Dear Heart . . .

This rainy Saturday seemed a good time to continue work on my project of turning an unused room into a guest room.

This has meant sorting through a desk and three crammed book shelves, so it's been time consuming, mostly because my heart keeps stumbling over relics of Gayland.

Today I was stopped completely by a note he had given to me on Mother's Day, 2000, along with a gift of two joined hearts in Steuben crystal. The hearts sit on a shelf in my living room. The note had been tucked into a drawer.

Dear Heart,

Blessed be you on this Mother's Day - and joy to hold dear the life you give and rejoice to see in fullness.

This bit of glass was to have been a Valentine gift -- but it better symbolizes this day and the joined hearts of you and Daniella!

So I rejoice to be giver and rejoice to see the joined hearts and share the giving love from your hearts.

Much love, Gayland
May 14, 2000




If you were ever the recipient of a note from Gayland, you recognize his stream-of-consciousness writing style.

 He wrote in full throat, never stinting on emotion or bothering much with punctuation. He loved dashes, and the fact that there are only two in this note is a bit unusual. And while I treasure all notes from him, this one is especially precious, for in it he at last reveals that he has started to understand the relationship between me and my child, a relationship that, early on, had startled him, puzzled him, and, yes, made him jealous.

He never had children of his own, and inheriting an adult woman as a step-daughter was a step into a totally unknown world. His relationship with his parents had been loving, especially with his mother, but he was taken aback by how very close Daniella and I are.

He was just plain jealous of the time she and I spent together, and sometimes, he was a bit of a brat about it. He was a world champion pouter, and I called him on it many times when we were visiting Daniella when she lived out of state. He would grumble and deny it and then eventually apologize. I think even he was surprised by his jealousy.

Eventually he came to understand that my love for him was in no way affected by my love for her. It was odd that a man so gifted in loving others was so worried that, in this one case, there wasn't enough love to go around. He would still have his moments, and Daniella and I would still call him out on it, but he truly did love her and her sons. Seeing her become a mother was amazing to him, and those two baby boys were the absolute light of his life.

So I watch as the joined hearts catch the light and give it back, much as his heart did every day in so many ways.

I miss you, dearest man.

Brightness falls from the air

It's a line from a Thomas Nashe poem, A Litany in Time of Plague -- certainly the one line that immortalized Nashe. It's a line in the middle of a stanza that's in the middle of the poem.

Beauty is but a flower

Which wrinkles will devour;

Brightness falls from the air; 

Queens have died young and fair; 

Dust hath closed Helen’s eye. 

I am sick, I must die.

Lord, have mercy on us!

But oh! How that one line speaks truth to those who have lost someone they love.

Brightness falls from the air.

That's exactly what happens when, in the midst of going about my day, I am blindsided by a vivid memory of my love. Anything can trigger it -- a view, a song, a news story, a flower, a sentence in a book, a TV show. Whatever the trigger, a vivid memory of Gayland springs full blown into my mind's eye, and for a split second, he lives in my mind. Then reality intrudes and -- brightness falls from the air.

Any transitory happiness flees, tranquility is gone, laughter fades, courage falters, hope fades, and bleak despair reigns.

Sometimes it lasts only a minute, and I am able to recover without anyone noticing that this black cloak of grief just enveloped me. Other times, it lasts for days, this bleak hopelessness. When this happens, I just fake it. Why suck others into my bleakest times? 

When it hits, the blow of grief has a physical impact. I feel my shoulders drop, my hands fall to my side, my knees weaken. Once in a while -- thank God only when I'm alone -- it has literally knocked me to my knees.

When that happens, I just sink down and sit there and let the dogs comfort me, as in their loving doggy concern they nudge me and lick me and lean close to me. When sometimes in the night I rise from my sleeplessness and walk outside, they all come with me, even the cat, and we walk the garden in the post-midnight hours, pacing back and forth between the garden "rooms" he and I created together until I am exhausted enough to go back to bed. 

And then, as if to make up for the black times, a period of tranquility will arrive, allowing me days of peace when I am allowed to believe I have come to terms with the loss of him. 

It's a lie.

Oh, I am functioning. I am even having fun. I spend time with people I love. I work on projects I care deeply about. 

But the impact of the loss of Gayland is never far from me.

Perhaps one day these moments will elicit only a fond smile. But for now?

For now when they come, they take the light with them, and brightness falls from the air.

Happy birthday, my love

Today is Gayland Pool's 82nd birthday.  Somewhere he is celebrating, I am sure, because he always liked a party.

He loved nothing more than gathering up all the people he loved -- and that was a LOT of people -- and plying them with food and drink and all the hospitality his generous soul could provide.

Gayland loved using the occasion of his birthday as a way to help others. One year we had a concert to raise money for Sudan. Another year we hosted folks organized against the death penalty in our garden. In other years, we  hosted fundraisers for animal shelters, the Women's Center and Women's Haven, and for politicians we supported.

For someone with such a generous soul, he was really bad at accepting gifts. He felt it was a waste of money, money that could have been used to help someone else. Partly, this was because he didn't hesitate to buy things for himself, particularly books and works of art that spoke to him. He knew what he needed to feed his soul, and if he could figure out how to afford it, he bought it.

But partly it was, I think, that at some deep level he didn't believe he was worthy of generosity. While I suspect I know the origin of this, I cannot be sure. This reluctance to accept gifts was something we talked about every Christmas and every birthday -- that he loved giving gifts to folks, and that he should allow folks the same pleasure in giving gifts to him.

"All you have to say is,  'Thank you,'" I would say to him, when he would begin in on how people shouldn't have spent the money, etc. And he would grimace and say, "Thank you."

Gayland's feeling of unworthiness is common, I believe, among people of his generation. Children of the Depression were raised amid scarcity, hard ground indeed for a theology of abundance to take root. He could be very tight with money. And yet, Gayland epitomized abundant love for others. It was mostly with himself that he was ungenerous.

To watch him move through a room, smiling, grasping hands, gently touching a child's head, an adult's arm, focusing intently while engaging with each person was to watch a lover of humanity in action. Children knew this instinctively. I can't count the number of times we would be stopped in a store or on the street by the sudden appearance of a small child who had wrapped him or herself around his leg. I soon learned to just stop while Gayland engaged with the child and I scanned the space for an anxious looking parent. Sure enough, here would come an adult, calling the child's name and looking simultaneouly relieved and suspicious. Who were these people with their child? Gayland would greet the parent, and gently unpeel the child, who usually was chatting away with him, and introduce himself and me. Within seconds, the parent relaxed, the child was transferred -- although occasionally one would insist tearfully that  he or she needed to go with Gayland - names were exchanged, and off we'd go on our interrupted errand. More than once, the parents and children turned up in church the next Sunday.

He was a child magnet. I think they recognized something childlike in him, a joy and amazement at being alive that they shared. His grandsons certainly knew they had an unfailing advocate in their Da, who believed they could do no wrong, ever. He was amazed at having grandchildren, and thought they were the most special, handsomest, smartest boys ever -- the Best Boys in the World. And of course, they are.

Just in time for his birthday, I finished some much needed work in the farmhouse, work that had been put off while we dealt with his illness, and then I dealt with losing him.

It has been a bittersweet experiece, because it is the kind of project we loved to do together, playing with space with Tino's help. I know he is pleased with the work, because if he wasn't I suspect he would have found ways to let me know.

So happy birthday, my love. I miss you every day.

And here's the latest project:

<<<<< You know the south porch that was falling down? I did as we talked about, my love, and took that wall out to add room to the kitchen.

               See the new space. >>>

You can see we whitewashed the floor like we talked about doing.

<<<<< I also removed the exposed shelves, and lowered the cabinet to I can reach it -- without my tall person here, I needed to do that. And I put up art where the open shelves were.

I also took the wall out to expose the stairs and open up the space beneath them as we'd talked about. >>>>>

And I took out the appliance center we never used and turned it into a seating area at the bar.     >>>>>>>

<<<<< I added lighting to the open space under the stairs and put a bench there to stow purses and things when we have a party.

<<<<<< Here's the view into the kitchen from the dining room. You can see the door in the corner has been removed when I opened up the porch. It makes the dining room much lighter. You'd like that.

Pierced hearts

A couple of weeks ago, I bought myself a potted Amaryllis bulb at Trader Joe's. Gayland used to give me one on or right after my birthday, figuring it would be open for Christmas -- and it nearly always was. 

The Greeks called these beautiful flowers Amarullis, which means “splendor” or “sparkling.” Even the unopened bud is very shiny.

The Greek poet Virgil wrote that this stunning red flower once was a shy nymph named Amaryllis. She fell deeply in love with Alteo, a shepherd described as having Hercules' strength and Apollo's beauty, but who paid attention only to his plants and flowers. He did not return her affections. Heck, he didn't even notice her existence.

Hoping that she could win him over by giving him the thing he desired most - a flower that had never existed in the world before - Amaryllis sought advice from the oracle of Delphi.

Following the oracle's instructions, Amaryllis dressed in maiden's white and appeared at Alteo's door for 30 nights in a row. Each night, outside his door, she pierced her heart with a golden arrow, causing blood to fall to the ground. Finally Alteo opened his door. There he beheld a gorgeous scarlet flower, sprung from the blood of Amaryllis's heart.

Well, that got his attention. He got his unique flower, Amaryllis' heart was healed, and she got the object of her desire. One hopes they were happy with the bargain. One also thinks the oracle was a creep.

Today, the amaryllis symbolizes pride, determination and radiant beauty. Other sources say it symbolizes success, strength, and determination.

I say it should symbolize the lengths to which some besotted young women will go to catch the attention of an oblivious male.

For me, it's a sweet echo of gifts of beauty from my absent love. This particular Amaryllis has put out two shoots, creating an absolute spectacle of itself. Gayland would have loved it.

Sable has adopted it as her own personal stage setting, sitting beside at every opportunity because she knows its bright red enhances her sable beauty.

It IS gorgeous. Looking at it makes me smile through my tears. 

Rough ways

We humans like to mark time off in significant chunks -- a birthday, a holiday, an anniversary. I guess we think it gives us some control over things -- one of the many things we kid ourselves about in life.

Yesterday, December 11, was the anniversary of his death. A year. Three hundred sixty five days without him.

The presence of his absence still is enormous, filling up most of the space in my life. I maneuver through and over and around it, but still, it can suck all the oxygen out of the room in a nanosecond. It ambushes me multiple times a day as I live and work and have my being in this space we created and occupied together. He left his mark on every square inch of this place I call home, so while I love it, and it is indeed a refuge, it also exacts an emotional toll.

This manifests in seemingly irrational acts, because inanimate objects become sacred holders of memory. Silly things, like two juice glasses in the dishwasher.

There they sit, the two cleanest juice glasses on the planet, because I haven't been able to move them from the place he last put them. Every morning he would pour juice for us, mine in the glass with the red ring, his in the glass with the yellow ring. They were the last glasses remaining from a set of eight that he bought years ago in one of Neiman Marcus' "gifts under $25" sales ( he loved those sales). Every day after breakfast he would rinse them off and put them back in the dishwasher. He did so that last day at home. And there they have remained. Not being used, but getting washed regularly. Silly. Like I said, grief can make you do things like that.

Earlier this year I wondered what it would be like, a year out from his death. I hoped it would be easier, that the pain would lessen, become more bearable. And I guess that has happened to some degree. But there are times the grief still is so raw it's as if he just died. I find myself angry -- angry that he's gone, angry at the many physicians who failed to diagnose a damn urinary tract infection that eventually became septic and killed him, angry at a medical establishment -- a world -- so ready to write off a man becoming increasingly frail because, hey! he's nearly 80.

The rage is huge and a little scary, so I try not to inflict it on anyone else. And I try to direct its fire into work that might make the world a little better. God know there's lots of that work around.

Anger and grief use up a lot of energy, I've discovered. At the end of the day, I am often just done, able to do little more than sit in my chair and hold a book. Sometimes I even read the book. Sometimes I watch TV, although often I discover I have zoned out and missed significant chunks of the show. Thank God for rewind.

Motion is what gets me through the day. I move from one task to another, one project to another, one hour to another. I am grateful for generous colleagues who have been willing to abide with my distraction, to put up with some missed deadlines, to be flexible on the days I can barely move.

I am most undone by the kindness of people -- the flowers close friends sent yesterday, the quiet glances, the prayers, the notes.

Because the grief is still right there. Right under the surface of my composure, lurking. And the season isn't helping much, calling forth memories with every emotionally laden holiday chore.

What does help is that The Episcopal Church is in the season of Advent, a time of reflection, preparation and anticipation. Virginia Theological Seminary offers #AdventWord, "a global, online Advent calendar. Each day from the first Sunday of Advent through Christmas Day, #AdventWord offers meditations and images to inspire and connect individuals and a worldwide community of believers to the themes of Advent. You can stay up-to-date by signing up to receive #AdventWord emails here, visiting AdventWord.org, and following the project on Facebook and Instagram."

The AdventWord for today is #Rough, a reference to John the Baptizer saying that "'the rough ways will be made smooth' in preparation for the coming of God."

I am intimately familiar with the rough ways - my very soul has been abraded by the harsh emotional winds of this last year. Grief still resides in my throat, making it impossible to sing, or even say some prayers out loud.

The #AdventWord for December 11 was #Go.

But I have no idea what comes next, for grief isn't a tidy linear process. It follows no rules, listens to no rational explanations, heeds no timeline, schedule, or plan. It is the shadow of the Holy Spirit, blowing where it will, when it will, taking no prisoners.

Oh, my love. I miss you so.

A wedding anniversary. Alone.

Today is our 27th wedding anniversary. And for the first time, I wasn't awakened with a kiss and an "Happy anniversary, my love." There were no flowers with  my coffee, no chocolates by my plate, no small package waiting to be unwrapped, no him hovering in happy excitement. He was such a romantic.

Today also is All Souls Day, the day we pray "for all those whom we love but see no longer."

It was important to Gayland that on the day we wed we also remember his deceased parents, Mattie and Mart, his brother Larry, and his 8-year-old nephew Jeffrey.

While the loss of his parents was hard, the untimely deaths of Larry and Jeffrey in an automobile accident was a life changing moment for  him. When almost overwhelmed with grief and loss, he determined to live a life centered in joy and love of God, and it shaped his life and his ministry from then on.

Now that they are all together again, I remember them all, along with my parents, Judy and Alan Sherrod. And while part of me wants to spend the day in bed under the covers, tonight I will be attending the world premiere of a Requiem for the New World, a piece commissioned by Trinity Episcopal Church here in Fort Worth. It is unusual in that it is in Spanish. The young composer, Nico Gutierrez, sang in the Trinity choir when he attended TCU.

Tonight's Requiem is part of the All Souls Day liturgy. It will be presented again on Sunday as a concert. They are making a recording of it, which is good, because I believe all the tickets for both evenings are gone.

Music was such an important part of our life together, and I find it unfair that I can barely listen to music any more without it laying waste to my emotions.  I have no defenses against lovely music. Whether I make it through this entire evening remains to be seen.

But still, I am trying, my  love. I am trying. I am trying, as the poem below says,
 to do what you would have wanted, to give what's left of you away.

Epitaph
By Merrit Malloy

When I die
Give what’s left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.

And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.

I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.

Look for me
In the people I’ve known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on in your eyes
And not your mind.

You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.

Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.
##

Eight months and ten days on

The rains came, and the purple sage bloomed. He always loved the sage.

There's so much to talk to him about. The wisteria bloomed! In August!?! A particular former bishop announced his retirement. A hawk landed outside the round window and then drank out of the bird bath, giving tiny heart attacks to every bird in the area. Robert Mueller is getting convictions. And our grandsons are both in high school (!) a fact that would have made him grin ear to ear at those beloved boys.

 

And you know what surprises me? That I can still be caught by surprise when I turn to tell him something. That the grief is still so raw, so painful.

It's been eight months and 10 days since he died. It feels like it was this afternoon.

I guess I believed those who said it won't go away but it will get easier. And yet here it sits, hunched just one thought away behind my veil of composure, ready at any moment to take my breath away, fill my eyes with tears, make my chest fill with pain.

I've gotten really good at disguising these attacks, at turning away or going silent or concentrating really hard on something else until I regain control. But when I'm alone it always wins, leaving me weeping from the force of the longing for him.

So I just keep moving.  I made through General Convention, even though every time I walked out of the House of Deputies and he wasn't there waiting for me, smiling and saying, "Hello my love," my heart hurt. And oh, he should have been there when I was honored by the president of the House of Deputies, Gay Jennings, because the work that was being recognized was made possible by his support, his wisdom, his having my back every minute. He would have loved it!

 

I made it through vacation in Hawaii, the vacation he bought and paid for the spring before his death. 

And I am surviving going through his office, although I can only do so much at a time before the emotional toll is simply too much to bear. He and I had talked about other ways to use the building his office is in, because as he got more frail, he worked there less. He always loved playing with ideas for new uses for old spaces.

But remember, we are talking about a space Gayland Pool occupied for many years, so every. single. cubic. inch is filled with stuff he kept -- books, art work, photos, books, letters,  cards from people he helped, people he married, people who loved him (thousands of cards), files, books, prayer cards, prayer books, hymnals, and more unidentifiable things than you can imagine.

And I have to go through it all, because his filing system was, well, very unusual. I found the title to his car in a file marked "pets." See what I mean?

And art work! What wasn't on the walls was stacked against the walls.

I found the brochure about the walking tour of historic sacred
spaces that he helped create.

And more political banners, bumper stickers, tote bags, and other items from the causes he supported than you would believe.

He gave money to every progressive cause that helped women, children, minorities, the vulnerable, the environment, and animals. He loved the ACLU. He was a life member of the NAACP.

And his sermon materials. Oh my. File after file for Year A, B,and C. Fifty years of priesthood wrapped up in notes, sermons, and more notes.

And that's all in the first room . . .

So please pray for me. For stamina, for wisdom, for patience, for discernment of what to keep and what to let go, for, well, for making it through to tomorrow without this beloved maddening, funny, wise, smartass, courageous, caring, creative, disorganized, energetic, and loyal man.

Oh God, my love, how I miss you.

A vacation gift from my valentine

Last year, when Gayland began failing, I kept getting phone calls from Westin Resorts, saying they needed to talk with me about my Westin vacation.  It sounded like a sales call, so I would just say, "I don't have time for this now," and hang up.

This went on for months. Gayland got sicker, and then he died, and my world just shut down to trying to make it from one day to the next. But these calls from Westin kept coming.

Until finally, on Valentine's Day, I said, "What is it you want?" And the woman told me that in the spring of 2017 Gayland had bought and paid for a 5-night, 6-day stay at a Westin Resort on Maui for two adults and two children under 18 and I needed to schedule it before the time ran out.

What?

In a daze I listened to her explain that it came with a rental car and a $75 voucher for use on the resort and I needed to schedule my stay soon. I explained to her what had happened, and she immediately extended the deadline until September. After the shock wore off, I consulted with my daughter and we selected a date.

So on July 16, my daughter, my two grandsons, and I flew to Maui, courtesy of Gayland's Valentine's Day gift.

It was wonderful. It was heartbreaking.

He and I had stayed on Maui twice, most recently five years ago.  Almost every day, he would say, "We have to bring the boys here." And I would agree. He was especially pleased to find a cafe in Lahaina called Da Kitchen, which he decided was Da's Kitchen (the boys call him Da).

When the plane took off I was almost overwhelmed with the sense of loss. His absence was so huge I could hardly breathe. He would have so loved to be there with us. He loved swimming in the ocean and he and the boys would have become waterlogged together. He would have snorkled endlessly with them. He would have loved watching them at the aquarium and urging them to try new foods. He would have loved their reaction to the volcano, to seeing all the new variety of birds and plants and all the colors the ocean can be from one minute to the next.

So I know he was smiling at their antics in the ocean and loving their having this time in a beautiful place. We came home full of new shared adventures and experiences.

They did love it, my darling, just as you knew they would. But it would have been so much better with you along.

What is heaven worth without dogs?

When you've lived with someone for 26 years, there is a lot of stuff involved -- and a lot of photos stuck here and there.

So yesterday, as I was cleaning, doing laundry,  and trying to get ready for General Convention in Austin, I happened to open a drawer in Gayland's bedside table.

And there was this photo.

This is Gayland with his beloved dog Esau. I am convinced it is a photo of their reunion in heaven.

Esau was a foundling, like all our dogs. Gayland found him lost and wandering on Meadowbrook Drive and brought him home. He left me a cryptic voice message that said, "The little hairy man and I are home, waiting for you." So I arrived home from Channel 13, where I was working at the time, full of curiosity.  And fell in love with Esau.

Esau was indeed a little hairy man. He was -- it turned out -- a loose coated wire-haired dachshund. Who  knew that was a thing?

But what a precious thing. He and Gayland bonded at once. Gayland had never had a dog that was just his. They had had family dogs, but Esau was totally HIS. They adored each other. Oh, Esau loved me too, but it was clear I was a distant second to Gayland.

In 2012, while we were on a trip to Sicily, someone left a gate open, and Esau and another dog got out and were killed by a car. Another of our dogs was badly injured. We came home to this news, and we were devastated, Gayland especially so. The loss of Esau was huge.

A few months later, we got two more wire-haired puppies who had gone soft coated, and we loved Ms. Wiggles and Toby, but they weren't Esau. I don't think Gayland ever really got over that loss.

So I look at this photo, and I smile. I know Esau was waiting for Gayland and greeted him with squeals of joy and wiggles of delight. Rusty was there too, and Molly and all our other beloved dogs who went on ahead.

Of course they were.  For what is heaven worth without dogs?

Triggers

When the longing hits, it's a full body experience.

It can be triggered by driving past a restaurant we liked, walking into church, seeing friends he loved, seeing an art exhibit he would have found interesting, coming home from a party. . .

The longing is so intense it takes my breath away. Just today I almost had to pull over to the side of road to catch my breath because it was so intense. All from passing a church where he served.

This weekend I met my new grand nephew for the first time, and as I drove home, all I could think about was how Gayland would have loved him. Gayland loved this baby's mama from the first time he met her as a little girl, and he was overjoyed with the news of her pregnancy. He would have loved seeing this baby boy's beautiful hands, and would have marveled at his composure at being surrounded by all the Sherrods -- something even Gayland found overwhelming at times.

Waiting on a vote at General Convention in Philadelphia, 1997

This week, as I get ready to go to the General Convention of The Episcopal Church next week -- this is the governing body of our church that meets every three years -- I miss him so much it hurts. For years we went to Convention seeking to change things in this diocese so women could be ordained priests here, and LGBTQ Episcopalians would be loved and welcomed in all orders of ministry. He paid a big price for this advocacy work, forced into early retirement by a bishop who couldn't do anything to me, a lay woman, but could go after my priest husband. The financial hit from that was a big one, one that remains with me, but Gayland never regretted our work.

Our partnership strengthened both of us, but certainly me. I found the courage to take on the church governance because I knew he had my back, that no matter what happened, he was there with and for me, even if he was back at home taking care of everything there. But he always managed to come for at least part of Convention to be with me. He was my strength and a lantern to my feet. Going to convention alone feels so wrong.

And now as I look down, I see all the dogs have gathered by my feet, and the cat is curled up next to my keyboard.  This always happens when I write things like this. So here we sit, one very lonely human amid five animals, all of us missing him.

A broken heart gets in the way

The other day I was watering the garden and right in the middle of the walk, as carefully placed as if by plan, was a small stone in the shape of a heart.

A broken heart.

It stopped me in my tracks. I picked it up, turned off the water, and walked over to the pergola and sat down to contemplate it.

It is a tiny thing. about the size of a nickle. But its impact was huge. Because I had been telling myself I was doing really well.

I was lying. My heart is broken. I am in the most familiar of places and yet I recognize none of it. Without him, all is foreign, all is strange, meaningless.

I am lost.

Stand still.

The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. you must let it find you.

"Lost" by David Wagoner

From Collected Poems 1956-1976

"Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known."

That is how I reply to people who ask, "How are you?" I say, "I am here." But Here is indeed a powerful stranger, unknown territory full of mysteries.

Last month his will was probated, a legal procedure so dry and formulaic that it made me want to scream, "Stop! What he wanted mattered more than these muttered rote words and scripted replies in a courtroom. He is not just one more 'case' come before you. He was wonderful, beloved, delightful. Can you not see that the whole world is diminished without him!?"

But of course one does not act that way in a courtroom when one is just a bit player in a minor legal drama that just happens to deal with the death of a beloved husband. 

So now I am officially his sole heir and executor. He had already made provision for others to be cared for, so his will was very simple and straightforward. Now I am tasked with inventorying our "estate," a word much too grand to encompass our eccentric and very personal creation of a home.  How am I supposed to put a dollar value on our life together? For that is what it feels like I've been asked to do. 

I have sat down again and again with all good intentions to start this task and end up walking away again and again, helpless before the impossibility of it. Yes, I have found deeds and records and all manner of documents, but I can't seem to go much beyond that. 

So I wander outside and watch Raven and Wren in the garden, although my Raven is actually Crow. Yes, Crow has taken up residence here this spring, and unlike the busy noisy wrens, he is a creature on a schedule. He comes to the pergola fountain at the same time every day to drink, scattering any loitering squirrels and daring my dogs to challenge him. They just act like they haven't noticed him. He perches on the bubbling top of the fountain and boldly drinks without even looking around. He doesn't care if I am sitting three feet away watching him. When he is done, he looks directly at me, and we eye one another in silence for a time. Then I tell him he is beautiful and he bobs his head at me, and takes off over the pergola, crying his raucous challenge to the skies.

Odd how I have come to count on those encounters. I sit and watch the birds, and the lizards and other creatures who share this space with me and wonder if they notice how different it is without him. And I wonder if grief is making me a little bit mad. A good friend who has endured a huge loss herself told me to call her whenever I needed to ask if I was crazy or not. Now I know what she means.

Grief does create a mad space in one's life, a space that makes no sense, a Here that is a powerful stanger, one that may or may not give you permission to know it. 

Missing my birthday boy

My beloved was born on April 23, 1937. So Monday was a hard day.

Because every year on our birthdays we would begin the day the same way. The one who was not having a birthday would ask the other, "How shall we celebrate your birthday?"

And we would then explore increasingly elaborate ideas -- go out to dinner, go to a  movie, go to a Broadway show, book a cruise, go to Mexico, go to Italy.

But we each knew what we would end up doing -- having dinner together here at home. In the garden usually on his April birthday, in front of the fireplace on my December birthday.

His birthday dinner in the garden 2015

Because nothing, absolutely nothing, was as much fun as just the two of us together in a place we had created together, eating and drinking and talking and laughing.

Daisy wishing her daddy happy birthday in 2015

He was among the smartest people I know.

I so miss his wit, his observations on the day's happenings. He was generally kinder than I am, but then, a lot of people are. Conversations with him were always interesting, challenging, and just plain fun. He taught me so much, and stretched my world view in so many ways.  He was so widely read -- and I swear, he retained it all.

He couldn't remember to pick up the stuff I asked him to get at the grocery store, but he could remember something he'd read ten years ago in a  Nikos Kazantzakis book.

A thousand times a week I think, "I have to tell him about . . ." And then reality intrudes.

I so miss our conversations, my love. I know you are probably having a wonderful time tracking down all the writers whose work you loved, but I wish you were still here. Things are more than a little bleak without you.

You would have been 81 years old on Monday, but those numbers truly mean so little when I think of you. Your vibrant spirit, your wit, your charm -- they were ageless.

So on Monday, I set up a gofundme account, the Gayland Pool Memorial Outreach Fund to raise $10,000 to carry on the ministries you were so passionate about through the work of the congregation at St.  Luke in the Meadow Episcopal Church. We've raised nearly $3,000 of it so far.

It's helping me get from one day to the next. Because it's damn hard.

I miss you so, my love. So much.

An empty garden

This is the time of day when I miss him most - early evening, when the day is drawing down and we both would stop whatever had kept us busy that day and turn to one another for companionship and conversation.

He would make me a drink and -- if the weather permitted and it nearly always did - we would head out into the garden. The dogs knew this routine so well they would meet us at the crossing in the walk -- are we going to sit in the pergola or in the Chapel Garden? When we would tell them which, they would tear off ahead of us, thrilled to be outside with us, knowing we would be playing with them, talking to them, laughing at them.

Daisy and Sam still look at me this time of day when I step outside -- are we going to spend time out here together, their eyes ask?

But I just can't. Sitting in the garden without him is so meaningless, so arid, so devoid of contentment that when I do sit outside I end up weeping, and the smaller dogs end up huddled around my feet, with big dog Booker putting his paws round my neck and embracing me in his distress.

I worked all day yesterday in the guesthouse garden, and when I finished, dirty and exhausted, I realized I had already turned to call him to come see how it looked, to come have a drink with me there while we enjoyed it together. But he isn't here, and the joy in the beauty of the space drained away, and it became just another job among many to finish.

I know the dogs worry about me. When I collapse in the garden weeping, they pile all over me, upset and trying to figure out what to do. I suspect if it weren't for them, I might end up curled up in a ball out there.  But they are here, and so I don't end up that way.

Instead, I walk into this oh-so-empty house, wash my hands, wipe my face, and try to figure out how to move through the next few hours until I can fall into blessed sleep, where, for a few hours in treacherous dreams, he is still with me in the garden. Because, in my dreams, we are almost always in the garden.

But the price paid for these sweet dreams is awakening every day to the knowledge of just how enormous is the space his absence occupies.

God, how I miss him.

Cold Wind

He loved Holy Week and Easter.

Yes, these liturgically-heavy days were busy, but being the world's biggest extrovert, he drew energy from it. He especially loved the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday services. Oh, of course he was tired in the week after, but while he was in the midst of it, he was fully present in this most dramatic week of the church calendar.

Gayland in Israel

Early in our marriage we had Holy Week and Easter in Israel. We spent Palm Sunday in Jerusalem, then most of Holy Week in the Galilee. We were back in Jerusalem to walk the Via Dolorosa on Good Friday. We went to the Easter Vigil at the ancient church of St. Anne's. And after wards we walked back across the Old City on worn stone streets bathed in the light from a full moon. We went directly to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to visit the candlelit empty tomb. It was a beautiful, powerful experience.

Gayland had essentially one Easter sermon -- through God Christ is risen and through the Holy Spirit he has moved out into the world. He was with the apostles and the women then, and he is with us now.

But Gayland is not. So, for now, the alleluias are stopped in my throat.  I have gone through the motions required of the season, and tried hard to be present. I have enjoyed the family being together, watching my nieces preparing food and filling eggs with some unexpected things (it IS April Fools Day), and watching the younger cousins and various dogs tearing around the garden. An intricate chalk design being created on the bricks of the patio took time in the early afternoon.

As we were finishing up the family Easter egg hunt, a cold wind began blowing from the north. The temperature dropped fast and little girls in pastel Easter frocks and boys in shorts and t-shirts began shivering. So the festivities were transported inside. Later, as it began to grow dark, I moved through the garden picking up cushions and putting hammocks away. The dogs accompanied me, subdued.The wind had gotten stronger and the air even colder.

It seemed more like February than April, more like mid-winter than spring, more like Ash Wednesday than Easter.

Sorrow's garden

Today I drank my coffee out of a cup he gave me many years ago. He called me his garden girl, and he was so pleased to find this cup that he could hardly wait for a special occasion to give it to me.

When we got married, he promised me one day of work in the garden every year. When he died 26 years later, he owed me 26 days. . .

Gayland and hot hard sweaty work just didn't exit in the same universe. Now, he WAS lavish with praise of MY work in the garden. He learned early on that it was a really really really really bad idea, when I had spent eight hours on a hot day digging out and planting a new flower bed, to say, when I proudly showed it to him, "Don't you think that bush would look better over there?"

Having a spade thrust into his hand and me saying, "OK, you can move it," and then me stomping off taught him that that probably wasn't the wisest move.




He loved the garden. He loved it year round. He especially enjoyed spring in the garden, when old friends reappeared -- the Lady Banks rose especially -- and new ones were planted.

 He didn't always know what a plant was, and sometimes when I would call him outside to show him some exciting new growth he would stare at the ground and finally say, "Now what exactly is it I'm supposed to be looking at?"

And I would point to a teensy shoot of green and he would grin and say, "Oh, that's fabulous." And then he would laugh at me and himself. His joy in the garden was all tied up in his love of me and this place, as mine was tied up in my love of him and this place.

But joy has fled the garden. It is now inhabited by her big sister, sorrow. His absence has made it all meaningless, leached the beauty away, and replaced the peace with grief.

And you know what? The garden doesn't care. It simply goes on, doing what gardens do, no matter whether humans are laughing in it, or weeping.

The absence of this one man, the empty chairs where he sat, the tables on which he put his drink, the empty walks along which he strolled with the dogs each evening before bed -- they are as nothing to the garden.

And, for now, the garden is nothing to me.

Just holding on

Today he has been gone for three months. I woke up knowing this was the anniversary of his death without consciously marking the 11th anywhere but in the cracks of my broken heart.

I try hard to avoid the "four months ago he was alive. . ." game because, well, why? But it still sneaks up on me and ambushes me with heartbreaking memories so fresh and real they could be movies projected on a screen. I come across a photograph, or a note he scribbled to himself and stuck in the tray of his car, or a list he made -- oh, how he loved lists, convinced that with a list he would be organized and invincible against his ADD. But, of course, he always forgot where he put the list . . .

Even sleep is an enemy, because, well, dreams. Dreams have become faithless purveyors of vivid images of him laughing, talking, walking in the garden with me, holding me, images so real that I wake up smiling, only to crash into lonely reality.

Grief seems to have taken up residence in my throat. I can't sing. I can't even pray out loud. Doing any of these things can cause me to dissolve into tears. Sometimes I can't even talk.

Music especially is difficult, which is simply mean, because I love music, as he did. We often had classical music playing in the house. But now one of his favorites comes along, and I can't bear it.

But he would hate it that I might go without music, and so I listen to it while moving through a world blurred by tears, or holding a dog who doesn't mind having damp fur on her back.

But the big dog, Booker, can't bear it when I cry. In his distress he climbs up on me, trying to cram all 60 plus pounds of him onto my lap. He doesn't lick, as the others dogs do. No, he gently prods me with his muzzle and rests his head on my chest, wrapping a leg around my shoulder. And then just holds on. As I do.

Booker and me, just holding on.