With gratitude to David’s philosophy professor, mentor, friend:  Dr. Albert B. Anderson.

I am beginning to understand David's lifelong love study of philosophy. In those two words, "Horror vacui", Aristotle, Epicurus, Plato, Hobbes, Newton, Einstein, Planck and modern philosophers, scientists and theologians struggle with matter, its origin and  movement into and through the void. Where did it come from? Where does it go?  Why is it abhorrent?  Which might be another way to describe Alzheimer’s process of replacing a full life with black holes and the grave. Where do our loved ones go when their bodies are still here but their minds have gone missing? Where exactly are they when their bodies are gone but we still hold to the memories and a sense of them? 

And how to describe  the void of three years without  David's physical presence? Three years in the strange trinity of chaos, Covid and creativity.

Chaos: remove the ballast in a boat or a balloon and you are adrift. Being alone and hidden from view up on my hilltop shielded me from eyes other than my own, watching myself on the days of wrinkled pajamas, uncombed hair, moving or not moving through the minutes, hours of the day, doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. Trying not to feel guilty that I am living and David isn’t, so I should live life more fully for both of us. Excusing the aimlessness by reading the note above my sink of dirty dishes, the calligraphic art of the written words  given to me by another widow adding emphasis:

                                            It’s okay if the only thing you did today was Breathe.

Phone  calls, letters, invitations unanswered as I wonder how long and how far I can go before I am out of sight, out of my mind and others'.  Inertia. Empty.

The energy required to overcome that inertia varies, supplied by sunshine, friends, family, the needs of others that help to pull me out of my darkness. But it is too often Sisyphean. Daily effort with anticipation of the night and  the Lethe of sleep.  During Covid, I remove the mask covering my nose and mouth and replace it with a mask covering my eyes. Sensory deprivation. Sensory protection.

And yes,  even with remedies, still after three years, there are days when I can still be “in irons” (From my sailing days: means that the boat is stopped, pointing directly into the wind, having lost all headway. It will not sail off on either tack…even when there is wind, you cannot move).  And ironically (oh  David, where are you to catch and toss back the puns?), being unable to move, being still is still be the  only way to face the mystery.  That is what matters, that is exactly what gave David the joy and peace that passed our understanding. In the stillness I know I am still loved.

These long  years of Covid means that there are a lot of people no longer with us. Many have died, many have not completely recovered, having lost capacity and ability. We hesitate to get together, to be close, to hug, self-conscious to breathe each others’ air.  The forced isolation, the masks, the limited visits have stressed our civility. We all carry so much grief and the chaos threatens to overwhelm.

How to respond to such immense grief? Viktor Frankle, holocaust survivor wrote in “Man’s Search for Meaning” that our distinction as humans is our ability to recognize the space between stimulus and response; that moment of awareness is our only way out of a meaningless, " unfair" world of suffering.  Our power to choose our response is our freedom from being victims.  Creativity is a response, the human need to signify, and often beautify a moment that might seem unremarkable except for the fact that an eye focused, an ear listened, a voice sang, a hand wrote and recorded the choice.

Today I choose to remember what is the matter, what matters, : David. His life. His love. His wood. His words.

I leave you today with a poem left  this week on David’s grave from a dear friend, John Willson, a poet who worked with David, a gentle man who shared words and laughter and now, memories. The photo was taken on that morning at Angkor Wat in 2020.

Sunrise, Angkor Wat

Siem Reap, Cambodia

1

I dip my fingers in a small green tin

Of Bag Balm, rub it into my heels’

cracked skin. 3:50 a.m.,

one hour before our guide arrives.

Bag Balm: David kept a tin

in a pouch of his nail belt.

David, with whom I built a house,

applied it to his wood –chapped hands.

2

Leading through darkness, our guide

seats us on a concrete embankment,

the Big Dipper above.

Lights in the distance, a procession;

Like druid candles, tourist cell phones

blink out, one by one

passing through the temple gate.

David, his Alzheimer’s diagnosis

in hand, the deaths

of parents and siblings from the same,

said I love vegetables, I just

don’t want to be one.

3

Turn away from the east

for even one moment, and we miss

onionskin shades of night

peeling toward dawn, the barest outline

of temple towers that stand for a mountain.

As I’m starting to slow down, David said,

I find that I love dearly

the spaces between the words,

the silences they invite.

4

The sun’s first sliver

glosses the moat: the world’s ocean

surrounding the temple.

With long planned intent, David stopped

eating and drinking, lay himself down

on a railed bed at home, hospice nurse

and his wife attending, the bowl

from his final helping of chocolate ice cream

empty in the kitchen sink.

5

The sun breaks free of the holy structure

fully reflected in the moat.

Fellow tourists stand, stretch,

text their sunrises.

My gaze comes to rest on pale fuchsia:

a drift of water lilies just below us,

the still black water between them.

                                                                                                         John Willson:  jswbamboo@yahoo.com