me? Is it about me? (I mean, isn’t it always about me?) Well, can you at least tell me what it begins with?
No baby. Just private thoughts. Private thoughts, my honey.
Private thoughts. Well, you can imagine how well that went over with someone who has to know the inner details, the finer points, the “how are you really feeling” details about everything. But he never told me. And the strangest thing happened. I realized over the years that we all have private thoughts, secrets never to be told, things that stay deep within us – not bad, necessarily, just private thoughts. Most people just wouldn’t say that out loud. But Ken did.
Looking back on it, he said it the same way he once told the cashier at a Pep Boys, after he’d paid in cash for new windshield wipers, that she couldn’t have his address. Not that he was a conspiracy theorist; he just hated his name and address being placed on some list only for it to be sold to someone who would profit from it. Annoyed because he was just not cooperating the way most customers did, the young cashier’s jaw dropped when Ken looked at her, deadpan, and with a twinkle in his eye, said quietly, “I just can’t do it. I can’t tell you where I live. The cops are after me.” And I had to walk out of the store because I was laughing so hard.
Then I learned to cook. It was before Food TV Network, and I relied almost entirely on an eclectic group of chefs on PBS so there was lots of Cajun cooking going on in the early years. Our first Thanksgiving Dinner together was a foreign affair as far as I was concerned. Never mind the Food TV Network, this was before the Internet and Google, so I had to go out and buy a holiday cookbook from Williams and Sonoma to learn exactly what went into a Thanksgiving Dinner and what this quintessential American tradition was all about. I’m sure like most Northern Irish folk, I would have the natural tendency to ask, with just a touch of martyrdom “Sure what would we have to be thankful for?” And then there would be some hand-wringing and worst-case scenarios about what happened to your man whose wife took up with somebody else, or the state of unemployment or Maggie Thatcher and terrorists, or The Troubles in general, and the brain-drain with all our young people like me leaving for America, Australia, New Zealand – following the sun.
A quick study, I was soon fixing turkey and all the trimmings like a pro. I even made pumpkin pie and candied yams (nothing from a can), and amber colored side-dishes and butternut squash soup, fare that would never have shown up at a fork supper or tea after a Harvest Home service at a country church in Northern Ireland. As if there wasn’t enough food to feed a small country, I was compelled to assert my Irish-ness with Brussel sprouts which Ken hated and roast potatoes and, for good measure, a Pavlova or a sherry trifle for desert – I could only make sense of Thanksgiving Dinner if I considered it an early Christmas Dinner. As if I’m not confused enough about my cultural identity. And to make it truly my Thanksgiving, we would listen to the entire Last Waltz soundtrack.
For tomorrow, I have ordered a turkey breast dinner. Just the breast, because that means there will be nothing to carve and no carcass for soup. Ken always carved the turkey, and he loved my turkey-noodle soup. Oh, how could I possibly brine and roast a turkey without Ken here to do the basting and the carving and telling me not to put apples or anything sweet in the stuffing? I always put apples in the stuffing. Why not? And when he wasn’t looking, I basted the turkey with maple syrup. I always add marmalade to the yams too and slices of clementines or even the syrup from cans of mandarin oranges. If it’s not sweet, what’s the point?
My parents are here, and already I am dreading the day they tell me it’s time for them to go back home to Castledawson and for me to resume living again. I hope they will stay for Christmas. My lovely irreverent friend in Tempe who hails from Ballynahinch and who knows about grief (as she will tell you herself, she is hands-down the winner in “The Sad Contest”) is going to bring a Pavlova and maybe even some currant squares and custard. And my mother will put the kettle on for us and make tea with Barry’s teabags and bring out a plate of Hobnob biscuits. I will complain if she puts too much milk in it, because I like a good County Derry cup of tea the way my Granda did, so strong “you could dance on it.’ Our meal tomorrow might feel a bit like a Northern Ireland Christmas dinner from days gone by. I just hope I remember to eat.
We have lots of food in the fridge – baskets of sympathy from near and far from heartsome people who ache for us. I don’t know what to say to them, other than thank you. And, my gratitude is heart-felt and genuine. But if I’m honest, I hate that it is these strange new gestures I am thankful for this year. It would be so much easier to give thanks that the turkey’s not dry.
Oh, Ken. Why did you have to die? There was something I wanted to tell you. It was important.
It doesn’t matter. By now, I have to believe you have run into Lou Reed, that the two of you have scored some really good weed from J.J. Cale, and you are feeling no pain. And maybe Seamus Heaney will raise a glass to you.
The last time I hoped Arizona Governor Jan Brewer would do the right thing was in the summer of 2010. I was sitting in my Principal’s office, only half-enjoying a visit from a former student – each of us was tense, awaiting announcement regarding SB1070. Surely our state’s Governor would do the humane and right thing? Surely she would refuse to sign an insidious and un-American piece of legislation that would criminalize undocumented immigrants and would require state and city police officers to check the immigration status of a detained, stopped or arrested individual, if they reasonably suspect he or she could be an undocumented immigrant. Surely a Governor of these United States in 21st Century America would veto any legislation that had the potential to institutionalize racial profiling?
She didn’t. Perhaps she still doesn’t get the difference between the right to do a thing and doing the right thing, because in a heart-stopping instant, Governor Brewer showed us that the lessons of history apparently do not apply to her. Swiftly and proudly, she signed an inhumane bill into law, and the world finally paid attention to an Arizona that, measure by measure, would continue to make the American life unlivable for immigrants.
What I found most harrowing then, with my personal baggage as an immigrant from Northern Ireland living in Arizona, was the prospect of immigrants being required to have their immigration papers on their person at all times. Shades of my home country in the 1980s, during The Troubles, when it was not uncommon for me to hand over my driver’s license for inspection by a member of the British Army or an RUC officer at random road closures and checkpoints.
I well recall a snowy afternoon at the top of the Ligoniel Road in Belfast. A student teacher, not yet twenty-one and heading home for Christmas, I was moving out of the Halls of Residence at Stranmillis College. My little silver Datsun weighed down with library books and lecture notes, clothes and toiletries, boxes of vinyl records and cassette tapes, a collection of concert posters wrapped in rubber bands, my prized hi-fi, and a violin, I somehow looked less like a university student and more, perhaps, like an IRA terrorist. Even though I had my license and could answer politely and truthfully, the young soldiers’ questions about where I had been and where I was going, still I had to step aside in the slush and the snow, watching and waiting as they rifled through the contents of my car, looking under the seats and in the trunk, emptying out my make-up bag, disturbing the folders of college papers. All in the name of security I know, but to this day, I question the randomness of it.
I remember raging inside – seething – that I was being subjected to such treatment in my own country. My. Own. Country. I said nothing. Of course, I said nothing, and I was soon sent on my way, but I never forgot it or the way it made me wonder about what it was about me on that particular day, that would cause British soldiers with guns to interrogate me and have me step out of my vehicle and search its contents? Did I fit some profile? Did I look like a terrorist? What was the ‘reasonable suspicion?” Why me?
Fast forward to 2014, and we find ourselves waiting again to see if the Governor of a beleaguered Arizona will do the right thing. SB 1062 has passed both chambers of the Arizona legislature, and only Governor Jan Brewer can stop this discriminatory rule from going into effect.
By a 33-27 vote, the Arizona legislature passed this bill that would grant businesses the right to refuse service to anyone, as long as servicing those individuals would be a substantial burden to their religious freedom. You’ll pardon me, I’m sure, for wondering about the homophobes who might be able to make a religious claim that refusing service is, you know, consistent with their religious beliefs.
Under the bill introduced by Republican State Senator Steve Yarborough, individuals and businesses would be granted the legal right to refuse services to individuals or groups if they claimed that doing so would “substantially burden” their freedom of religion. In other words, business owners acting on sincerely held religious beliefs, can refuse services – discriminate against – groups that they perceive act in ways contrary to their religious beliefs. If signed into law, the bill would essentially legitimize discrimination against the LGBT community. Come to think of it, there is the potential for discrimination against other protected groups including non-married women, minorities, gays, people of other religions, or anyone they refuse to serve. You get the picture, and it is a distressing picture, given that we are, after all, in America in the 21st century. Well, we’re in Arizona, which often seems very far from the noble, inclusive idea of America itself.
I’m a straight woman, a newly single parent, an immigrant, a widow, a cancer patient. Often, I am the one in the room that represents everybody’s worse nightmare – my dead husband and my breast cancer reminding folks of what they fear the most –disease, loneliness, their own mortality. So why do I care so much about SB 1062? Because it is yet another bill with immeasurable potential to hurt good people, to deeply wound families who want nothing more than to get up every day knowing they are valued in their homes and schools, by their churches, and by their elected officials; knowing they are not “less than.” A bill like SB1062 terrifies me because it signifies a hardening of the heart in Arizona, an indelible mark we find in deeply wounded faraway places. Places like my Belfast. Like Sarajevo. Like Johannesburg. Like Gaza.
This evening, I wonder what I can say to my hairdresser? Topher is a gay man, not yet thirty years old, a restless soul who came to Arizona – like me – in pursuit of sunny days. By all accounts, he is doing well. He has been promoted four times in one year, he has a full clientele, and he has even begun contemplating owing his own salon. In Arizona. My daughter adores him. In the weeks following her dad’s death, Topher brought a smile to her face by cutting her bangs and straightening her hair, knowing how important such things can be when you’re sixteen and insecure about your looks.
As more states legalized gay marriage, he and his partner, Ian, changed wedding plans and finally settled on Hawaii, for an intimate ceremony in front of close family. One day, he hopes to raise children with the man he loves, and until today, he envisioned doing so in Arizona. But at what cost?
As he styled my daughter’s hair this evening, I asked him about SB 1062. He told me of his shock, that at the beginning of the year, he had begun to believe that the times really were a-changin’, that we were genuinely celebrating each other’s differences, and slow as it was, change was being embraced.
As a young boy in Indiana, he had been bullied, beat up, and ridiculed in small schools in small towns. At about 10 years old, he knew he was different, he wasn’t sure how. By 13, he knew he was gay and soon the snide comments and the name-calling taught him that who he was, was somehow not okay in our world. In school, the place where he should have been safest, he was scared all the time. His teachers never intervened to halt the bullying. Not once. He was kicked out of his church youth group. Soon, he was in a position of vulnerability, an easy target for an older man who would abuse him.
One night, when he was about 15 years old, two big men came to the basement where he slept and took him away to a behavior modification program. For twenty-two months, he was assigned to a “family” of 25 boys. Constantly under surveillance, his stay there began with nothing. Even his shoelaces were taken away. He had to earn salt and pepper and the right to make a phone call, and occasionally a candy bar; he had to request permission to speak, to go to the bathroom. As a gay boy, he was designated to “the black cloud,” a kind of solitary confinement where essentially, he didn’t exist. He wasn’t taught how to operate in the real world and so even after being released to his family home, he would still call out “Crossing” when he crossed the line from hallway to bathroom.
Four times, Topher attempted suicide. Four times. He failed. Why? He tells me that, of course, he didn’t know what he was doing, but more importantly, while he doesn’t subscribe to institutionalized religion, he believes there’s something to be said about the undaunted human spirit, and that his spirit just wasn’t ready to leave. He forgives the Mormons who coaxed him to “pray the gay away.” He forgives the teachers who turned a blind eye to his tormentors. He says all of it has made him a stronger, better man, one who can champion for other children today, children who deserve a place at the table. Barely a month after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, it pains me to know we are having these discussions in Arizona. It’s wrong. On so many levels.
When I look at this young man, his easy smile tempered by new doubt, I could almost weep for those who don’t know him, who will designate him as less than acceptable, who would put him in a box where he is neither seen nor heard. Discriminated against. Discarded.
Really. I traded Northern Ireland for a place where a young and joyful man – interested only in what we all want for those we love and who love us – might be turned away?
Dear Governor Brewer, you have five days. Do the right thing. Veto SB1062.
Please share this message if you stand opposed to the dangerous “license to discriminate” SB1062, which would allow businesses to deny services to LGBT Arizonans
We cannot be silent or passively enable the passage of the Arizona Legislature’s so-called “Free Exercise of Religion” (House Bill 2154 & Senate Bill 1062) bill which was passed this past week. The legislation apparently is ready for Governor Janet Brewer’s signature as soon as this coming Monday.
From the Arizona Republic, “We need to veto the dangerous anti-LGBT “license to discriminate” legislation, saying SB1062 is a “do-it-yourself black eye” that would severely harm economic growth and make it harder for businesses to recruit and retain top talent to our state. SB1062 is bad for business and bad for Arizonans.
Many groups and organizations such as the Greater Phoenix Black Chamber of Commerce also is urging Gov. Brewer to veto anti-gay legislation.
Join the Anti-Defamation League, the Human Rights Campaign and the Greater Phoenix Economic Council to immediately contact Governor Brewer’s office asking her to veto HB 2154 and SB 1062. E-mail the Governor’s top staff: Scott Smith at ssmith@az.gov and Lorna Romero at lromero@az.gov to veto HB 2154 and SB 1062.
SB 1062 is bad for business and bad for Arizona. Please take action
Cleaning the leaves from the pool is now part of my Saturday morning routine. An exercise in futility, because as soon as I think I’m finished, a warm breeze rustles through the trees and Mexican honeysuckle petals and leaves cascade into the water like confetti. I “shock” the pool too, with a powder of chemicals, and for good measure, I add a capful of something blue. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m sure the pool isn’t shocked at all.
Sometimes I wish my husband had left behind a list of all the household chores he did, so I would know all the things that still need to be done after I do what used to be my share. I never bothered to take stock of his share which included pool maintenance and going to the grocery store to pick up those items I invariably forgot. He always took a list, from which he never strayed. I, on the other hand, just took my phone, knowing I would call and ask him to peek in the fridge and let me know if we needed more eggs or milk or tomatoes. Naturally, he’d always ask why I hadn’t brought a list with me, and I would remind him, “Because I have you!”
I know I need to back-flush the pool pump (whatever that means). I remember him doing so with some regularity, but I never took the time to find out why or how or when. I know I need to change the air-filters but I don’t know how often or where to buy them. Knowing my luck, it will necessitate an outing to Home Depot or the mom and pop hardware store up the street, places I avoid like the plague.
To familiar faces at the grocery store or the gas station, I look the same as I always did. They just don’t know that the rings sparkling on the fourth finger of my left hand no longer mean that I’m married. Nor do they signify that I’m a widow. Ostensibly, nothing’s changed. If you were to ask the people who know me as the woman who drops her daughter off at school every morning, everything is as it has always been. I leave the trashcan and the recycling bin out on a Monday night, so the man who drives the City of Phoenix garbage truck would have no reason to believe anything has changed in my house. I wonder if the mailman knows – surely he must – but still he delivers letters addressed to both my dead husband and me.
I have to hand it to the Victorians with their explicit rules and regulations for mourning so that everyone knew, based on outward appearances, the extent of one’s grief over the loss of a loved one. Were I one of the ladies of Downton Abbey, the Dowager Countess might give me permission to go “into half mourning next month and back to colours by September.” Except doing so would confuse even more all those people who already struggle over what to say to me.
At the grocery store last Sunday, I managed to annoy the woman behind me in the checkout lane. There I was, in all my glory, in the 15 items-only lane with an overflowing grocery cart. I was oblivious to my mistake, perhaps because I had been so distracted by the realization that I would no longer need to buy men’s deodorant or razor blades or V8 vegetable juice. Of the three of us, only Ken had liked V8.
Unloading the more than fifteen items from my grocery cart, I was interrupted by a loud sigh from the inconvenienced woman behind me. “You do realize, don’t you, that this is the fifteen items only lane?” Well, no, actually. Had I realized the error of my ways, I would have been in a different lane. I apologized profusely for delaying her check-out, even as my mind raced with thoughts of all the things they don’t tell you about becoming a widow.
They don’t tell you how guilty you’ll feel when you tell the bank to go ahead and erase his name from the checking account or when you strike certain items of the grocery list because only he needed them. I wanted to scream at her that my husband was dead, that he was much better at doing the grocery shopping because he didn’t stray from the list like I do, that if he had been with me, we would have been in the appropriate check-out lane, that she was lucky to have her husband with her and less than 15 items in her grocery cart. I could have been petty and asked her if the six-pack of beer counted as one item or six, but I didn’t. They were in the right lane. I was not. But had we been going about our business in the Victorian era, with me in “full mourning attire,” I bet she would have given me a break. She would have somehow known that my heart was breaking over the fact that I had almost put the V8 juice in the cart but then realized I wouldn’t be needing it. Ever again.
There is no manual for this. There is no way of predicting when the grief will take your breath away and send you scurrying behind dark glasses or to the bathroom at work so nobody sees you crying. There are no rules about when or if you should stop wearing your wedding ring. My husband and I didn’t have a wedding with the exchanging of rings. We just got up one November morning in 1991 and decided to get married. We didn’t even tell anyone. It was just something we wanted to do for us. On a Christmas morning, twelve years later, my husband gave me wedding and engagement rings that I have worn every day since. I wear only a little jewelry, so I cannot imagine looking down at my left hand and not seeing those rings sparkle. Since there don’t appear to be any rules – although I’m sure someone has an opinion on this – I think I’ll just keep wearing them.
The ring question, however, is the least of my worries. I’m more concerned about what happens next. Obviously, there will be no resumption of normal activity because whatever normal was, it isn’t that anymore. There was the way I was before my husband died. I was on solid ground. One day stretched into the next with predictable routines and rituals that appeal to a creature of habit like me. Now there is an uncertainty, a kind of dread, about tomorrow and the next day.
Until I had to do them myself, I underestimated the number of mundane yet essential tasks my husband performed just to keep the house functioning. For someone with a lousy memory, he still remembered to take the garbage cans out; to open the gate for the lads who take care of the yard and to lock it again; to water the flowers that bloom madly in mild winters; and, when to shock the damn pool. He knew when to change the air-filters and the oil and when to renew the registration of our vehicles. He always fed the hummingbirds and checked the mail and did the laundry, and reminded himself to do so on post-it notes that accumulated in the basket where he kept his keys. He picked our daughter up from school every single day, and he was obsessive about being on time. He never wanted her to come out of school and not see him waiting for her.
Unlike me, he was punctual and practical and always put things back where they belong. He had a good sense of direction and, not to belabor the point, but he was always on time. My mother always said you could set your watch by him. Before you think he was a saint, he wasn’t. There were things he didn’t do and wouldn’t do and things he wasn’t good at, but that’s where I came in. Between us and for us, we made it all work. I can’t make it work the way it used to, because “it” is finished. A new and different stage of life – without him here – has begun. I have no idea where it will take me. If he were here, he would tell me not to worry, that I will do what’s best for me personally and professionally. He loved me and believed in me and even when I made mistakes – and I have made many – he remained in my corner. He had a way of turning my tribulations upside down to expose the humor in them, and he was quick to point out when I was making a shit-storm out of nothing. If he can see me now, he might be laughing at some of my recent exploits.
There was the night last week when my daughter wanted a tuna sandwich. Simple, right? It would have been except the can opener broke. Naturally, I immediately told her to Google “what-to-do-when-the-can-opener-breaks,” which led her to ask if by any chance we had a Swiss army knife. No. We don’t. Then she found a Youtube video on how to open a can without a can opener and, somehow, between us, with an ice-pick and a bread knife, we opened that can and scraped out every morsel of tuna. The good news is that I had the wherewithal to add “can opener” to the grocery list and for good measure threw in a new corkscrew as well.
Then, there was the evening when I decided to water the plants in the back yard before having dinner on the patio with my daughter. I had bought a new five pattern spray nozzle for the garden hose and was doing a fabulous job soaking and spraying and misting, until I needed to turn it off. Simple. Except the nozzle would not cooperate. When I tried to turn the faucet off, the hose began to leak, sending water shooting into the sky, soaking me and everything else on the patio. My daughter came out to save me from myself, and tried to help, only to get soaked and somehow to make the water come out even more furiously. In the middle of this mini-fiasco, each of us drenched, she asked – and I am not making this up – if we should call an electrician. An electrician?? I would love to have been on the other end of that phone-call. Now, I realize this is one of those stories that loses a great deal in the telling, but suffice to say, we eventually turned off the water and had dinner, without the intervention of a plumber – or an electrician.
It’s not all slapstick. In exchange for pasta and wine, my friend Rhonda came over and taught me how to use an electric drill. I’m always hanging things on the wall and destroying the plaster, but hanging things on the external brick walls requires more than a hammer and nail; it requires a drill and a masonry bit (which I had referred to as a masonry bite giving everyone in the hardware store a good laugh). My first project was to hang funky junky letters that spell p-a-t-i-o – on the patio. I know. I didn’t need them – I know where the patio is – but I like them. And that would be my stock answer to the question Ken always asked about why I keep bringing junk home.
In all, I am just very busy. I’m preoccupied too, with thoughts of how I can mother my daughter in ways that make her feel as though has more than one parent. How can I be more dad-like when she misses fatherly advice not to mention his unique brand of humor. I can’t. I can only re-tell all the stories that prove how much he loved her and hope that something therein will lift her up.
If it’s hard for me to know what to say to my daughter, I can only imagine how tough it is for other people. They don’t know what to say, worried that whatever it is will be the wrong thing. I never knew about Being. A. Widow. until it happened to me. I don’t even know what to say to myself about it. It is the subject some people do not bring up; the massive elephant in the room. I want to tell them that saying the wrong thing is better than saying nothing at all, that ignoring the chapter of my life that just ended makes me feel a bit like the way I felt when the bank removed his name from the checking account. I just wish they would say his name every once in a while and ask me if I miss him. Do you miss Ken? What do you miss most? How long has it been now? It would be easy and less sad for me if I could just talk about him without making people feel awkward. Asking me about him would allow me to tell a story about him, something funny perhaps, like the time he drove to work with no pants on, because the dryer was broken and all his jeans were still in the washer. It was before 5AM on a hot Phoenix morning, still dark outside, so he drove down the freeway with his Levis hanging out the car window to dry. Yes he did. Thinking about it makes me laugh, and laughter is great medicine; it’s a gift.
One of the first gifts my husband ever gave me was a silver pocket compass. Having noted very early in our relationship my stellar capacity for getting lost – and notwithstanding the fact that I was then a novice driving on the American side of the road – my man intervened as he knew best. I hadn’t the heart to tell him that I was never one for “orienteering” or map-reading; I was more of a free-spirited “let’s-just-see-where-the-road-takes-us” kind of gal, a far cry from those students back home who earned Duke of Edinburgh Awards. WIth that kind of attitude, I got lost all the time. Devil-may-care on the open road frequently gave way to panic. I would fret over whether to turn left or right, then commit to turning right only to look over my shoulder and realize I should have turned left. And then I would call to report that I was lost. Again. Invariably, he would ask me if the sun was behind me or in front of me, somehow believing that if he helped me establish North, I would be just fine. Naturally, that never worked, and he always had to stay on the phone with me until I found a recognizable landmark. So for our first Christmas together, he gave me the lovely compass which is still in the blue velvet lined box it came in. I always thought it was too much like a piece of jewelry to be practical and, anyway, I didn’t really need it to help me find my way home. I relied on himfor that.
With factory-installed GPS navigation systems de rigeur and knowing there is most certainly “an App for that,” I am much better at finding my way around the greater Phoenix metropolitan area these days. It should be noted that if I have been somewhere at least eight times, I can get there without assistance. But until such times, I must count on either Google maps,Siri, my daughter reading directions from the phone that is smarter than us or those friends and colleagues who consistently “bring me in” by phone from my destination, where they are already waiting.
My daughter had never seen the compass. It was safe in a box with old birthday cards and Valentines from my husband. For her 16th birthday, I wondered what I could possibly give her to mark the occasion. What do you give to a teenager whose father died just three weeks earlier? For her birthday, there was not one thing I could go out and buy that would make her day any brighter or better. I don’t know why I thought of the compass, but it seemed perfect. In a rush – last minute, as usual – I had a local jeweler engrave the front of its case with her beautiful name, Sophie, and on the back, a perfect sentiment from W. H. Auden:
“He was my North, my South, my East and West
My working week and my Sunday rest.”
He was my daddy for 5,809 days.
I well recall a snowy afternoon at the top of the Ligoniel Road in 
