Letters to Michael: A Final Tribute
June 14, 2012


Dearest Michael, you are now lost at sea in your favorite place and mine, the warm waters of the Sea of Cortez.  Last night, just one day shy of two months since your departure from me, and your life, we celebrated you once again.  This time on a much more intimate level, with friends Tom and Mary Malone, who had missed your wonderful celebration at home.  Also present were our neighbors Christy and Jan Davids and Baja neighbor, and new friend, Jane McGee, who I have grown to love. Even though Jane and I do not share the same political ideals it doesn’t matter, we are women sharing the Sea of Cortez and many other thoughts and values in common.   Our event began with appetizers, Tom’s special rum drink and many memories of you.  I read my tribute to you and we showed the DVD of your life.  I was struck by how difficult it was for me to read my tribute this second time.  Unlike at your original ceremony, this was an intimate group and I had to pause several times and to gain composure just so I could continue to read through my entire speech.  In this setting I wasn’t on stage with an audience of more than three hundred with their faces a blurred in the sea of humanity.  Here I didn’t have to be embarrassed by my tears in front of such good friends. I knew that the shock of your death and the numbness that got me through the first memorial had worn off.  With the passing days and months it is obvious that you are no longer coming back to us. Your absence is sadly real.  

So, as the sun set behind the scrub encrusted mountains, we lit our personally decorated luminaries; each one bearing an individual design representing a pictorial of your life.  Each boat held your Ashes, in individual receptacles, which we all took to the sea.  Carefully, we swam out a distance, sang “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore,” and gathered in a circle before casting you out into the warm water.  Two large pelicans swooped low over us and tipped their wings in tribute to you.  Other than the light of a few stars, and the illumination from our boats, we were swimming in complete darkness.   We laughed and told fun stories and then noticed a magical appearance of blue-green phosphoresce that sparkled around each boat as it moved with the dark waves pulsating underneath.  Then Tom’s beard began to sparkle, and soon we noticed more sparkling lights around each of us with every movement that was made. It was a night unlike any other and we will remember it always.

Death brings such finality.  Since your departure from this world I have had many hours to consider my life with you and wonder how I will ever deal with my life without you.  I have worked out the fact that there is no second chance to say I love you, no more time to tell you not to go.  I have run out of time to tell you how much you meant to me.  I will never again tell you how you have ruined any chance of me finding another man who could ever measure up to you.  Unguarded, multiple questions trouble me.  How will I spend the rest of my life?  What do I do next? How do I plan anything that doesn’t include you enjoying it with me?  With time I am learning that it is possible not to make plans.  Possible to laugh, to dance, to swim, to cry and not have you here to love me and support me.  I can do many things on my own.  I am happy not to have every day planned.  I don’t need to know the future.  It will take care of itself.  

Many years ago I wrote a paper for a philosophy class where I was grappling with life and the finality of death.   Sartre was the philosopher that I cited while I was trying to understand the finality of my mother’s recent death. Since she had lived in Kentucky at the time of her death, distance gave me the ability to suspend reality for a very long time. I could just imagine her going about her day collecting antiques, reading books, doing crossword puzzles, and traveling with my father.  She was alive to me even though I had watched her take her last breath and stood for two days at her wake staring into her open casket.   I wanted to believe I could call her even though I attended her funeral service and saw her coffin go into the earth in her hometown of Holly, Michigan.  I liked thinking she was still alive out there somewhere.   But then, five years later, I took a trip with my children to Holly to show them the cute Victorian town where she grew up, tell the stories to them that she had told me.  I also wanted them to visit the Holly cemetery where many of my relatives are buried. After lunch in a quaint refurbished railroad dining car, and a walking tour of the town, we stopped at the cemetery guard office to get directions to our family graves.  Then, as if an afterthought, I took a deep breath and also asked for the exact location of my mother’s grave hoping that the guard would laugh and tell me she wasn’t there. He cleared his throat and asked her full name. Then he blew off the dust from an oversized ledger book and after several fumbling minutes found her name just as I feared he would.  Next, he went to a file drawer, opened it, and pulled out a card that held her name and plot number, date of death, and date of internment.  It was only then, at that moment, that her death became real.  She was no longer antiquing in Kentucky.  She was really there in Holly Michigan, no longer a young teen skating on a pond near her home.  She was no longer a bashful beauty with thinly teased eyebrows, pin-curl wavy hair and pouty red lips. Though she was indeed, back in her hometown, where all the stories of her growing up originated.  This time she was really dead and permanently resting in the hard Michigan earth.   The reality knocked the wind out of me and the fantasy that she could be alive evaporated.  I also realized that this was the last notation of my dearly loved mother.  This would be the last time her name would be written and officially documented. 

Not long after this trip I got a job in the maternity ward in a tiny hospital in Chestertown, Maryland where my own children had been born.   Witnessing a birth of a child is exciting and brings tears to my eyes every time I witness the moment when the child takes its first breath and cries.  After the formalities of caring for that new life I was directed to an oversized ledger that contained all the births recorded in the last few years at that hospital. Blowing off the dust, and turning to the last page of this worn out book, I wrote the name of the parents, the sex of the child, date of birth, and the child’s name and apgar score.  The realization that we are but notations in two different books was sobering.  Yet, what we do with our life in between those two notations is rarely documented.    If we are lucky we leave behind a few pictures that follow our progression from birth to death.  If we have been really lucky we leave footprints in the minds of those we loved, those we disagreed with, and in those who shared the same philosophy. 

I won’t be searching for your grave.  You are floating in the Sea of Cortez and a bit of you will rest in our garden on Ninth Street.  But no matter where your Ashes are you will be with me just the same.  Where ever I go and whatever I do, I will love you and miss you for many more sunrises, dozens of full moons, numerous warm water swims, and with every slow dance.   I will miss you in times of happiness and sadness.

 To me you are more than just two notations documented at the beginning and end of life. You are there in the books of our travels around the globe. You are with me walking the colonial streets of Chestertown and visiting with my friends.  And you are the guy who gave up everything to be with me in Bethesda so I could graduate from Georgetown. But most of all, in my mind, you will always be that young guy newly in love with me.  When I am back home in Manhattan Beach you will be there to meet me in the middle of the crosswalk, near the bank, just as you did Thanksgiving of 1991.  I delighted in finding you coming toward me with your arms open wide, handsome as ever with that shockingly beautiful smile.  I run to be captured in your embrace, as you spin around in the street unaware of the traffic light change, and impatient motorists, who stare with warm eyes, knowing smiles, and visions of new love remembered as they witness us lost in each other’s arms.  I can wish you fair-well my prince but, I can never say goodbye.

Letters to Michael:  Looking for Acceptance

June 10^th

Dear Michael, it is early morning and from my bed I can see the beautiful water with wind-tossed ripples sparkling like millions of little stars, dancing with the first sunlight.  Today, just like all mornings here on the Sea of Cortez, there was a beautiful multicolored sunrise that flooded the bedroom with light and woke me from my dreams.  Usually I just turn over and will myself back to sleep.  But, too often slumber eludes me.  If I am lucky I can empty my mind and just drift out to sea to the beautiful, just-before-sunrise glow that casts a red, yellow, and purple rainbow painted along the horizon.   I am mesmerized by the changes in colors as the fire ball of sun rises slowly to expose the turquoise waves that splash up against the large boulders grouped along the shoreline.  It is nice to take even a few seconds to let my mind rest after eight weeks of processing a thousand thoughts and worries that will no doubt resurface when I am fully awake. 

I am relieved to say that there are moments when I think I have made peace with the fact that you are never going to show up here and tell me this has just been a horrible mistake.  I am learning that no amount of crying, anger, frustration and wishful thinking will change the reality that you are never coming back to me.  However, I still bounce around from hopefulness to bargaining, anger, and frustration. Perhaps it is just too soon for my heart and mind to be in synch. I try to be optimistic about the future. However, I realize that you won’t be there to share that future with me and that I need to work out a new plan.  This will take time.  I am still processing the events of the past two months.  I am getting tired of this broken record playing over and over again in my brain.  I start each morning missing you, and retracing the backlog of recent challenges overloading my data base.

Nothing I do, or wish I could do, changes the facts leading up to your death.  Yet, the lazy part of my subconscious, that hasn’t quite gotten the message, still wonders where you are.  I am then forced to once again zip through the news-reel of those last days with you just to reinforce why you can’t be here.  Even though I know it is crazy, I keep trying to edit, re-write, and change the facts so that you come out of this stroke unscathed.  It is just a foolish game my unrelenting mind wants to play.  I am trying to learn to beg off, stop the movie, and look for better ways to occupy my mind.  I have been fortunate to have wonderful friends and family visiting during my stay in Buena Vista, Mexico.  They unknowingly steer me in another direction and fill the hours with cheerful topics, push me to join them for a swim or a long walk along the beach.  We have spent hours buried in books that trick me to concentrate on other things.  I am still able to lose myself in the kitchen whipping up a few decent meals. On the outside I am cheerful, hopeful and in control.  Inside I am still processing and missing you a lot.

When I am honest with myself, I realize, with a strong conviction, that you wouldn’t have wanted the story to end any other way than it did.  You wouldn’t have wanted to live without your ability to have sharp recall, to talk about politics, or hold court with the ninth street women, and charm everyone with your affable smile.  You wouldn’t have wanted to be stuck in a wheel chair, need twenty-four hour care, or constantly be reminded that you were no longer independent.  I am comforted in the thought that, though I was not prepared to let you go, in many ways you were prepared to die. Your body had betrayed you, and you wanted the impossible…a new one.  Failing that, you were tired and maybe even ready to go.  However, I will never let myself believe that you would have wanted to go so soon; you didn’t want to leave me, and you wouldn’t have wanted me to go through this agony of loss that I have felt these past few weeks.   Still, nothing changes the facts, and you got to go the way most people wish they could, quickly and painlessly.  I should be grateful.  But I am not.

I still want more of course. How can I give up perfection? No one will ever measure up to you.  Okay, you had some flaws, but you were my kind of perfect.  I miss you asking me “How are you doing?”  I miss your smile, your laugh, your hugs, your smell, and your silly little songs that you would sing.  I miss hearing your stories about your day, the people you had met, and the jokes you had heard.   I miss telling you how much I love you, and hearing you say the same back to me.  You were my safety net, my solid ground, my life-line, my anchor.  After living through a very unhappy marriage, you were my affirmation that I was worthy of love.  I knew from what you said to me and others that you were proud of me and my accomplishments.  Because of you, I knew no boundaries.  You were the mirror that reflected nothing but hope and promise back to me. My accomplishments were yours to cherish.  You made me feel I could not only fly, but soar!  Yet, I enjoyed the fact that you watched me like a hawk, protected me like a fragile ornament, and took care of most of my needs.  You were unselfish and I was not. Because of this I can’t help but think that I let you down.  I couldn’t return the favor in those last few weeks.  I couldn’t keep you safe and may have pushed you too much.  I am trying not to punish myself for being culpable in your death.  But, maybe if I had been more observant and caring, I would have known that something was wrong.  Perhaps I could have saved you.  I just didn’t want to believe that the man I married had changed, needed more rest, or actually had a problem.  I never wanted to believe that you would leave me quite so soon.  We made a pact to live into our 80’s or 90’s and beyond.  I wanted a promise that could not be fulfilled. You tried to warn me otherwise and I tried to convince you how foolish you’d become.  I know that beating myself up doesn’t change reality; but it still doesn’t stop me from wondering these things and wanting to re-wind the clock, start that last day over, and make the necessary changes that save your life.  

Lately, I have been rewinding the clock back to meeting you and our first dates.  This is a far more pleasant place to spend my time. I see this as a positive adjustment in my thinking. Perhaps I am making some progress after all.  There are so many wonderful, exciting, and happy memories to choose.  I want to go back to the early 90’s and relive those years over and over again.  Of course, because I have a choice, I would leave out all your surgeries, my cancer, and all the other sad stuff we experienced.  I am happy to select only the part of the movie of those years that I like the best.  It is something to hold on to when I can’t hold on to you.  I am hopeful that this shift from our last full day together, to all the other happy days we had over the past twenty-one years, is just one step closer to acceptance.  I am working on letting myself off the hook, and challenging myself to give up on all the “what ifs” so I can fully enjoy the reality of all the great years of things that really happened.   Those precious moments keep me sane, help me navigate the treacherous waters; they fill me with bitter-sweet joy. 

Saying good bye to each other would never have been easy no matter when or where we had to do that.  I am no fool.  None of us get the option of endless life.  Few ever know when the end will come.   I realize that you wouldn’t want me to mope around feeling sad all the time.  But, it is difficult for me not to want more time with you.  I know you would want me to look forward to really living my life to its full measure and enjoy whatever comes my way. You told me that I would do fine without you.  You said I would easily find someone else to fill the void.  I remember firmly telling you to stop those foolish thoughts because there could never be a replacement for you.  I can’t even begin to believe that possibility.  However, I am trying to be optimistic, trying to be strong.  I know your ultimate goal of this trip was to be here with me in Buena Vista.  I am certain that you would have fought to finish our trip if you had that option.  I am trying to live one day at a time and appreciate this place knowing that you loved it so very much. 

Even though I am sometimes overcome with sadness, there are many times I allow myself the enjoyment of floating in the warm, crystal clear water. I realize I am giggling at the puffer fish, smiling at the schools of tropical fish, and marvel at the sting rays burrowing into the sand.  It is exciting to see manta rays jump out of the ocean; sometimes three at a time.  I am surprised at the loud, slapping sound they make as they re-enter the water.  I love the large pelicans as they sail by in a line above my head or close to the water in perfect flying formation.  Often, one will circle back, fly higher, and dive into the water right in front of us.  I just wish you were here to share in my stories and ask me for a full report when I return from snorkeling.   I am trying to soak in all the beauty of this place for both of us.   Buena Vista is a magical place.  The water couldn’t be more warm or beautiful; the sunrises more stunning.  Yet, now that you can’t be here to enjoy this with me, I wonder if I will ever be able to return.