Past Is Prologue, Part Two

 Memory--both bane and blessing!  When Shane was first lost to me, the times I was impatient, crabby, or unkind came flooding back. In that First Worst Week I stapled the pages of my journal closed so I would be unable to go back into my past and review the times I had been less than my best self. And by “less than my best self” I might be referring to the time I told him he “was just lucky I was such an F-ing saint.” Except I didn’t say it as “F-ing.” And I might have “said” it at top volume—sounding more like a Shakespearean fishwife than a saint. Which, even at that time, the incongruity made me laugh. Do Saints go around proclaiming their Sainthood at top volume? With swearing? Probably not.

I experienced the common compulsion to Deify my lost love. The annoyances fell away. Shane was the Saint, a unicorn, a man above men. When my husband was stripped from my life, any of the imperfections became unimportant—all that mattered was his essence: his love, his humor, his gentle spirit. The fact that he insisted on folding the towels “wrong” no longer mattered.

 

Except—it kind of does. In keeping the memory of those little “quirks” about Shane, he gets to live on—more fully fleshed out than just a saint. The kids and I keep his “Shane-isms” alive in our conversations. We tell stories, we make jokes. We threaten to delay a loved one’s imminent departure by changing the oil or rotating the tires on their car, “real quick, won’t take but a minute.” 

Summer 1978

Seven years ...and love survives at the cellular level. Even as we shed our past, dissolve and transform, we carry the DNA of love into our future. Love is both energy and matter—it never ends, no matter how many years have passed.

Past Is Prologue, Part One

“Outside in the porch swing with my first cup of tea. The morning is cool, as it should be in June, and the swing rocks slowly. It seems a day of infinite possibilities—a day when a boy on a motorcycle might kiss a girl on a horse. A long, glorious summer day that will give way to a short summer night, a night of stars and kisses, whispered promises and scraps of poems.

For me, this is a month loaded with events and memories. Events that are celebrated but missing some of their zest. My birthday. Father’s Day, a bittersweet day--three beautiful young men a testament to our love’s immortality. Shane’s birthday at the end of this month, a day that has been traditionally celebrated with a huge German chocolate cake—his favorite. Memories are both blessing and curse.”  

I wrote that seven years ago, that First Worst June. Seven years—how can that be? Seven years since that January morning when Shane went out for gasoline and never returned. It is both forever ago and just yesterday. 

When I was a kid, I believed the prevailing wisdom that our bodies completely renew themselves every seven years—that all of our cells are gradually replaced over that time and we are a “new” person.  It seems so cruel to me now, to think that none of the surface of my skin bears Shane’s touch, no pat on my shoulder, no warm embrace. There is only the memory of that touch, and the tears spill. 

Time heals—yet seems the cruelest of chrysalises—a carapace that protects as we transform—but we still have to dissolve from who we were. Our future self begins to shape itself inside of the walls of Time. That process is both horrific and beautiful.