Thirty-five years ago today, my first husband died. It was completely unexpected, an undiagnosed heart condition. I had to deal with the police because of the odd circumstances, and then I had to deal.with the landlord who didn't want to rent to a young single woman, and pack up my life, put everything in storage (he gave me 10 whole days), find a new apt., And plan a funeral. If you want all the details, they are in a diary called "Grief Is a Journey." I simply lack the.emotional energy to write it all again.
A loss like that changes not only the path of your life, but leaves a hole in your heart and in your soul, a terrible and beautiful scar.
I was 34 when I stopped being a wife and became a widow. We were married for 6 years and ten months. I had been a joyous bride and a happy wife, loved and beloved. We did almost everything together, reading, going to movies and plays and conventions,just being with each other. We were each other's best friend.He was the hero of all my stories: my blue-eyed, fair-skinned, dark-haired Celt out of an Irish myth. If you want toknow what he looked like, google "Charles O'Connor Horslips." Change the eye color, keep the intensity, and replace the fiddle with a sword, and you have him, a little taller and a lot more feral and dangerous.
We met, briefly, at a science fiction convention. We fell in love at the meeting of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. A friend said it was fascinating to watch two strangers falling in love before your very eyes. He hadn't believed in love at first sight until that night. we were at a party but for us there was only silence around us, only us. The bond was instant. We were married long before we said words and exchanged rings, bound by the silver cord that ties two souls together more strongly than any law or ceremony. That kind of love is deep as an ocean, strong as a New England mountain, something ancient and mysterious and impossible to describe to someone who hasn't experienced it. It is beautiful and it is terrible and it is terrifying because it is so rare.
And then in another instant, all that was ripped from me. And everything changed. I was a widow and I was alone and nothing would ever be the same.
You will never be the person you were before that day. You will always be sadder. The world will never be as beautiful. Springtime will never be about rebirth,but about loss and grief. You will have learned a lesson most people don't learn until their 40s or even 50s: People your age can die. Sure, you may have lost grandparents or even a parent--they were older, they were usually sick with cancer or heart issues,it was expected. You were somewhat prepared. You had been warned. But 29 year-old men who fenced and practiced martial arts, who.had been doing b oth t h e day before-- they don't die.
Except when they do, and your own mortality chokes you for a moment.
For me, it was the moment my life, that life I loved with the man I loved in a city I loved, ended, and another began. I have now lived half my life--I turn 70in November--without him. I had to rebuild on.the rubble of my dreams,of our dreams,of going to Japan, to Ireland, of selling my first book, of celebrating a tenth anniversary at our favorite restaurant in Chinatown and throwing a party,of just living our lives together.
Instead, I moved to FL (terrible mistake) because my parents were moving there. We had lost my grandmother a month to the day before we lost Tim, and we were shell-shocked. I taught college English on Eglin AFB. I got involved with the local SCA and fandom. And every single night when I slept alone, I buried my face in a pillow and sobbed my self to sleep, because Dad had told me not to cry where my Mom could hear, because she had lost her mother and her son-in-law. Apparently it never occurred to.him rhat I.had lost the grandmother who had lived with us my e tire life and a husband and that I was overwhelmed with grief too.
I got through it. I dated. I went to SCA events. Strangers were kind to me. Eventually I met Mr. Witch and friendship became something deeper and more romantic. It was not quite love at first side because he was in a marriage that was falling apart and ended shortly after our meeting. It is a strong, rich and wonderful relationship. We renewed our vows on our 30th anniversary in September 2018. three of the people who were at our first wedding were there. I have lived some of the dreams I shared with Tim. Mr. Witch was Navy, and we spent 7 happy years in Japan together. We spent 12 less-than,-happy years in GA, took care of my father for 18 months, and survived a lot of bad things. We lost a house to.foreclosure. We filed for bankruptcy. Mr.W. made it through heart surgery. We moved up to New England, and lost everything but our cats the contents of the car and 6 small boxes. All the furniture, all the books, all the artwork and photos (Mr. W,unbeknownst to.me, had packed the photo album from Tim's and my wedding,plus a tiny book with photos of my grandparents), all my clothes.
We started over with nothing. We were living on the poverty line from 2015 to 2017, until he got a job in January ,2018. We replaced furniture a little at a time,first a bed and a mattress; year after t h at, bureaus; third year, a couch and chair. This year would have been replacing the dining room table bevause the chairs are literally falling apart,but replacing t h e engine of our car took the entire refund, his bonus, his pension from the Navy, a paycheck and $ 600we had put aside; anything left over paid rent and ls. march was rough. We were grateful we had the money. Tax refunds and IKEA bought us a new life. His job is keeping us comfortable.
Mr. Witch is not a jealous man. He knows about Tim. In a way,he resonates wirh him. They would have been swordbrothers. Tim was smoother, having attended a private school that gave us Nelson Rockefeller and Sargent Shriver, dated girls from the schools that produced Caroline Kennedy, was in the Knickerbocker Grays. He had 3 black belts and 2 brown, and was part of an informal alliance that was sort of an interracial preppy gang,because t h ey got tired of getti g beaten up by the Diablos. Mr W was raised in the Deep.South, rode a Harley, and played football fora small town high school. He was Navy Enlisted. What they shared was a love of reading, history, edged weapons, and me. Think a more belligerent but equally skilled Jamie Fraser from Outlander( in fact one of Mr. W's SCA persona was a Fraser, lo g before the first book came out.
How do my friends feel? Tim's best friend, a fight choreographer, actor, stunt man and writer, walked me down the aisle in September. The photographer had been a bridesmaid when I married Ben and was a college student in NYC when Tim and I lived there. She put together an album of photos from that time and my wedding to Mr. W. The couple who stood up with us. attended our wedding, but had been friends of mine for 40 years.
How amI today? Teary and sad that a young man who should have lived another 40 or 50 years died far too young. That all quicksilver talent and brilliant honor (maybe not so.much Jamie Fraser than Jon Snow, while Mr. W is more like Jamie with a certain level of cynicism and toughness and pragmatism that Tim never had) never got to bloom. I still love him. I will.always love him. The image of him in kneehigh boots and hose and doublet, flashing a slightly feral come-and-try-to-take-this-blade -away -from-me Mad Highlander grin, with a languid wave of one hand to.his opponent is how I will always think of him. And I will smile through my tears, knowing he is he in Valhalla or t h e back.room of Callahan's Bar, tossing back a single malt with Roger Zalazny, Robert Adams, and Sprague de Camp, with our black half Maine Coon cat on his lap.
If you want to know what he was like, Teel James Glenn wrote a book called Murder Most Faire, which is the way Tim.should have gone out fighting for what he believed in rather than taken by something as mundane as a heart attack. I wasn't quite as much a wet mess but damned close. It also includes the diary I published here,, "Grief Is a Journey. " You can get it from Amazon and Barnes and Noble in PB or ebook form.
So, Tim, I still love you. I will.always love you. That will never change. But I am okay. I am happy. I made it through the two.hardest parts, and Mr. W has taken up your mantle as ptotector,lover, friend. You would like him . Pet Corwin for me, and say hello to.Rover, Sprague and Catherine and Bob for mw. They are missed.
Remember this: You are not forgotten, and you are loved, still and always.