Three Years Without You

November 14, 2018 marks three years since you died.

To commemorate, your son and I went to your favorite place, the Phillip’s Gallery, and onto lunch. Afterward we walked down 19th Street, where I first met you in 1977. That fall I was living and renovating a building at one end of the block, while you rented a place nearer the other end. One Saturday morning a building between us burned. Fire engines blocked the street. Their hoses snaked the sidewalk. I walked toward the fire and passed you walking away.

Whenever I write about our meeting, I always begin: I met him at a fire. A simple sentence for a long and tangled relationship. Still fire will always be an apt symbol for us.

Of course you know all this. A lot has happened to me since you died. We had your memorial service at the funeral home on Lee Highway. Your son gave a warm eulogy in which he had your mourners laughing at your quirks and antics. I was too numb to hear his words but I saw the deep sadness in his eyes. You were a hard father. I found you difficult, too, domineering, eccentric, even mean at times. A lot of things you did were better appreciated in hindsight.

Your friends got up at the service and remembered you with love and affection. That’s what happens when you die. People in the outer circles of your life hold to the good in you and let the rest go. I cannot do that for I must understand us.

We had your wake at the Italian Café. Appreciate the irony in our choosing a restaurant you despised. That’s what happens when you die. We, the living, make decisions you wouldn’t. Keep an open mind about the Italian Cafe. We had more than sixty mourners, many from your workplace, the Department of Energy. You might have liked the rainbow trout served. Or you might have said it was too dry. That was part of who you were: your refusal to be easily pleased or too enthusiastic.

Because you left no will, your son and I had to go through probate court and spend time and money jumping through Fairfax County’s hoops. Guess what? We figured out how to do it on our own. Even though you were told your cancer would kill you, you made no provisions for your death. You never made a will or told me much about our finances. Guess what? Your son and I figured it out.

In July 2016 I flew to Paris, where I knew no one. I sought direction. How should I proceed with the rest of my life? From my apartment in the 8th arrondissement, I travelled the city. You taught me how to study transit maps and hop on trams, subways, buses without fear. If I got on going the wrong way, I could get off and back on going in the other direction.

As usual I met people, but essentially I was lonely. Blue oh so blue as the cerulean of Van Gogh’s “The Church at Auvers.” What a stunner. I returned often to see Van Gogh’s painting at the Musee d’Orsay, comforted by it and the work of other impressionists. My loneliness abated when I flew to Krakow and met our son, who loved the city as we did. What joy I had in showing him our old haunts.

Yet when I returned home to Rosemary Lane, shadows overtook me. In Europe I could pretend you were somewhere else in this world, but in the house we shared for 38 years, I faced your death again and knew I could not remain within those walls. I started house-hunting with the help of my sister. Slowly I fell in love with the mid-century modern style. Low-sloped roofs over walls of glass, a style so different from our Cape Cod.

In October, 2016 I bought a light-filled house on a hill. Here I found a place that suits me, where I could begin to heal.