She's Back

I have been tired lately.  Several causes have come to mind.  I may be sleeping poorly.  I may be depressed.  I may be focusing on Marlou's shawl, inexplicably sitting on the sofa in my front room.  The garment doubles, I suppose, as a rug.  The sort of blanket that once warmed the laps of Victorian heroines.  This seems to be at the center of things.  The shawl.

The curious fact is that I can imagine Marlou wearing it, and this image comes to mind without pain or regret.  There she is, my departed wife, wrapping this shawl around herself for an evening out.  It is both the wrapping and the wearing that strike me now.  I can see Marlou pulling the shawl up and over her shoulders in a way that was distinctly hers.  She had a grace.  She was graceful.  The quality was deeply and unshakably hers.

Marlou's mother recalls watching her daughter, barely at the toddler stage, standing in her crib.  There was a small bowl of Cheerios next to the little girl.  Marlou carefully picked the cereal pieces one by one, eyed each and placed the single morsel in her mouth.  Then she picked up another.  She never dropped them.  Or crushed them.  Marlou had a quality of precision and delicacy.  It was there when she helped me dress.  Or stand up from some low chair.  It was there when she set the table.  It was her.  And that her mother noticed this quality early on, well, that is another important part of the story.  Being noticed must strengthen us, encourage our finer qualities.

Many say that in getting over the death of a loved one, there comes a stage when one forgets the worst.  The agony of dying.  The misery of aging.  This fades away, and a more idealized memory takes over.  The person in their prime, at their best.  I have always distrusted this process.  Much of the last year, the notion of forgetting Marlou's suffering felt like betrayal and denial.  I was in no mood to prettify what she endured.  Or pretend that she wasn't ravaged at the end.

Still, this thing has occurred.  On a Saturday afternoon, she has risen, in a manner of speaking, to sit on the couch, draw up her shawl one side at a time and sit, with accustomed composure, looking at the wall.  I have been looking at the same wall all year, sometimes feeling up against it.  But now I am looking at Marlou, or the remembered Marlou, and seeing what I have not seen for a long time.

That we live in our bodies, and we live a certain way.  This quality of Marlou's, this gracefulness and poise.  It had to be natural because the alternative would have been horrible.  Marlou was comfortable in her body.  Her personal carriage was neither over controlled nor prissy.  She had plenty of sensual ease and looseness about her.  Combined with gracefulness.  There was a beauty in this.  And it reflected an inner beauty.  And I see it now, not entirely certain what it means or meant, but it has entered my life in a particular way.  And it's sitting on my couch.

What's sitting on my bird feeder would be no mystery to Marlou.  I can spot the finches, including the goldfinches, but the rest?  This knack of identifying Bewick's Wren, both by birdsong and characteristic crown, fit in with Marlou's general capacity for delicacy and detail.  As for me, the birds are mostly a blur.  They bat about in what for an introvert is a sort of background.  I see them.  I also see their impact, the astonishing decline in bird seed, seemingly hourly, as they eat their way through my feeder.  But this afternoon for the first time in a long while I am seeing what happens.  Six birds at a time, sometimes seven, work the feeder.  There's a bird on each of the four perches sticking its beak into a feeding hole.  And there is the backup.  At regular intervals, the latter lunge from their perches, fly at a feeding bird with talons spread and wings beating furiously, and drive off the competitor.  That bird feeds a while.  Another on a branch comes at it.  And so it goes.  Musical perches.  It's not a pretty thing, the food chain.

It's not a pretty thing, survival.  Nature in all its harshness must be incorporated.  Which brings me to the strange gift of Jane.  She has that rare ability to see the upside in human experience without denying its cruelty or pain.  And she appreciates the moment.  This is her sort of thing, watching the birds as they are, right now.  A sober, credible optimism.  I have needed someone like this.  There are not many.

And this is death in a guise I have not yet experienced.  But what I recognize as closer to the time-honored and universal version.  Marlou, looking quite unscathed, adjusting her shawl, as though getting ready.  For what, eternity?  For my own death?  In any case, she is sitting there, both composed and sensual, ready for what's next.  She is smiling, and that is important.  She is neither looking at me nor ignoring me.  She is looking ahead.  At the wall, I think.  Or at the blank TV screen.  The latter, which looked massive when the installers moved it into our living room, had long been a point of contention...until it was switched on and filled with movies, which Marlou loved.  Now the contention is long forgotten, as are the movies.  And the fact that I rarely turn the thing on now hardly matters.  

For Marlou is happily staring ahead.  She has survived her own death.  She is back, and at her best.  Not idealized, but simply at her finest.  She had, or has, a quality of peace and repose that I lack.  A natural optimism.  Gentleness, femininity and the capacity to wait.  Actually, she could not wait long without saying something irreverent.  Her sardonic side could be harsh.  But not at this moment.  If she is about to say something, her words will deflate and include at the same time.  Like lunging at soap bubbles with a knitting needle.  Something joyous and sharp.

In short, Marlou is back.  She has decided to visit for a while this afternoon, doubtless will soon depart.  Only to return.  I think she has come back, because her pictures have gone away.  They now stare at each other in a desk drawer.  I don't know what Marlou wants, but she seems content enough.  There's no hurry, that's clear enough.