It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time. Kingsolver

 This post began on the morning of March 30, hours before the beginning of James' memorial.  Needless to say I have had a few interruptions, I hope it makes sense.  Also, for some unknown reason, I cannot insert a page break so this will appear all on one page.  If Matt gets to it, I know he will edit it correctly.

Friday March 30
The day has dawned crisp and clear, the ocean is a living thing outside my window with seagulls floating along and we have found ducks which are a sure sign of spring.  Since we are right on the ocean we don't have spring birds much, like robins and cardinals, but when it's warmer we will have a little flock of finches that nest in our grapevine.   I woke to hear the sound of internet voices from the front room and it flooded me with the memories of James in January when sleep evaded him and he would leave his computer on with documentaries from the History Channel or Top Gear reruns or, of all things, Anthony Bourdain.  He would often be asleep but sometimes would peek out from
under his hoodie and accept a cup of tea and a short visit to check in.  This morning, Matt was watching a movie and says he has only been up for a little while.  I hope so, it will be a long day.


Yesterday we visited with James' Aunts Marcia and Betsy, my sisters, and Uncle Jim. They have traveled from California, Hawaii and North Carolina respectively.  A lovely surprise was that Betsy's daughter Lissa and her two babies Charlotte and Noe came down from VT.  We met them in Peabody on their way in and had lunch then visited the Kaplan Family Hospice House for a brief tour and then home to Rockport for a peek at where Tanny and James lived.  After they left at about 4 and I checked my phone, I discovered that our friend Alex had already arrived in Boston and was intending to wait until 8:30 for my cousin Bruce's plane to arrive but I think he drove to Gloucester instead and went back down to the airport later.  This may all sound like normal family funeral activity for some folks and it is even for some folks in this family but less so for me.  It has been many years since I have seen Jim, Bruce and Lissa and I have seen Marcia only once in about 10 years.  I have said before that my life is very quiet and private- there are many reasons for this which don't belong here but it has made this experience very deep for me.

Someone wrote to me yesterday that they don't know where I get my strength.  I guess some would answer that they get strength from god, or from nature or from their family.  Maybe they get it from friends or from another devotional practice.  I have given this some thought and I think my answer is experience and love.  Some folks reading this blog may not know that I have been to many family funerals including my mother at age 11, my stepmother at age 16, my father at age 19, then my brother Johnny died in his 40's.  I was the AIDS Coordinator for the VNA of North Shore in the late 80's and was present for the deaths of close friends during that time as well, sort of a river of bereavement then.  And then my beloved brother in law Stevie the Swearing Lawyer suicided about 11 years ago.  I also lost three grandparents, an aunt and a stepmother whose funerals I did not attend.  When I started working as a hospice nurse, I tried to go to my patient's funerals but quickly found that I became too flooded with memories and emotion that would have been brought into my practice, so I had to stop.  Families understand and in my current role I don't have long, ongoing relationships, I am the first face they see before they meet their team so it's not an issue.  So you see, I do know the territory of bereavement.

 Saturday, March 31.

The strength I found for our lives since January came from love, from my love for James and his love for me.  I knew from the beginning, New Year's Eve, that James was terminally ill.  James did too, to an extent but he also had the magical belief that chemo would shrink his tumors and he would get better for a bit and get back to his job at least for a while.  As he declined, became weaker and more dependent, he began apologizing for being sick, for not being able to carry groceries or clean the car or wash the dishes. And we had a long talk about love and what love does and where it takes us in times like these.  It was love that allowed us to have the relationship we did which gave us a deep and mutual trust.  I trusted him to tell me finally everything that was going on and he trusted me to do everything I could to be sure he was getting the best care and make decisions he would make when he couldn't.  It was love that got us through some of the most painful conversations I have ever had to have with anyone, explaining about bowel obstructions, ileostomy surgery, daily bowel check ins and being the one to say ,"you can't get well, James, you are dying".  And it was love that made room for James to share with me the things he needed to share with someone before he got too sick to talk.  I know he did this same thing on some level with his buddies, Bobby, Jesse and Matt, and it was a big reason he wanted to get home from the hospital, to tell them the truth about his illness and to tell them his personal truths including how much they meant to him.  This is not something he did easily but it was crucial to him.

So from my perspective now, it is love that is keeping me going as we move through the memorial.  I am completely surrounded by James' love but also by the love and concern of my son Matthew who has been with me for three weeks.  We knew about the concern of others from the many ways it was expressed: cards, food, contributions of money and gift cards, and the endless offers to do anything we could dream up that would help ease the difficulty of the situation.  I'm sure if I had asked someone to wash my floors or change my oil, they would have done it with relief that they had been able to contribute.  But I couldn't , of course, I couldn't even think about it.  What we didn't know was how the relative pebble of James' existence, when dropped into the world, had created such amazing and diverse ripples of love and emotion, radiating out to so many various shores where it touched people in such meaningful ways.  I know that James was proud of his work and his ability to connect with so many kinds of people.

Sunday March 31

There was a time in his life when James did not have the confidence to go in to Dunkin Donuts to get a coffee, could not pick up the phone to call a cab or even walk from home to school.  He worked very hard and endured some very unwelcome feelings to get through those years but with the help of some wonderful friends who stuck and stuck by him, some dedicated teachers who guided him and other resources I will keep private, one day he just started walking away from all of it and made a change for himself.  I mean that quite literally, he started walking and lost over 85 pounds, he walked away from living situations that were not helping his life and he walked away from relationships that were doing him damage.  It took a number of years but he did it mostly on his own to grow into a strong, loving and charismatic man whose effect on the people he touched was much greater than he knew.  He would never, ever have expected to see the outpouring of love and respect in evidence on Friday and he would have been so very happy to find that people from all aspects of his life had come to say goodbye.

To everyone who came to the memorial and slipped me a card or a gift, I have no words to thank you.  My friends Cindy and Marja helped with setting up the event and Greelys did a beautiful job allowing our experience to be customized to James' life in a most supportive way.  Thankyou to Jim, Kelly, John, Minna and Mark for every moment of support.  By the end, I was overcome and running on empty and came home to my hot tub and my bed while the rest of our visiting gang went out to dinner and visiting.  I am still in bed on Sunday morning as I write this but will have a few hours today with my old friend Alex, the sneak, who added a day to his trip just to have the final check in before the week closes and my new life without James begins.  I do still wake in the night expecting lights in his room, the faint sound of his computer or XBox and the smell of a 2am cigarette.  I expect that will last for a long time.