Remembering…

I wrote this as an exercise in remembering last year…

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Jim was in hospital and just out of the intensive care unit when I talked to him that night.

“I can get time off tomorrow and drive to Germantown,” I offered. It was Thursday and I could easily make it to Tennessee and back in a long weekend.

“No, I will be out of here by the weekend,” he said. “Let’s wait until the end of the month when you will be out of school and we can spend a week or so together in Florida as we planned.” he said.

And so I put down the phone not knowing I would never talk to him again. On Saturday I went out for a day of shopping and when I got back that evening, there was an almost incoherent message from his mother on the answering machine. He died unexpectedly that morning. His funeral would be the following Tuesday.

Tuesday was sunny and warm. It was April in Mississippi. I had spent the intervening days between the news of his death and this day in planning what I would be doing at this time. I would make a “saying goodbye” ritual for him to start at two o’clock, which was when he was to be buried since I could not go to his funeral. At one-thirty, I showered, washed my hair and put on my dark red top and skirt. It was an outfit we both liked on me. Dark burgundy red has always been the color of freedom to me since it was the color I chose to wear at my divorce hearing. Jim liked it because the skirt flared out when I walked, and it was a circle of light crinkled nylon that lifted into the air at the least breath of wind. I had been wearing it on the day we had gone to the beach in Destin.

It was spontaneous– he had suddenly swung the car off the road at one of the signs that said beaches—and we had walked along the shore. I had taken my shoes off and he sat on the sand and watched me venture with trepidation into the ocean. With an incoming wave came a gust of wind that swirled my skirt up around my waist and I looked over my shoulder at him and smiled because I knew he was watching and appreciating what he could see. Later we bought chocolate ice cream bars and ate them sitting together on the sand. We watched a father who was blowing bubbles for his child from the little dime-store bubble makers. The bubbles rose and drifted out over the ocean. That night, he told me again how much he loved me and how much he had enjoyed my company on that day.

At two o’clock on the day of the funeral, I took my journal, went outside into the mild sunshine, and sat on the front steps of my house. The steps were warm with the sun. When he came to stay with me, this is where we had sat almost every evening looking out at the cows that wandered up to the fence that surrounded my two acres and being peaceful together. Now, as he was being buried in Tennessee, I wrote to him. I told him how much I loved him. I told him how much I missed him and how angry I felt with him for dying and leaving me alone. I told him how much I wished I had not been so badly hurt in my marriage because then, perhaps I would have had the courage to marry him or at least go and live with him in Tennessee. And I cried.

After the tears ended, I closed the journal and, because we had talked about going back to the beach and doing this, I blew bubbles for him. I watched them rise into the air glinting in the sunlight. One or two popped softly on my face, but most of them drifted up into the intensely blue sky, were caught by a breeze and lifted out of my sight. And for him, I said aloud the “De Profundis”, the prayer for the dead that I had learned as a child.

“ Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice… Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.”

So be it.