I ran a 5k today, my first. I didn’t really run. I completed it in 39 minutes which is barely a jogging pace, but I jogged the entire time, stopping only once to linger in shade. It was 84 degrees at start time, quite reminiscent of the day in 2007 that Kevin ran his first and only marathon. That day was so hot a few of the runners crossed the finish line on stretchers, one was intubated. Kevin was suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion. He had a look on his face that was different from anything I had ever seen. But I would see it again when, a year and a half later, after surgery to his spine, he developed a hematoma and wasn’t getting enough air to his lungs or his brain. That run precluded his cancer by only a few months and he came to think that the extreme training regimen he endured could have had some causality.

I have never liked running. Honestly, I still don’t. I’ll run a few times a week and improve my pace, maybe shoot for a longer run someday, but I don’t think I’ll ever get the “runners high” that Kevin loved so much. I am a social person who loves group exercise like aerobics and Zumba or group bike rides. Kevin was more solitary than most people realized and he loved individual pursuits. He also loved a challenge, especially one that he gave himself. So running to him was a personal challenge to be better than he thought he was, or better than others thought he could be. I understand now, more so than I ever did before, how one can be caught up in the self- imposed challenge. I have dared myself multiple times in the past five years to move forward, try something new, do something I never thought I could. The decision to run a 5k (and I should say, I did it as part of a social group) was just another in a line of tests I’ve given myself.

Rising to those challenges has changed me in many ways. And I am constantly dealing with that change. I can’t help but feel sometimes an almost overwhelming sense of betrayal for all that I’ve started and accomplished in the past five years (and thanks to my dear friend Dania for helping me put a name to this strange feeling). If Kevin were here right now, he would barely recognize this person I’ve become: a teacher, a writer, a Detroiter, and hardest sometimes to reconcile, a happy person.

As I trained for the 5k--running with a group of people I’d never met before and making new friends as we moved along the Dequindre Cut Greenway, one of my favorite spots in Detroit--I very often thought about Kevin and his love of running. As I've mentioned, it was something that we didn’t share and there were times when I would be aggravated by his need to get up and run in the morning when the kids needed tending and we were all rushing to get out the door, or Saturday mornings when there was a long list of chores and he would go out for an hour to drive to the trail and run. It wasn’t until after he was gone that I fully understood how much he needed that time and that routine. His ADD made it difficult for him to stay on task and being able to tick something off each day before he even got in the shower was important and helped to get him focused for the rest of the day. Some of his ashes are spread along his favorite trail. I wish I had understood more thoroughly and been more generous.

As with many things around loss, I learn about Kevin and I learn about myself as I learn something new. I know that this challenge to run and complete a 5k was motivated in part by the feeling of betrayal or moving away. I know on some level I thought that maybe if I do something he would have  loved for me to do, I can be at peace. The first time this thought came to me, about two weeks into training, this Kenny Chesney/Dave Matthews song came up on my phone as I was completing my run.

Of course it never had before. It was part of  Kevin’s chemo playlist and was suggested to Kevin by another dear friend, Jenny, as he was compiling treatment music. I had purposely avoided loading any of Kevin's treatment music onto my phone because it's still very emotional, so I have no idea how it even got onto my playlist.

When the song came on after our run, I didn’t hang around the group to stretch, but went straight for my car and had a good cry.

Today, I purposely loaded Kevin’s running playlist onto my phone. I felt it fitting that he would be with me in this way; another challenge. I was running with him and for him and for all the running he was never able to do. I was running for me and our kids as we see a future and try our best to embrace it with all our hearts. I was running for forgiveness. More than anything else, I was running for forgiveness. 

 About five minutes into the run a goofy song came on that Kevin loved and I hated. I won’t even mention its name since it is really goofy and I’d have to tell the whole long story behind it. But of course I knew that he was laughing at me having to listen to this song, and telling me it was ok that I didn't love every single thing about him.

"Leave that burden right here, at this finish line, and don’t keep trying to make me happy. Make  yourself happy. Live your life."

I don't think I’ll ever grow to love running. But I’ll keep doing it. I'll keep running toward all that awaits me.

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.

Last night, I took my son to see Queen, the 70’s glam rock band once fronted by the iconic Freddie Mercury. Because my son is headed to Vermont next week to be a camp counselor and won’t be in Detroit for their local show in July, we traveled to Chicago to see them open their North American tour.

The trip to Chicago isn’t easy as I have lots of memories of Kevin in the city—from the times he visited me at Northwestern, and from the many trips we made while he was sick and receiving treatments in Evanston. I love the city. If it were more affordable, I would consider living there, despite the fact that the drive west on I94 is sometimes emotional.

Yesterday’s trip was laden with its own emotion, the result of being in this city and taking in this particular band’s concert. Most who know me know of my undying love for this rock group. It’s not always rational or understandable, and certainly wasn’t always easily understood by Kevin, who came to abide my love of Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon. 

This was my seventh Queen concert (in one form or another), and the second one that I’ve shared with my son. I saw them first when I was only fourteen—too many years ago to count. Just barely a high school freshman, I attended with my two best friends, Sharon and Susan, who were twins. We told our parents we were spending the night at each other’s house and convinced my sister to drive us to the show and drop us off at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit. I saw them four more times, and met them twice. Shortly after Freddie Mercury's death, Kevin and I saw guitarist Brian May while on a solo tour.

How do I explain my enduring love and fascination with this musical group except to say that they are a part of me, a part of my adolescence, my teen years, and my adulthood, woven into my life like threads of actual DNA. 

Together, Sharon, Susan, and I did all of the typical teen girl activities—we joined the fan club, collected magazines and pictures, hung posters on our bedroom walls and bought all their records. Memories of the band are connected to so many facets of my life. They were smart (four degrees and one PhD between them), good looking, and formidable musicians. And they were more. They quoted Tolkien and Shakespeare in their lengthy songs; they wrote about time travel, fairies, and other mythical creatures. It was rock music for geeky bookworms like me. It felt like home. The music, especially that sung by Freddie Mercury, was sexual in an androgynous way that I didn’t quite understand, but knew I liked. It was dangerous in a way that made us brave enough to lie to our parents about where we were. It was bigger than the four walls of our small houses and even smaller-minded schools. It was black nail polish (but only on one hand), costumes, song lyrics in Japanese. It was sensitive and rebellious. It was campy spectacle with a metal edge. It was loud and romantic and rhythmic and beautiful and rock and roll.

By the time I finished high school, my tastes had changed and I had moved on to punk music and its slightly safer cousin, new wave. My clothing, haircuts, and multiple ear piercings reflected this change. As Kevin and I began dating, my Queen records were dusty, but still maintained an important place in my collection. But they had been set aside for newer albums by The Clash, Patti Smith, the Talking Heads and Elvis Costello. I often had to defend my love of the band as they fell out of favor. I continued to collect their records—some rare bootleg albums, both of Mercury’s solo efforts, Roger Taylor’s solo album, and even a signed copy of a very rare 45 cut by Freddie Mercury on the day he met the other members of the band and they became Queen. I didn't listen to the music nearly as much. I also lost touch with Sharon and Susan as our lives took different paths.

It wasn’t until ten years later, as news of Freddie Mercury’s imminent death became public, that I revisited my enduring affection for him and his music. By that time, I was married and eight months pregnant with the son I would later take to concerts. The memories, mixed with the hormones racing through my bulging body, put me into a deep funk. I cried for days at Freddie’s passing. I sat in front of MTV for hours, watching as fans lay flowers at Garden Lodge—Freddie’s home in London. I mourned for the time of my life when my friends and I were happy and mostly carefree, and for the fact that I wanted nothing more than to find them to share these moments.

I believe it was the first time I took stock of what it meant to have a full life and to lose that life  senselessly and painfully. I mourned the too-early passing of this man and was utterly devastated by the way in which he died—the way in which AIDS took from him his voice, his sight, the very essence of his creativity. How awful I thought, to struggle so much at the end. I realized that he had filled his life so whole-heartedly while living, that he had lived many lifetimes in the span of his forty-five years. But of course, that’s no trade-off. He still left us too soon and was far too young. I thought a lot, in the months after his death, about what it means to leave a legacy, especially one of creativity; of dedication to craft, of choices we make. Conversely, I thought of regret, and how one’s life impacts those left behind.

On a family vacation to Switzerland in 2002, I made Kevin take a detour on our way from Zurich to Paris in order to stop at the bronze statue of Freddie in Montreux. I left roses at the statue and had a few photos taken. I thought about him again, about the significant impact he had on my life, and about this separate love I had that was somehow woven into my family life but was also a part of the me that existed separately from my husband and children. As we drove away and I looked back through the window of our rented car, I thought about trajectories. How lucky I felt that my path crossed his, if even for a few moments. But also regret that my life had not been a part of his to the extent that my teenage self had wished so hard it would be.

In the years since Kevin’s passing, I’ve become fascinated with the stories of other widows, especially those in music. Contrary to belief, Freddie Mercury wasn’t gay, but was bi-sexual. He had a relationship with a woman named Mary Austin that lasted for many, many years, starting when the two were in their early twenties. She was his soul mate who stood beside him despite his many transgressions. She is the executor of his estate, maintains Garden Lodge today, and is the only person who knows the whereabouts of Freddie’s remains (which he did not want to ever be made public). She has taken abuse over the years because she maintains her position to the chagrin of many who have tried to lay claim to some part of Freddie’s legacy. I admire her strength and the love the two shared. She is, absolutely, his widow.

It was with a certain amount of ambivalence though, that I purchased tickets to last night’s show. They are touring with American Idol Adam Lambert, who sounds like Freddie, but who seems to me to be lacking in style. John Deacon has retired from music and refuses to even be seen with Brian May and Roger Taylor. So it was just those two—a bit wider in girth and grayer of hair—that performed last night, along with anonymous back-up musicians. 

Despite the second thoughts, it only took the first beats of the bass to put me right back at the very first concert. I stomped my feet, I screamed, I danced, I shouted their names. There is something about feeling the beat of that very loud music tingle the bottoms of my feet, pierce the tip of my spine, and travel upward and outward through my body that makes me feel alive in a way that nothing else can. The campy spectacle and over-indulgent light show was back! The show included a few nods to Freddie, including film of him from old concerts. I couldn’t watch without tearing up—for the all the loves in my life, including childhood best friends, Freddie, Kevin; and for the never-slowing passage of time.

It was a joy to be there with my son, to see him enjoying the music too and to see him mouthing the words to the songs. I’m not certain what my legacy will be, but if just a tiny part of it is that I passed along the love of this music, then I think I’m ok with that.

I’ve been thinking about music for a few reasons lately. I recently spoke to a colleague about working on a music book project this summer. I’m terribly excited by the prospect. The book has to do with widowhood, so it feels perfect in many ways. I’ve also been reading Facebook posts by friends who share the “top 10 albums that have stayed with you over the years.” I don’t think I could narrow it to ten, but I’m thinking and trying.

Then I had a conversation with another friend about the music of our childhoods, during which we discovered a mutual love of Neil Diamond that comes from the fact that our parents loved and played Diamond’s music when we were young. Like the memory of cruising to the zoo, I can put on Diamond’s Holly Holy or Cracklin’ Rose and, with the first strums of the guitar, I’m immediately taken back to springtime Saturday mornings, doing chores while these records played on the turntable that was built into a stereo cabinet the size of a VW bus that occupied most of our living room. The windows were cranked open to let fresh air in and the volume was cranked up as loudly as my mother felt was respectable. 

Having now lost my mom just over a year ago, I’m also reminded of the several times that my sister and I took her to see Neil perform in concert. Mom worked on an assembly line for GM, cutting and sewing the fabric that would become car interiors. She worked forty-plus-hour-weeks and then worked another several hours each night with household duties. We always had a full meal for dinner (which we always ate together), and the house was pristine. My memories of Mom at those concerts, standing with us, swaying to the music, her arms raised in the air, are now some of the few times I really remember her feeling and acting carefree. They are powerful memories that sustain, and that come back to me readily after the first notes.

Oliver Sacks’ fascinating book Musicophelia, and Daniel Levitan’s equally interesting Your Brain on Music, both address the idea of music from a neurological perspective, including how we remember music, from individual notes to complete symphonies. For me, music is so closely tied to memories that—with older songs especially—the two seem intertwined in my brain. That has certainly been the case where music and memories of Kevin are concerned. I can’t consider our meeting, dating, marriage, or the time of his illness without also thinking of the music we shared.

We first connected over our mutual interest in the Clash. He borrowed albums I had purchased from the import bin at Dearborn Music and told me about going to their concert at a high school gym in Grand Rapids. When we moved in together a year later, the amount of duplication in our record collection spoke of two people with very similar tastes. They differed at some points, and Kevin quickly learned to accommodate my enduring love of the music of Queen and other 70’s rock bands that he had come to disdain. We also attended concerts together, some twenty or so over the years: everyone from Echo and the Bunnymen, to the Rolling Stones, to David Bowie, U2, and Bob Dylan. We made mix tapes for each other and for our kids—the first one for our son made while he was still in utero. We hung out at record stores like Schoolkids and Wazoo. We visited Johnny Cash’s grave and the bronze statue memorial to Freddie Mercury in Montreaux, Switzerland. We named our first puppy Mustang Sally.

So when Kevin was diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo treatment, it wasn’t surprising that music was part of that as well. At first, he made his own mix lists on his iPod, some songs soothing, some closer to battle cries. The radiology technicians plugged his iPod into their speaker system while he lay on the table bolted in under plastic mesh, and he put his headphones on as soon as he walked into the chemotherapy room. For round two, he solicited music from the many friends who read his carepages blog, agreeing to add anything that was suggested, even country songs and rap. The suggestions poured in and the list--over 200 songs which are still on our iTunes program--include Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong, Bill Withers’ Lean on Me, Mama Said Knock You Out by LL Cool J, a very fast version of Amazing Grace by the Dropkick Murphys, and Beethoven’s Symphony #3 in E Flat, Op.55, Eroica.

Kevin absolutely loved this list. It connected him to everyone that was out there supporting him during his worst days. The music cheered him, strengthened him, calmed him, and gave him nourishment as certainly as any food. He listened to these songs as the anesthesia took effect before his two spinal cord surgeries. He spent forty-five days in the hospital before his last two weeks at home. Every night, the last thing I did before leaving for home, or curling up on the chair next to him if I could stay overnight, was to put his earphones on and turn the iPod to “Chemo List #2.” The drugs knocked him out each night, but the music allowed him to sleep.

He told me that he had two favorites on the list: Dylan’s Ring Them Bells and Three Dog Night’s Shambalah. It was the closest thing we had to time spent planning a memorial service—I took that conversation as an indication that he wanted those songs played in remembrance. They were, along with several others. It was a music-filled service, as he would have wanted.

Of course I could not listen to this playlist, or even one or two of the songs on it, for the past three years. It’s still difficult to listen to Ring Them Bells or Shambala or Wonderful Life or Joe Strummer’s version of Redemption Song. I wondered sometimes, if those songs were lost to me forever, their tunes and words just too painful to have in my life. I knew my relationship to music was forever changed. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. So much of what we shared is just all around me, waiting for me to deal with on my own without any choice. But songs can be turned off or avoided altogether. It has taken some time, but I'm gradually putting the headphones back on and making music a part of my everyday.

I've managed, I suppose, to come to a different place. Now, when "Kevin songs" pop up on my random playlist, I simply let the tears come and embrace the time as a few minutes that I can spend in the comfort of memories. 

And I know that the memories will always come along with the music. Someday I’ll put the music on and dance, but for now it’s ok to just sit and listen.