A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.”
― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs
Best Friends: Gloria & Edgar
First there was Molly, a retired racer who loved me. We had rescued her in the Christmas of 2008, on the heels of a spectacular crisis in my professional life, and she lifted my heart. Molly adored me, and the feeling was mutual. Elegant and affectionate, she knew how to be retired. But the separation anxiety was too much for her, and because I was unable to spend every minute of the day with her, I had to surrender her to the Greyhound Adoption Agency. Heartbroken, I promised myself – and my husband – that we would just stick to cats.
Then one early October morning a few years later, Edgar came into my life, the moment we met indelible in my memory. My daughter and I had just left the gym, and there he was, standing in the center lane of a street already busy with the rush of Monday morning traffic. Sophie spotted him first, alerting me to that fact by screaming at me to stop the car. She jumped out, and flailing wildly at oncoming traffic, she successfully brought it to a momentary standstill that allowed her to scoop up the tiny Chihuahua that trembled in the widening beam of the headlights before him, name him Edgar, and announce that he would be moving in with us.
In spite of having just completed several miles on a treadmill, I had not yet had my coffee. I was neither happy nor ready for a Monday or the prospect of a Chihuahua. Rather than argue or rise to the bait, I told myself we would post a few “Found Dog” signs around the neighborhood, and by the end of the day “Edgar” would be back where he belonged, answering to whatever name someone else had given him.
Sophie almost convinced me to let her stay home from school that day, so she could be with “her” new dog. He was shaking and scared, submissive and sweet, and Sophie was vexed that she could see his little ribs so plainly. Without saying it, I knew she knew that based on our experience with the beautiful Molly, a new dog was probably not in the cards. Her dad and I had established an unspoken rule – we were always good at that. One cat. No more dogs. No way.
But there were tell-tale signs that the unlikely Chihuahua was making his way into my husband’s heart. “Surely someone is missing this little guy terribly,” he’d ask. Repeatedly. Rhetorically. He bought dog food. He drove around the neighborhood, looking for “Lost Dog” signs, hoping to make some family’s day by returning their dog. Daily, he checked the newspaper and Craigslist to see if someone in Phoenix had lost a cute little Chihuahua. He took him to the Humane Society where he was informed that they didn’t take lost dogs. Still, they checked for a microchip. There wasn’t one. They estimated his age at about five years old, determined that “Edgar” hadn’t been neutered or cared for. He had bad breath and worse teeth. Malnourished and dirty, he weighed three pounds. Barely.
Within three weeks, it was clear that nobody was looking for this little dog, who in spite of having four perfectly good legs, expected to be carried everywhere. He was like a bag of sugar, so dutifully, we all obliged. He gained weight. He stopped trembling. He slept in our daughter’s arms every night. He came running when we called “Edgar,” and soon we were all in love with him, because, as poet Mary Oliver reminds us,
. . of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.
A month later, my daughter and I were far away in Northern Ireland, leaving Edgar and the cat at home with my husband. It was dusk when we were with my parents and the blacksmith’s son in The Forge in South Derry, in Seamus Heaney country. We were there because I had given up waiting for a friend to come through with tickets for the free concert Van Morrison was giving at the Waterfront Hall after being granted the Freedom of the City of Belfast. With Van out of my mind and Barney Devlin’s son regaling us with the story behind the the midnight anvil – the one with the sweeter sound – I was in my element and couldn’t wait to tell Ken about it, knowing only he knew my affection for all things Heaney. When I called him, there was no answer. The unexpected sound of my own voice as my phone-calls continued to go straight to voice mail, transported me into a panic. A certain and unshakeable foreboding had me in a vice. It was not to be ignored.
Next, a flurry of texts between my best friend and me, in different time zones, on different continents. I was on the phone with her when she arrived at my house and looked through the bay window to see Edgar looking back at her, still and silent, knowing what she would find after she found the keys under the doormat and called my husband’s name three times over before finding his lifeless body, hoping he was just resting but knowing – as Edgar did – that he was dead.
I don’t know and will never know his final thoughts, but I must believe that when he died in our Phoenix home, my Ken’s last interaction on this earth was tender, with three pounds of unconditional love curled up like a comma on his chest.
Late in the first summer following Ken’s death, Sophie told me that her day begins not with sorrow over the loss of her beloved daddy but with Edgar licking her face and making her smile. He is ready – always – to help her get ready to walk out into the world. “What about Edgar?” she pondered over pancakes one morning. “What if he spends every day just waiting by the door for me to come home? Doesn’t he need a friend to keep him company?”
Yes. He does. Don’t we all?
So I did a little research. I found out that dogs like Edgar are indeed in need of friends. According to the Arizona Humane Society, dogs like him have replaced pit bulls as the most abandoned breed. From January to March of this year, 821 Chihuahuas have been surrendered or brought into the shelter for a variety of reasons. In 2013, the Arizona Humane Society and the Maricopa County Animal Care and Control, the two largest shelters in Phoenix, received 10,535 Chihuahuas and euthanized 2,100.
Knowing this, how could I not find a friend for Edgar? Off I went to the Arizona Small Dog Rescue after work one day, having spent my lunch hour perusing picture after picture of tiny dogs who needed a home, one in particular – a little black and tan Miniature Pinscher Chihuahua mix, just two years old. The volunteer told me she had come from a “hoarding situation,” that she had been caged for most of her two years, that she was “as sweet as can be, quiet, mild mannered and gets along with all dogs and people who are nice to her.”
And with that, I knew she would be coming home with me, that Edgar would have a new companion, that we would name her “Gloria” – with a nod to the most requested encore at a Van Morrison concert and, of course, Ms. Steinem – and that my 16-year old daughter’s tender heart would expand once more.
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.
Crawling across the bottom of the TV screen are the words “Robin Williams Dead at 63,” and as celebrity doctors weigh in on reports that the actor died at his home in Northern California today, apparently due to suicide by asphyxiation, I am drawn back to my first encounter with Robin Williams on the TV in our living room in Antrim. As they speculate about his battle with severe depression, I am a teenager in Northern Ireland once more, and he is an alien from outer space on the Mork and Mindy show.
Brilliantly, he was Mork from Ork. Pam Dawber, as Mindy, was the perfect foil. Easy to like, she shared my taste in music with the cover of Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty” album hanging on her apartment wall. Naturally, when I went to college in Belfast, living away from home for the first time, the “Running on Empty” cover hung on my wall too. But there was no one like Mork in Belfast. He was unlike anyone we had ever seen in rainy, slow 1970s Northern Ireland. With his rainbow suspenders and the catchphrase that caught on with all of us, “Nanu Nanu,” Mork was enchanting, a lovable clown with an inexhaustible range of funny voices and a child-like exuberance for all he was learning about being human.
Somehow, he was accessible to everyone. And even though he was out of this world, Mork learned about being in it, about being human, about falling in love, eventually reporting back to his invisible mentor, Orson:
Love doesn’t make sense. That’s why Earthlings think it’s so wonderful.
We loved Mork, and we loved Robin Williams being Mork. Like Mork, the actor was constantly evolving and surprising all of us, perhaps even himself, as he improvised through his various roles. So quick and agile in body and mind, he disappeared into roles such as that of the teacher we would all want for our own children in Dead Poet’s Society; the broke dad masquerading as a no-nonsense housekeeper and nanny for his own children in Mrs Doubtfire; Adrian Cronauer, the DJ who spoke truth to power in Good Morning, Vietnam; the heartbreakingly vulnerable homeless, Parry, in The Fisher King;and, the widowed psychologist, Sean McGuire, in Good Will Hunting, who would go to the ends of the earth for the love of his life. This last was my husband’s favorite Robin Williams role – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences liked it too, and awarded Williams with an Oscar.
At the end of the movie, when Will Hunting leaves that note on his best friend’s front door, Ken always said he could have written the same for me, as a farewell to the life he left on January 13, 1990, to begin a new one with me, his girl.
“I’m crazy about you,” he told me that Saturday afternoon in a dive bar doorway. “I’ve been waiting for you my whole life, and I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show up.”
Within just weeks, we had embarked on a new life together. Unexpected and off-script, yet meant to be.
Like Sean McGuire, my Ken had no regrets about all he had left behind. He understood exactly why Sean would give up his tickets to see the Boston Red Sox play in Game 6 of the World Series. Sean had to go “see about a girl.” And even though he was a made-up character in a movie, there was something about the way Robin Williams delivered these lines that made me believe he was still the same guy who shone through in Mork, the guy who knew what it meant to love:
That’s why I’m not talkin’ right now about some girl I saw at a bar twenty years ago and how I always regretted not going over and talking to her. I don’t regret the 18 years I was married to Nancy. I don’t regret the six years I had to give up counseling when she got sick. And I don’t regret the last years when she got really sick. And I sure as hell don’t regret missin’ the damn game. That’s regret.
Learning tonight that he suffered from depression saddens me. Yes, Robin Williams is is a stranger to me. A celebrity. Of course I don’t know him, but I know about depression and despair, addiction and self-medicating, denial and co-dependence and all the other words from the Big Book. I would come to find out that the man who had waited for me for so long also struggled with all of these. Until the end, it turns out. For most of those years, I had no idea, because he hid it so well. Masterfully and with shame. No one would ever have known, on the outside looking in, because he was attentive to those around him. He was funny – so funny – and warm. He listened more than he talked so that he knew so much more about others than they did about him. He kept those demons at bay until it exhausted him. I know that now. Side-stepping the disease, each of us engaged in self-preservation or a kind of selfishness, we were no match for it. And now that he is gone I find myself remembering all that was good – all the laughter and love wrapped up in random road-trips and surprise bouquets and trips to Dairy Queen every Friday with our daughter. So much good, that I have to believe Gabriel García Márquez was right:
..the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past
Ah, endurance. Often we endure quietly and alone and wonder what we could have done differently or better – when it is too late. We don’t like to talk about depression very much. It’s not quite “as acceptable” as some physical illnesses, is it? It isn’t pink with ribbons and races. It is dark, and it lurks beneath the surface, nipping at the heels every day. Unlike other diseases, it is non-communicable and highly treatable, but there are only certain diseases, disorders, addictions, and ailments that can be the subject of “polite” conversation.
Depression can be unrelenting. It can be lonely, and loneliness – as Mork reported back to Orson – all those years ago, is a disease:
. . . loneliness is a disease of the spirit. People who have it think that no one cares about them.
Unlike the “common cold,” its symptoms unapologetically made public with persistent sniffles, sneezes, loudly blown noses, and a tell-tale trail of balled-up Kleenex in its wake, the “common” depression – and it is more common than we think – is more of a secret never to be told. So those afflicted often find ways to conceal it. Perhaps it is somehow, heartbreakingly, easier to camouflage depression with the routines and rituals by which other people define us. Perhaps. So, for a while, we had Robin Williams. He made us laugh and cry and feel better about our lot in life. I will remember him the way his wife has requested, grateful for the “countless moments of joy and laughter” that will sparkle forever.
Brilliantly, he was Mork from Ork. Pam Dawber, as Mindy, was the perfect foil. Easy to like, she shared my taste in music with the cover of Jackson Browne’s “
