My mind continues to be consumed with the last few weeks of Roy’s life, his sick body lying there on the hospital bed in the living room. His last two breaths and then forever gone. Every now and then old memories find their way into my grieving psyche. August 26, 1972 was our wedding day. That day forty-two years ago the temperature reached 82 degrees, and the unusually hot Seattle summer as I remember it, left much of Western Washington parched and brown. Our wedding, at high noon, was held at Mary’s Catholic Church. The reception followed at my parent’s Mt. Baker home and early that evening we drove to Anacortes, boarded a ferry, crossed The Sound, and spent our first night as a married couple at Rosario Resort on Orcas Island. The details of the day and honeymoon week have faded, but I remember having fun camping at Moran State Park, and then driving to Vancouver Island in Canada camping and hiking and communing with nature for the better part of a week. At the end of September we returned to school, Western Washington State College, Roy was a senior and I a junior. The night before “our day” I had managed only bits of anxiety filled sleep. Till death do us part was incomprehensible at twenty years of age. Now at sixty-two the death of my partner, arrived too soon catching me off guard and unprepared.
I was concerned about surviving the first wedding anniversary without Roy. We always made it “our day.” Some years we would go away often returning to Moran State Park to relive that first camping experience. In the early years we often had our children with us sleeping in what we affectionately called the big blue tent. As they grew older we would leave them with their grandparents, taking an opportunity to enjoy a weekend retreat from the stresses of parenthood. Last year we had a nice dinner at the Triple Door, nothing particularly special, but a pause, to reflect and honor our commitment. I had no idea it would be our last celebration together, it was ordinary, not spectacular. We spent our twenty-fifth anniversary in Hawaii, and our thirtieth in southern France. We talked about planning an extravagant event for our fiftieth; a lost milestone that I will continue to grieve.
I spent August 26, 2014 remembering the good times as best I could. I stayed home from work and scanned our faded wedding day pictures into my computer as tears of sadness flowed listening to some of our favorite music from the 1970s. I felt melancholy most of last week. I am still struggling to step out of the gloom and embrace the crisp fall days that will blow in soon. Autumn was our favorite season. Roy loved the colors of autumn, deep gold, red, yellow and brown. Over the years many of his plaid shirts were some combination of those colors. Halloween and Thanksgiving were his favorite holidays and I have a collection of decorations that reflect his love of those two days. We began dating in the fall many memories of our days spent in Bellingham and those first few romantic walks in our waffle stomper boots kicking up the fall leaves on Sehome Hill come to mind.
I still find sleep difficult four and a half months later. I manage to get enough to get through the day, but I am chronically tired and emotionally drained most days. My memory seems to be returning, but I long for the days when I could keep many details in my head; the time between diagnosis and death are shadowy.
I feel as though I am suspended in a gelatin like substance; I cannot poke through. My feet rarely find solid ground; I am bouncing and rolling through time a blob. I witness the people around me walking freely, their gelatin casing melted away. Can they see mine?