Dharmaputra

April 29, I think.
It’s a beautiful day.
It had been warm and humid, but a dry front came through and cooled off at night, all the way down to the 50’s and its coming up through 70 degrees maybe, its nice, and bright and sunny.
I felt this morning like the beautiful weather was a slap in the face put up against my mood.
Anita has been gone two weeks now. Lizzy went back to school to collect her things. She should be back home on Sunday. Monica spent the night at her house.
So it was the first night I spent rattling around in that big old house all by myself, and let me tell you it weren’t a pretty sight.
For the most part I was ok. I did a little gardening, and took a dip in the pool, and sat out there and talked to her, … it wasn’t so bad.
But I had some episodes of bawling and moaning. I really let myself go, and, there was noone around.
Then I pulled up some old pictures, of Anita’s 50th. Actually Carol Fischbeck called and reminded me of that.
And I went through that and then pulled out my old journal from around that time, and oh boy, that was hard.
And I thought about that as an example of our life together.
And I was glad that I did that. You know I pulled out all the stops for her 50th birthday. You know I blew a lot of money on that thing, the lake house, and the massage ladies, and even flying her best friends in, and the big party, and all that. But I was happy to do it. I was proud to do it.
And at the time, I had no idea that we’d have so little time left. But we did cherish the time we did have, because as I said then, there were days when we feared we might not even see 50.
So all this is well, I won’t say “not unexpected.”
Ha, what is that, a triple negative? But still, you’re never ready for it. You dont think, we didn’t think it would come this soon.
And then at one point in the night I sorted out my feelings, literally. And that was a useful exercise.
It came to me yesterday, driving into work, what to do there, and I cut up a piece of construction paper into probably 15 or 20 pieces, and I wrote down all the different ways I feel on each one, and I had no trouble using all of them.
And so I layed them out on the desk, and I bounced back and forth between all these different feelings, I cycled through them in various orders and sequences, between anger and loss and emptiness and numbness and even a little relief, that its over with. and I forced myself to say, “yes. this is the anger. and this is the loneliness.” and its important to know the difference. and one of the feelings I wrote down was righteousness, I am confident I did everything I could for the woman, and I did my duty. I was happy to do it. I was honored to be able to do it.
But now all that’s in the past.
I’m lonely, and anxious about the future.
It’s like a page in my life has turned.
You know when you’re young you have no idea what life has in store for you.
But normally you think you have time, and you’re going through the process, … I don’t know … speaking for myself, I didn’t think too much, I was just living my life, just trying to survive and to have a life.
But then Anita and I found each other, and we built a life, and it was a good life. You know making a family, and building a nest, and everything revolving around the kids, and the community and the neighborhood, and that whole thing, that whole lifestyle, it was really good. I mean storybook good.
And now that’s all over.
Well, you know it’s kind of like people talk about a mid-life crisis, it’s kind of a normal passage, but even then you have a life companion to go through it with. The kids grow and move out, and you have this empty nest and all, but you still have the love of your youth, the person who was there through it all, there next to you.
But now I have to look at life on my own, and what’s in front of me?
I’ve talked this over with the kids and a few other people, and maybe there’s something good in front of me, but you know it’s like I’m going to have to make some changes, and its going to take some energy. Energy that I certainly don’t have right now, but maybe it’ll come.
The stabbing pang of grief should subside eventually and then I’ll move on to another phase. And I guess it could be worse, I’ve got some things working for me and you know you go through this whole process. I’ve got my health, I still feel like I’m productive, I still have some creative years ahead of me, and I still have dreams.
I’ll tell you one thing; I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. But I think it’s right and its ok to want to be alone, and it comes naturally to me, like Carol said, to “go solo” for a while.
I think about people out there who never had this life that I’m mourning, never experienced that kind of love. I won’t lie to you, a devotion and an intimacy that only comes from sharing life threatening experiences together, and then sharing other life transforming experiences, a love life so fantastic it was transcendental, and then creating a family, together, to be part of this cosmic eternal dance to add another leaf to the tree. For those who’ve never gone through all that process, and now, what is there to hang on to?
Well, this is just awful.
Oh yeah, I got an email from Barb too, and it’s kind of nice to know people are thinking of you. And it helps at some level to know there’s nothing unique about any of this. Every single one of us will share the same fate and every one of us has some experience with grief and loss, of a parent, a sibling, a child, a spouse.
And well, Anita was young, and though we were sensitized to the possibility that she might not have a full life expectancy, it still feels like we were robbed of something.
You really can’t grade them; you can’t compare different forms of grief. And losing a child is just so wrong… so unjust and disturbing. But the intimacy of that relationship is comparable I guess in a way to losing a spouse before her time.
Another part of me is infantile about it though and says no, this is special and unique. This is different. It’s not, but it is my time, it’s my turn. It’s happening now. It’s happening to me. It’s happening to me now. So in that way, it is different.
And another part of me feels like its assuming a role of some kind.
I tell you, I read this version of the Mahabharata years ago and it just resonated with me.
I’ve thought about this one main character, Yudhisthira, a lot over the years.
He was a king, but flawed. He lost his kingdom gambling, if you can believe that. To his cousin Duryodhana, who tricked him into it and then cheated. He was a bad guy. But what king puts his kingdom up at stake in a game of dice? Yudhisthira had been tricked, but he was a compulsive gambler. And it was a hard lesson, but he honored his debt and gave up his kingdom.
The Hindu perspective is different, but similar to the classical perspective I think, like the assignment of different attributes to different deities and the claiming of descent from one or another of these deities, either transferring or personifying that attribute in an individual.
So Yudhisthira was called “Dharmaputra,” being the mystical son of Yama, the god of death, also called Lord Dharma.
And “Dharma” is a Sanskrit word that we don’t have a cognate for in English. It’s kind of deep and mystical, meaning destiny or duty or character, and also righteousness.
These concepts are all tangled up together, and so your fate — we each have our fate assigned to us, and it is our duty to live the life we’ve been given and always to do the right thing, the right thing meaning you’re following your destiny, being true to yourself, no matter the cost, no matter the difficulty.
It’s not about free will vs. determinism, it’s just the way it is. You are who you are, and it is what it is, and it’s bigger than any of us, and it’s awesome and beautiful. Don’t fight the wave.
And there’s so many anecdotes that reinforced that message, that kind of resonated with me in terms of my relationship with Anita: It was our fate to meet just when we did. And it was her fate to get ill. And it was my choice and my duty and my destiny and a defining aspect of my character to be the one to take care of her.
And I thank God for the opportunity and the privilege to be able to do that, to become the man she needed. And I am grateful, and I tell you the rewards were sweet, and the honor was mine, is mine. And its not for us to understand the whys and wherefores of the thing, but even if it were, I wouldn’t change a God-damned bit of it, except to have her with me for one more day, and one more day after that, and for us to ride off into the sunset together, in love forever and ever, Amen.