Three months and eighteen days after Ned’s death, I took his ashes, as per his written request, to India.
This was still relatively early days, so perhaps I can be forgiven for my persistent illusion: I still thought you could somehow outsmart grief.
I did not yet know that when grief wants to be felt, it will find a way to make you feel it.
XXX
Anyone who has been widowed after a good marriage discovers that almost anything associative brings on grief spasms. Not just obvious things, like anniversaries or photographs.
The stone bench across from the post-office, because suddenly his kissing you there rises in memory: it was raining lightly, you had just had that big fight about whether or not you should go to Ames for Christmas, then you had made up, then that walk, and the bench, and kissing.
The theatre where the two of you saw Jacques Brel, years ago. Both of you tearful during Ne Me Quitte Pas; both of you sheepish about the tears, relieved when the other confessed the same.
Washing the blue checked flannel sheets: you will never sleep between them with him again. (How dare they still be here when he is not?)
The bushels of Liberty apples at the farmer’s market, the first September after his death; you always made a pie together from first apples.
The August light coming in at a certain angle through the small pantry window; he once called you, urgently, to come look at it; you were miffed at being interrupted. But he wanted to show you the way that golden light poured in, illuminating the wandering jew plant, its leaves made a vivid purple by the light, edged in green flame.
Any of those. Anything, almost: that tedious agonizing melt-down, again and again.
XXX
So, I cleverly, foolishly decided that to avoid this, to deliver his ashes, I would travel to India via a route we had never taken.
I would not go New York and then via London, or Zurich, or Frankfort, to Bombay, as that city was then called.
I would not go Los Angeles, and then via Singapore or Seoul, to Bombay.
I would skip Bombay altogether.
Instead I would travel to San Francisco, and go from there to Hong Kong, and from Hong Kong to Sri Lanka, and from Sri Lanka to Trivandrum, in southern India,
So there, grief, I remember vaguely thinking as I made these travel arrangements.
XXX
Thus I found myself weeping in a hotel room in Hong Kong, looking out the window across an expanse of water towards Kowloon, a beauty and terrain which seemed to me singular in both its loveliness and its Chinese-ness. Because had Ned himself been with me (instead of that improbable plastic bag of ash which I was supposed to believe was all that now remained physically of that big handsome fellow whom I had adored for 23 years), his watercolors, brushes, soft pencils and pad would already have been out, and he would have been sitting, riveted, beside that window, jet-lag be damned, his tall form curved over the pad, his attention absolute, painting or drawing for a couple of hours.
Thus, I discovered grief, far from being outsmarted, had outsmarted me. Since there were no memories to call, it grew speculative: “Why couldn’t Ned be here to see this? Why will he never get to experience this?”
And thus I found myself, on the way back from India, having completed the task the once-living, now-dead Ned had set out for his still-living widow, weeping at the Mount Lavinia Hotel in Sri Lanka.
XXX
“Be gentle with yourself,” people tell you, so I had allowed a few days at the Mount Lavinia to recover, before I flew back to the U.S. It’s a 4-star hotel, an over-the-top architectural artifact of the days when Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was then called, was ruled by the British. The days when the sun never set on the British Empire and the underlying “nice country, we could use its resources, we’ll take it” ethos of colonialism ruled.
Built in 1806 as the country house of the second governor of that small island country, the Mount Lavinia is sited on a promontory above the Indian Ocean, which surrounds the mansion on three sides, an easy scramble down to an immaculate white-sand beach. It’s an elegant, beautiful, impressive pile, enormous, embodying everything one might think of as the romantic style of the colonial tropics. Tall ceilings, ever-circulating fans. White marble expanses indoors and out. Terraces with vintage rattan couches and tables. Enormous windows, open to the sounds and smells of air and surf. Giant potted palms. White walls, mahogany paneling. Polished brass. Views. Manicured gardens. Statuary.
And everywhere, brown-skinned servitors kept it all running smoothly. Some standing guard or offering assistance or leading guests to their table. Others mopping, sweeping, polishing, gardening, tucking in, folding down, endlessly unobtrusive.
What I did in those days I had allowed myself, or what I thought I would do with them, is still mysterious to me. And, how was staying there being kind, good, or gentle to myself, as I had been told to do and was trying to do, but about which I was as clueless and grief-befogged as I was about everything else?
I know I swam in the warm sea a few times, aware that the Lavinia’s lovely and near-deserted beach was bordered, on either side a half-mile down, with walls, on the other sides of which the same beach teemed with native Sri Lankans: messy, populous, loud.
I still wasn’t eating much, but I tried, a little, at its elegant dining room. There, I was the only table for one. There, one night, the music on the sound system inexplicably played James Taylor. Shower the People You Love with Love came on: it had been played at our wedding, I had reprised it at his memorial.
I slept and woke at odd hours.
I kept finding myself shaking my head, over and over, at the unreality of every single part of my present and presumably future life. Where I was and where I would remain, without Ned.
At one point I remember looking at the room service menu and seeing the snack items described, straight-faced, as “tit-bits.”
I burst into laughter — how Ned, who adored large breasts, screwy language and word-plays, would have roared and carried on at that! How instantly it would have become a riff between us!
One more reference in our ongoing private personal language. Now with just one speaker, it was a language as dead as he was, absent of life as the ashes I had scattered by the handful standing in the Pamba, as they swirled around me and then slowly floated away. Light gray ash, dark brown water.
Of course, my laughter at “tit-bits” almost instantly turning to those same old endless, exhausting sobs.
XXX
In my small room at the Mount Lavinia, facing the sea, I sat at the dark wooden desk trimmed in rattan. I spend hours writing, crying, thinking, or all three.
At one moment, without forethought, I took my wedding ring from my left ring-finger, where it had stayed for 23 years.
It was as if I had slammed into a wall of emotion as forceful as the physical tsunami that was to strike Sri Lanka years later. Before I could be sucked completely under, I immediately shoved, jammed, that ring back on my ring-finger.
Shortly after that, sitting at the dark wood desk on a tropical night, the surf audible from my room, I wrote the following poem:
How It’s Done
I don’t know how
to not be married to you
I guess like this
I wake up every morning
and you are still dead
XXX
Wow! Every line speaks to me. I am in early-stage grief – it’s been 18 months, and other widowed friends and relatives have also told me it takes many more years to get out of the claws of punishing grief. That you write about the power grief wielded over you, even inside the safety zone and the breathtaking beauty of the Lavinia Hotel, is comforting to read. I keep thinking I will find a way out of this bleakness, this enormous waste of my time and of my healthy body, by doing the next thing, taking on the next project. Surely installing new cabinets in the kitchen in my apartment in India, or painting the walls or returning to New York and finding a small apartment for myself – surely this new thing will change my life or bring some relief. But it is not to be. Grief reigns supreme and yes, “he is still dead.” He is not coming back. I don’t know when it will feel less harsh. Right now, I am living in the wasteland of active widowhood, where nothing is spared – no thought, no action – and nothing is forgiven. And yet, one has to go on. This is the world as it is now, this is the life I must live. I cannot outsmart Grief. Perhaps I have to learn to befriend this “terrible and loyal companion,” as you describe… (BTW is Grief “him” or “her”?)
Thank you, Crescent! In a few days it will be six months since his death… instead of getting incrementally better, so much of the time things feel worse. Trying to make ANY decisions is difficult. For me, grief mires me down and sucks every bit of energy from me. A dear friend sent me (what looks like) some lovely music. I can tell from the titles that I would probably enjoy it but it took me two weeks to remember that I hadn’t responded to her, thanked her for her kindness. I haven’t listened to the music yet. Silence and cold numbness still reign in my home. Everything takes so much effort and time. Even typing this message to you, is difficult and time consuming… and time and again I stop and come close to erasing the entire thing. But I hope in my honesty, I can reflect to another widow(er) who is feeling and experiencing something similar, that they are not abnormal, that others too are walking a similar Path. In sharing your experience, YOU give me hope that I can someday figure out how to not just survive but thrive… and not be married to him…
I promise that hope has a basis, Laurel. xxxooo
Crescent,
You were married as long as I was. I was fortunate to have a very happy marriage. My grief is incredible. But, a few yers later my sister became a widow. She had been married to a micro-managing, controlling man. Hearibg her proclaim that widowhood is the happiest time of her life – horrifies me. To think someone could force themselves to live with a person for over 60 years and find happiness when that person died – freaks me out.
I have always called her stupid and insensitive but I feel so sorry for her. She finds happiness in the period of life where we face misery being alone. How sad for her!
Family stuff… It is so complex. I have a troubled and troubling relationship, or for the past several years non-relationship, with a sibling so I can relate on that front.
You know, I know one woman who really was happy to be widowed — her marriage (she stayed married because she was a Catholic) went from good to blah to… she hung on, and did her part, but was worried and troubled… he was turning into an old man with a drinking problem, and was a nasty drunk. When he did suddenly (cardiac) she really was relieved. She felt she had done her duty (and she had), and for the first time felt free and unbound. She had a passionate late-life love affair with an English professor — had more sex in those 5 or 10 years with him than she had had had with her husband their entire life. She remained happy until the last few months before she died (months that had considerable physical pain, but no regret).
I don’t know exactly what I am saying here. Our journeys are so individual! But those of us who are lucky to have loved and been loved, even though we pay the terrible price in grief… we still wouldn’t change it. And I agree, it is sad for her. And it has to be so strange and upsetting to hear it, and sort of unbelievable that she would rub your face in it.
I like to say I “divorced” my brother… that is an option, you know. I finally realized I was breaking my own heart with my brother; despite a lifelong history of bad behavior, behavior I would not have tolerated from any one else on earth, I kept interacting because, “He’s my brother.” I finally realized, as I say, that this was on me.
No advice here, just thinking aloud with a fellow club member. And wishing your courage and wisdom and love as you walk this path, which is unique to you… xo
CD