Widowish: A Memoir(23)

I tried to picture him in the mail room of Atlantic. I saw him in his hospital gown.

I tried to remember us breaking the glass at our wedding. I saw the tube taped down around his mouth.

I tried to remember him laughing, elated, telling me, “She’s got so much hair!” as Sophie was being born, but I only heard the machines that were keeping him alive.

If I couldn’t have Joel with me, physically, I at least wanted my memories. They didn’t exist. They couldn’t. I tried to breathe, but my lungs could find no air. So I tried not to move, for fear I myself would die, too. I tried to make sense of things. I couldn’t. It wasn’t just that my heart was broken, my soul was shattered. All of the bones had left my body. There was nothing holding me up.

Somewhere along the line, Joel and I had decided we wanted to be cremated when we died. But a few months earlier, out of the blue when we were both getting dressed for the day, Joel said to me, “Maybe we should be buried when we die. Recycled back into the earth.”

I shook my head dismissively. “Nope!” I said. “I don’t want to feel guilty for not visiting you in a cemetery. And I wouldn’t want you to feel guilty for not visiting me, either.”

Joel thought about it for a second, then shrugged. “OK.”

It was a fleeting and ridiculous conversation. But now I felt guilty. I wanted Joel cremated so I could keep him close, literally keep him next to me. I still carry some of his ashes in my yoga bag.

I wanted to be alone, but with people. I wanted to gather my thoughts, but not have a thought in my head. I wanted to come to terms with this impossible new reality, but I didn’t want to think about any of it.

Our dogs were also grieving. They had been waiting weeks for Joel to come home. They were anxious and made me cry every time I walked through the door. They expected him. They wanted him.

While Joel was still in the hospital, I had gone into a holistic pet store and burst into tears. The woman who worked there came out from around the counter and held me.

“It’s OK to cry.” She asked, “Is your fur family sick?”

I collected myself and told this woman I had never met before, “My dogs are grieving because my husband is in a coma and they haven’t seen him in weeks. They miss him.”

It all poured out of me. “He had a fever. I thought he was contagious so the first night he was in the hospital, I went home and washed all of his clothes, and our sheets and towels. I didn’t want us to catch whatever it was he had. But now nothing even smells like him anymore, and the dogs don’t understand what’s happening.”

As I continued crying, she went around the store, her hand on her heart, listening empathically, shaking her head, gasping, stopping to ask, “How many dogs do you have, sweetie?”

“Two,” I cried.

“How big are they?”

“A big one, like a husky. Sixtyish pounds. And a small, neurotic one. Twenty-five pounds.”

The woman went shelf to shelf, read labels, and gathered potions and ointments.

By the time I finished—“. . . and he won’t be coming home because he’s been on life support, and we’re turning it all off on Friday”—she was at the register ringing up antianxiety oils and pills and treatments. She wiped tears from her face as she collected everything and put it in a bag.

“Please come back and tell me how they’re doing,” she said. She hugged me again. “I will pray for you and your husband.”

I took her prayers along with the doggy meds and left.

Sophie and I needed to pick out the clothes we would wear for the small memorial service at Hal and Rita’s. That meant getting dressed. Looking presentable. What does one wear to her husband’s memorial?

My friend Mimi had kindly arranged for Sophie and me to get our hair done. I don’t know how I was able to leave the house, let alone drive somewhere, but I did. When we got to the hair salon, they didn’t have our reservation. They were busy and asked if we could come back tomorrow. I started to lose it. “No, we can’t come back tomorrow, because today is my husband’s memorial. He died!” I screamed, apparently. “My husband died and my daughter and I need to get our hair done. Today!”

Sophie was mortified.

At the small family-only memorial, I sat in the backyard of my in-laws’ house, holding hands with my daughter as Rabbi Hannah eulogized Joel. It was the same spot on the deck where sixteen years earlier, Joel and I had said, “I do.”

I had been a reluctant bride all those years ago. It seemed everyone was divorced. My parents, Joel’s parents, Joel . . . I never fantasized about my wedding day. I loved Joel and wanted to build a life with him, and while I would have been happy to elope, he convinced me to have a small wedding.

“Come on, hun. I want the people we care about to see how much I love you. Marry me.”

How could I resist?

We said our “I dos” under the chuppah in Hal and Rita’s backyard with beautiful and expansive views of the valley. The sixty people who attended tell me it was one of the best weddings they have ever been to. It wasn’t lavish or over-the-top; it was intimate and full of love.

Our first dance as husband and wife was to the Lemonheads song “Into Your Arms.”

But before that, Joel cued up the James Taylor song “How Sweet It Is” to start playing right after we kissed and stepped on a wine glass and everyone yelled, “Mazel tov!” In a Jewish wedding, breaking the glass symbolizes the ancient destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. As Jews, we remember that, even during moments of extreme joy, we should be mindful of suffering.