i rose at 5:30, as usual...and as usual, i laid alone in our bed in the dark and the quiet,
our three children still fast asleep, and as usual i wept over my wife's death, more than
eight weeks gone now...
i wept a bit harder this morning, because tomorrow would have been her thirty-ninth birthday...
and as usual,
after about an hour i got up out of bed and turned the coffee
on, then the computer...i read an email from my sister, in which she reminded me that
our beloved nana had walked down this same road over half a century ago,
as a thirty four year woman with five children in 1940's upstate new york...
i pulled the curtains open on the
kitchen windows and looked out at the eastern sky,
just lighting with the morning sun...the sun turning the
the clouds a deep red, somewhat similiar to lauren's auburn hair, i think,
but then, i see lauren in everything now...i think of an old saw,
"red skies at morning..."...i can't remember
the rest, i can't seem to remember much these days...
for a few moments as i stood in the kitchen i felt
defiant in the face of these dire straits, i thought, yes,
of course i will have bad days, days when i fail as a father,
days when i feel like i can't do it, days when my
sorrow overwhelms me, days when my longing to be with my wife again will
completely defeat the sound and the light of the world...
but, i thought, in spite of those truths,
i will do it, and we will make it...i thought, i
will raise my kids to love the way their mother did, i will see them
through so that they grow up strong, with big hearts, and
open minds...i thought, someday i will travel back to england, lauren's
homeland, with our children, and i will smile rather than cry as i show them
the places she loved, the places we happily wandered as young lovers,
all those years
ago...i thought, someday i will manage to look at pictures of lauren
on our wedding day and smile rather than
cry, i thought, someday i will be able to feel the beauty in this world and of this life, someday that beauty will pierce and even at times conquer
this grief...i thought, someday i will meet a girl who will make
me feel like a little schoolboy when she puts her hand in mine...i
thought, someday i will have the strength to use the knives and pans lauren bought me to cook again, someday i will make meatballs with my son again, someday when he is old enough i will
teach him the secrets of making pasta the way nana taught me, the way her family has done for generations
...i thought,
someday my heart will sing again, because lauren taught me to live and love from the heart, because her love
made me strong enough so that i realized that i
don't know any other way to live...
it felt good to think those thoughts, and to actually believe them
all, even if now, a mere couple of hours later, the defiance and hope
have dissipated like the light fog of a warm spring morning, leaving the scared, lonely, heartbroken me
exposed to this cruel world...as futile as this may sound, at one point this morning as i wept in our bed i whispered,
through my tears, o my lauren, help me, somehow, help me...and a few minutes
after uttering those desperate words i stood alone in the morning
quiet and had a moment of faith and hope, a moment when, to
paraphrase words my sister wrote to me the day after lauren died,
i believed in myself as valiantly as lauren
did...and for now, even though the weakness and sorrow have returned with
relentless and unforgiving force, bringing the tears back to my eyes even as
i sit in public, in a coffee shop, listening to music and
writing these notes, still, i can look at that moment in the kitchen as a prayer
answered: not what i want but for now it will carry me through the next few steps along this
seemingly endless road.