It’s autumn again, that difficult time of year. This time six years ago, I was in the worst throes of grief and loss. It still amazes me how much I feel this time of year coming on. As foliage begins its dusky turn and darkness nudges the dinner hour, my thoughts turn to those difficult last days. The first cool nights settle in against me and prod my mind to memory. It is unavoidable and outside of my control. 

This time last year, I was also settling into a new home. The strange mixture of excitement and newness coming on the cusp of my saddest time of year created a strange situation that took months of adjusting to. I also sent my youngest child off to college and was acclimating myself to a life more solitary than I had ever lived before. My memories of that time are of darkness coming very early and a chill that I’m sure my mind exaggerates. I continue trying to make myself comfortable in this new life, trying to shape myself into this new person who feels fully and happily single. I don’t know how long that will take.

On a recent chilly day, I pulled one of Kevin’s favorite flannel shirts from the closet. Many of his things are packed away and stored safely in bins and boxes. Despite two moves, I’ve parted with very few of his belongings. Some things that were only his (as opposed to ours) I brought with me—favorite ties, his navy blazer, his shaving kit, his running shoes, and a favorite summer hat. Until recently, I haven’t been able to wear anything of Kevin’s. Many find comfort in wearing something that belonged to their loved one. But for me, I have always felt that putting myself into his clothes would take him out of them. I know that makes no sense and I struggle to explain it. It is difficult to think of putting anything of his in the washing machine. I want forever to hold something that touched his skin and know that nothing has happened to erase that closeness. Whatever cells or molecules of him that might still remain in the sleeve of his shirt, I want to know that they will always be there. But on that day, I wrapped myself in his shirt and sat on the balcony of my new home watching a young family stroll down the street.

So much has happened since my move, and in many ways I do feel settled in my new home. I love living in Detroit. My neighbors are wonderful; my neighborhood is cool and friendly. I can walk or bike ride to most everything I need. I take walks along the riverfront. I go on weekly bike rides around the city with a thousand other people. I’ve met a former president and the current president, along with senators, fashion designers, rock stars, writers, and television personalities. I’ve joined clubs, re-connected with old friends, and made new, life-long friendships. I’ve hosted dinner parties, started teaching at the nearby university, attended concerts and gallery openings. I'm on a first-name basis with folks at the bakery, the bookstore, and the farmers market. That’s a lot in one year. I worked with an architect to design the space I’m in by myself, with no input from a partner. Aside from some furniture from the farmhouse and those few small items of Kevin’s that I brought with me, there is very little of him in this new space.

And yet, as I sat on the balcony in his shirt, I understood that he is everywhere. And he is missing. 

I had the mistaken idea that moving to a brand new space, in a different city, in a building that couldn’t possibly be more unlike the one in which I lived with Kevin, would be a new start in so many ways. I didn’t want to erase my memories, but I did think that a new place would nudge me toward making new memories. And I have done that. But at the same time, I am surprised at how much I miss Kevin in this space.

It is a different emotion, for sure. At the farmhouse, his absence was a gaping wound that would never heal. It was an emptiness that rung out at every turn and from every room. It frightened me to think of being there on my own because I knew that the memories and the absence had such a strong hold. 

Here, in this new place, it is absence of a different sort. I grieve not that he was here in this place and is now gone, but that he was never here at all. And that grief is far greater than I ever would have thought possible.

I remember when I used to travel for my job. I would always look forward to a work trip as part mini-vacation—no chores, no meals to prepare. But once I got there, especially if it was in an interesting place, I of course missed having my family with me. I would squeeze in a few minutes to do something touristy and be disappointed because I knew it would have been better if it had been shared with my family.

That’s the feeling I often have in my new home. I’m doing all these wonderful things, but the thought of how much Kevin would love living here sometimes makes the enjoyment hollow. I know he would run every day in the neighborhood, or along the riverfront, or on the greenway path. I know he would love having his favorite brewpub just downstairs. He would hang out with the neighbors, play with the puppies and kids, and chat-up the people we would encounter on our evening dog walks. He would love it here. He should be here. He was never here, yet I miss him so much. 

It has been a definite realization over the past several months, that missing him will always happen, regardless of where I live. It is like the shirt that I feel has bits of him woven into its fabric. He is woven into my fabric. He is a part of me wherever I go, whatever new experiences I have, whatever new life I create. He will be in it, and he will not. He will be a part of it because he is not. Moving-on will always be moving-on without. He will make himself known by his absence. And wherever I am, there he'll be.

P.S. The title of this entry comes from a line in one of Kevin's favorite movies, The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the Eighth Dimension in which it was uttered by John Lithgow's crazily hilarious character John Warfin.

It’s January, so I shouldn’t be surprised that I find myself feeling blue. January has always been a difficult month. December is often gray and cold, longer nights and shorter days. But there is the anticipation of the holidays; of friends and family gathered. There is no such fun in January—it is yet too cold and gray to anticipate the possible rebirth and warmth of spring; weeks on the other side of December’s cheer. It’s a tough time. Kevin used to steer clear of me in January, knowing that I struggled. He would surreptitiously put seed catalogs where I would find them hoping it would bring me from my gloom.

I had made the conscious decision at the end of last year to spend January in a sort of hibernation. Last fall brought working, traveling, teaching, sending my daughter off to college, and moving to a new home in a new city. It was a time of great change and exhaustion; a time of readjustment, excitement, and fear. Mostly, it was a time when I was too busy to think. So I made the decision that I would spend January being fairly quiet. I would occasionally visit nearby museums or see a film, but mostly I would concentrate on writing, reading, resting, and my job. Though I wouldn’t turn down an invitation, I wouldn’t actively seek out things to do with others. I knew it would be difficult, but I also felt it was necessary. Part of the difficulty is that slow, quiet alone-time often brings opportunities for grief to settle in with me under the covers.

It became even harder than I anticipated with the loss of people and places early into the month. The news of David Bowie’s passing caught me (and the rest of the world) unprepared and deeply saddened. His music fills a fairly large part of my collection. Early on in my musical life I became enamored of glam rock and he was its godfather. His creativity and artistic abilities were so deep and wide. What an impact he had on the worlds of music, art, and fashion. As always happens when someone famous passes, there were comments from other widowed friends. People say that they don’t understand their friends being so sad about this person that they’ve never even met. How can people even begin to equate the loss of this person with the grief they are feeling over the loss of their partner and soulmate, they ask.

I understand their feelings, but I also want to explain that I perfectly understand the outpouring of sadness and how these strangers can feel such a loss in their lives. No, they didn’t know David Bowie personally, but they knew a great deal about him because of his music, because he shared so much of himself with the world. We didn’t know him intimately, but we grieve his loss because he knew us, or

I’ve also learned this month that my favorite coffee shop, Foggy Bottom, is closing. It is also a loss. It is where I sequestered myself to write, feeling for the first time like a real writer as I sat down with my laptop and a well-made mocha. Most of my Master’s degree was accomplished there—hundreds of pages of thesis and multiple critical essays. I became friends with the owner, Doug, and we often chatted about books. I recently confessed that it was difficult to go into the shop when Kevin was sick, because seeing people there going about their normal lives felt like a slap in the face. It is difficult to explain how much one cannot understand how everyone else’s life can go on when theirs is so upside down. Many nights I drove past on my way home from the hospital and wished that the coffee shop was open so I could stop in and pretend that everything was the way it was before, even for just ten minutes.  I couldn’t bear to go in after Kevin died because it was also a place where I enjoyed being by myself, a place that I appreciated as an escape. How could I have ever

I also had the opportunity to walk through the first apartment that Kevin and I lived in after we married. I had a small apartment on my own and we lived in it for about a month after we married. But then we moved to our first place together, Third Street—an apartment so full of character and charm that it came to be known as simply that “Third Street.” We had a tiny place in an old house that had been divided up and turned into four apartments. We made life-long friends, cooked in a closet-turned-kitchen, and learned to live with each other in that apartment. The house has been sold and the new owners are doing extensive renovations to both the house and the barn behind the house. Some of the character remains, but much has been replaced by shiny new countertops and stark, white cabinetry. It is more efficient and modern and will make a profit for the new owners after they’ve put many hours of labor into it. As I walked up the oak staircase into what was our apartment, many memories came flooding back: cooking in that kitchen, studying at the desk in the bedroom, walking to the ice cream shop. It was harder than I thought to stand in that space, but I’m glad I did.

So in addition to telling my fellow widows that we can grieve for people we didn’t know, I would also tell them that we grieve for more than just people. I suppose when we grieve for a person it’s for more than just the flesh and blood of that person. But we also grieve for places and things, and events, and times, and ways of being. I want to tell them that grief really knows no bounds or limits. I remember when we were expecting our second child. We sat our son down and explained to him that our love was like the flame of a candle—I’m sure I read this in a parenting book and hoped it would work for us. The idea, though, is that the flame of one candle can light many others and never diminish itself. Love is like that, but so is grief. The grief I feel at the loss of David Bowie doesn’t diminish any of the grief I have felt at any other loss, especially Kevin’s. If anything, it makes it richer and more powerful. The grief I feel at losing my favorite coffee shop, or of now living in a different place, they all just signal for me that I’ve been fortunate enough to have many attachments. They may not each hold the same importance, but losing them means losing a piece of the rich and varied tapestry that is my life. I’m thankful to have had them, to know that my life is better in some way because I’ve connected at more than a superficial level with the man I married, and the music I listen to, and the people who lived in the downstairs flat, and the guy that served me coffee. 

I’ll get through January with more tears shed than I anticipated. But they are tears well-earned, and I am grateful for them.

I’ve just come in from shoveling the dense, packy, sodden snow that accumulated outside last week. It’s the heavy kind that fills a shovel every few inches. Lifting that full shovel reminds one of lifting a mid-sized dog. It fell in big heaps over the weekend, nearly fifteen inches by the time it was done. My car got stuck in it twice as, despite the constant clearing, I just couldn’t keep up.

Shoveling snow is one of those chores that reminds me that I’m a widow. Actually, it reminds me that I’m a widow who doesn’t own a snow blower. The driveway at our old house was long and winding enough that it required hiring a plow. The walkways were fairly short and we had a teenaged boy (now away at college) to help. I’ve never had a very good relationship with any machine that requires a pull start, so the thought of purchasing a snow blower now didn’t make much sense.

In the three years since Kevin passed away though, I have purchased other small equipment. After a tornado touched down just ¼ mile from our house, I purchased a small, battery-charged chainsaw. I have used it a few times to cut very small branches and brush. I know it’s a fairly wimpy machine (not even sure it can be called a machine) but using it is still exhilarating and somehow empowering. 

But there’s a fine line between feeling empowered and feeling overwhelmed. Problems that arise--that I know Kevin would have dealt with--or that we would have tackled together, are more than just hassles. They remind, they discourage, they bring to mind the same questions, oftentimes they simply wear me out. I have written about the emotional struggles of being widowed, but there are physical and intellectual challenges as well. I come from a long line of strong women. I am grateful for whatever genetically endowed internal fortitude I have, as it has been called upon repeatedly over the past three years. 

So let me tell you about the strong women:

My great-grandmother on my mom’s side met my great-grandfather when she was twenty-one and he was fifty-four. He had been a Civil War lieutenant and the town’s Post Master. She bore five children in six years, watched one become blinded and one die of consumption, and then buried her husband before he turned seventy. She went on to run a boarding house in a town that had a lumber mill, a cannery, and textile factory, so I can only imagine her encounters with rowdy men. 

My great-grandmother on my dad’s side was a Cherokee woman who I’m told, hid in a cellar during the government-imposed relocation of Native Americans known as the Trail of Tears. She rarely ventured out of the house afterward, fearing for her life. 

My father’s mother married my grandfather at fifteen. She worked with him in the logging camps along the Tennessee-North Carolina border, where she managed the kitchen. Each day, she rose at 4 a.m. to make breakfast and supper for sixty-seven men, including baking over a hundred biscuits. She raised eight children, including a granddaughter. She and my grandfather were married sixty-six years.

My mother, worried that her mother would never understand that she wished to marry and move away, eloped with my father in 1943. Together, they left their families and moved to Detroit, where my dad registered for and was drafted into World War II. At eighteen, and pregnant with my brother, my mom lived on her own in the second floor of a house owned by an Armenian family that didn’t speak English. In 1950, she went to work for General Motors. She worked full-time, raised 4 children, and kept a spotless house. She taught my sisters and me to be independent, to have our own money, and to love unconditionally.

I have often called upon the memories and the strength of these women as I’ve moved through the past three years, knowing that they also suffered losses as great as mine, and kept going. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the thought of one more pep talk to myself makes me want to scream.

I remember in the months after Kevin’s passing it seemed that everything that could go wrong did. In six months’ time, I replaced a hot water heater, a water softener, the heater control on our hot tub (twice), a sump pump, then had major car repairs for both my car and my son’s (which broke down on the freeway sixty miles from home). The furnace went out when it was cold, and the air conditioner quit on the hottest day of the summer. 

After going through so much, I was greatly anticipating spending a quiet summer evening at the home of a neighborhood friend. We would sit on the deck, sip wine and laugh about all of these problems. But when I arrived at my friend’s house, we instead discussed the fact that a black bear had been sighted at the house across the street. We wouldn’t be eating on the deck, and before we could dine at all, I was advised to return home, lock my dog in the house, and remove all bird feeders from the yard. 

A bear. A f#@**&ing bear!

Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly be put through anything more, I had to deal with a bear.

I sat down that evening after dinner and looked to the sky. I told Kevin that if his purpose was to make me realize I had taken him for granted, it had worked! But I was now ready to have a little break from this cosmic joke. 

Other things have happened, as they do. And even the day-to-day takes additional strength some days. I’ve broken down doing the simplest things: unloading groceries, putting gas in the car, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, and yes, shoveling snow. It doesn’t have to be something big to remind me that I am doing all of these things on my own.

And the big things remind me too, even those things that are planned. When I think back on selling my house, buying a new condo, buying a car, selling a car, helping my son with college arrangements, getting my daughter through high school, and all the other things big and small, I am thankful for whatever amount of fortitude I inherited from the strong women who came before me. 

Oh, and if you think the genealogy detailed above is impressive, you should also know that Elvis and I are cousins!

The kids and I brought home our Christmas tree last night: a big, spindly, beautifully-smelling ten-footer. We drove out to the tree lot and cut it ourselves, my son and I taking turns lying on the ground with the bow saw, pushing and pulling against the grip of the wood on the blade, snow filling our boots, the ground a mix of slush and mud as the temperature climbed above freezing. The two of us dragged the tree from the back-forty up to the barn while my daughter, newly-turned 16, drove the car back to meet us.

So much of this scene is different from past Christmases that it incites reflection on what can only be called a time of transition for all of us. If I stop and consider, as one is wont to do this time of year, I realize how many steps forward I’ve taken. Each of those steps feels hard-won, and each carries with it the weight of leaving behind a past life that was perfectly fine until it wasn’t. That my son, who for years complained about our sojourns into the woods for a tree, now insists on maintaining this tradition, and my daughter is now old enough to drive the car to help, are both reminders that life goes on, even at those times when we wish it didn’t. Transitioning from one place in life to another always causes the ground to feel uncertain beneath your feet. When that transition wasn’t planned and in fact arrives as a shock, this is even more the case. Second-guessing and regret often accompany each step.

A ten-foot tree would never have fit in our old farmhouse, built as it was with low ceilings so as to conserve heat. The very fact that we have this tall tree is a result of forward movement as we celebrate Christmas this year in a house we don’t own. I miss Christmases in our old house, where I decorated so much, I believe I could have convinced visitors that Norman Rockwell had married Martha Stewart and settled into our home. Considerable effort was put into making everything perfect. I realize now (as I transition to purposely spending my time in other ways) that it usually resulted in a beautiful setting and a very cranky decorator. 

This year, we are in a rental home—a way station along this path. As mentioned in an earlier post, I sold our farmhouse this past summer, unable to deal with the constant work and expense of maintaining it. I live in the rental home while my daughter finishes high school. Once she’s away at college, I will move into a renovated loft in the Midtown area of Detroit. It’s an old Jeep factory, and I currently own a shell of space that will be built out over the next year. It is walking distance to many things that are important to me: Eastern Market, Comerica Park, Whole Foods, the Institute of Arts, the Detroit Symphony, a community garden, three galleries, a nationally-known bakery, multiple restaurants. I can’t contain my excitement when I think about it. My recent meeting with a newly-hired architect resulted in a change of plans whereby the room with fifteen large windows and tons of natural light will be my writing space. The kitchen now opens up into the living room so that I can cook and entertain. I cannot consider this space without smiling.

I also used to bake cookies this time of year—thirty dozen by one count. They were gifts for friends and service providers, they accompanied us to every party we attended. On the second Friday after Thanksgiving, I would begin at 7 a.m. and finish around midnight. Kevin would call and check-in from work a few times through the day, getting an updated grocery list of items that had run out, and later, collecting my dinner order for Chinese carry-out. Once home, he sampled each kind, a smile on his face like that of a child in his favorite bakery where everything is free.

I have cooked and baked very little over the past three years, and couldn’t even begin to think about recreating the annual “cookie baking day extravaganza.” There is no longer the time, and I just don’t have the heart for it. But I did bake this year for my cooking group cookie exchange. I am grateful for my cooking group. They will never realize what their friendship (over half of them being brand new friends that I had never met prior to our first gathering) has meant to me this year. Together we have made numerous trips to Eastern Market in Detroit where we discover new things to eat, and befriend vendors like the lady who, with her son, sells the best turkey and veggie burgers, or the completely engaging couple who run the Middle Eastern store—they treat us like their long-lost daughters each time we visit. Because of this, I've returned to cooking with renewed interest and purpose. For my month of hosting our group I prepared—as a tribute to my parents and grandparents—an authentic Southern meal complete with chicken and dumplings, collard greens, green beans, mashed potatoes and peach cobbler. 

Tonight, my children and I will decorate the tree. Ornaments are now kept in a storage unit instead of the dusty attic of our old house. I’ll look at each one (and we’ll need each one in order to cover this huge tree) and know of the memories it represents. There are ornaments from trips to family reunions, our first trip south for Kevin to meet my extended family, two trips to Europe. I have the ornament we purchased while on our honeymoon and the ornament I gave him on our 25^th wedding anniversary. Some ornaments I made by hand and several were made by our children. 

This year, I’ll place three new ornaments on the tree—small, beautiful, hand-crafted bangles given to me by friends as we celebrated at a holiday dinner last week. The four of us are all single women who happened to live in the same neighborhood—two divorced and two widowed. We gather each month at one of our homes or at a local restaurant and share equal amounts of celebration and commiseration. They (and many others) were there for us during Kevin’s illness and then for me after his death. I cherish these friendships as well, and find myself hoarding away little incidents and big news as I go through the month, in order to share with this group who understands better than most what this new life entails.

There are other recent events that cause both smiles and contemplation: I reconnected with a wonderful friend last week that I hadn’t seen since my wedding day. Twenty-seven years evaporated like the steam from our coffee as we caught up on our lives and made plans to keep in better touch. It’s always good to be reminded that I can reclaim some of the fun of the past and bring it along with me.

My siblings and I have started a new tradition of meeting just before Christmas to lay a wreath at my parents’ grave and have lunch together--a new tradition that brings sadness and laughter colliding together. As part of my move, I found and watched several old videos of my family sharing Christmas Eve. Time moved in fast motion as I pulled one video out and popped the next one in, a year having passed in the moments in between. So much time and so little; so much change.

Old friends and new, just-born traditions and those well-worn, all bring comfort; they occupy in different ways the empty space that’s created when those so important are no longer here. I permit myself the time for sadness and hope that it settles into a place that also allows for the joy that springs up along the path when I’m not looking. 

Here’s wishing each of you a safe, joyous, peaceful, holiday season filled with both reflection and hope, and surrounded by those you love.