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Jenifer’s Journal: Widow’s walk

Life has to end. Love doesn’t. — Mitch Albom

In 2004, a couple years from my second divorce, I thought maybe it would be nice to go out on a date just one more time before I died. 

My friend said, “Jenifer, you don’t drink and you do live on an island — try a dating site.”  I found the suggestion unseemly, not to mention, unnatural, but then my son-in-law said, “Just fill in the Match.com profile and I’ll post your picture for you.” 

The unheard of result of these unsettling efforts was that within 24 hours of my going online, I “met” Tom, the lovely man with whom I would spend the next nearly 16 years. Tom, the nicest man in the western hemisphere who, as a boy, was so gentle and kind he fished without bait.

A boy who graduated from high school on the short side, 5’8”, but by the end of his freshman year of college he was 6 feet and a handsome, strapping man with a profile worthy of coinage, who loved dogs, fast cars and eventually, some 30-plus years later, me — possibly in that order. Oh, and funny, did I mention he was funny? To paraphrase the psychologist in “Good Will Hunting,” neither of us was perfect, but we were perfect for each other.

We spent our first nine-plus years together making one couple out of two vintage people with decades worth of baggage between them, but we really liked each other, showed up “in sickness and in health,” and made one another laugh at least three times a day. In 2013, we decided to actually get married.

Why? Well, I got to be a June bride this time (there was that) but mostly because after nearly a decade together, we were just ready. Yesterday, June 23, would’ve been our eighth wedding anniversary but, sadly, Tom died two years ago on June 21, 2019 of a deadly complication from the chronic COPD he’d suffered for years. 

My first lesson in grief was that however long-term the illness, the death of a loved one always feels sudden. The sheer absence of him was shocking. It took up so much space that used to be filled with all those tiny, daily intimacies, knowing each other’s likes and dislikes, sharing private jokes, finishing the other’s sentences. It sounds so cliché because it’s all true.

All those small, shared rituals — Sunday drives, decorations taped up around the coffee maker on special occasion mornings, designated “No Entry” wrapping rooms at Christmas, on and on — cozy memories suddenly turned heart-twisting. Several years ago, John Boylan, a legendary figure on this island, came over for dinner after he’d lost his beloved Bea. He said the hardest thing for him was “not being a ‘we’ anymore.”  I get that now.

Tears ambushed me every day (and often still do) picking up the mail at the post office, walking past the men’s shoes section at Famous Footwear, a friend stopping me at the IGA to say, “I’m so…” I’d be crying already. That was my next lesson: My grief was in charge, not me. Eventually I realized those tears were healing, an affirmation that what we had together really mattered. In its way, my sadness was teaching me self-care.

The litmus test became anything that kept my heart open, like two baths a day, midnight walks, whatever. Acknowledging that need for self-care, just last month the Senior Center instituted a bereavement group, a place to share the weight, to know we’re not alone. What a boon for the Island, because grieving takes what it takes. Call Laurie Fanelli at the Center to register at 631-749-1059.

There are so many kinds of grief. The kind for a spouse is distinct because she or he is not blood-related. You’ve both started from scratch, strangers at first, building something that in all the world can never be duplicated. How can it just disappear? After Tom died, a friend wrote me: ”He will never be beyond the reach of your love.” Nor, I’ve learned,  will I ever be beyond the reach of his. 

Maybe that’s been my biggest lesson so far. Having these two “anniversaries” two days apart, one lead, one gold, showing me that grief and gratitude are two sides of the same coin.

Happy, glad, sad or mad, I’m a walker, all over the Island. I was down at Crescent Beach last week, striding along under the brilliant June sun, mulling over this column and I realized it was the only place that, when he felt up to it, Tom and I actually walked together. It’s a “widow’s walk” now, I guess.

Except my friend was right, we’re still in reach of one another, but he’s breathing deep and easy now.  Happy Anniversary, Babe.