I am living the third part of my life now. In the first part, there were four of us. My husband Bob was a gentle giant to all who knew him. He was universally loved. We were in fourth grade together and he fell in love with me then. Seriously.

He was deeply spiritual and principled by nature. But he never learned how to be emotionally available. He kept much of himself hidden, even to me. He liked to take walks alone, to go on errands alone. He was an independent individual.

Our daughter, Laurie, looked the most like him. She was a Gemini who loved to laugh and tease me. Her cancer did not alter her sunny desire to be with friends and play. Sadly, she became too ill to join in many activities. We were talking with a grief counselor after her death and he told us, “She was your spark plug.” Very true. And when she left us at the age of seven, the first part of my life ended and a new one began.

We moved into a new house two years after her death. I was 38. Rob was quiet and didn’t want us to move to a new side of town, but Bob was adamant about it. At first my sister and her husband lived close by, but they soon moved farther away from us.

Our grief and our adjustment to a new life hit us all hard, but it was harder on Rob than we knew. He is a silent being and he kept his feelings to himself, pushing us away as all adolescents do. I herniated a disk and spent the better part of two years in pain until it finally resolved without surgery. This second new life was hard and unsatisfying to us all. Bob lost his job at age 51 and never worked again. He did occasional consulting, but mostly he was at home.

When Bob was in his mid-fifties his slow decline begin, although he was not diagnosed with multiple myeloma until he was 58. Given less than three years to live, he managed to squeeze out four and a half. My life was shattered for a second time and I worked hard at being a caregiver. My rage at life handing us a fatal diagnosis twice was understood by Bob, who remained stoic.

I started a website for him and pounded the keyboard after days spent in the chemo room by his side. One day I showed Bob a note that another multiple myeloma patient wrote to me. “I have visited your website and it is like entering a Zen temple. So quiet and wise.” I forget the exact words, but the note is still in my files because Bob read it and then picked up a sharpie. He wrote on the note: “My prayers have been answered.” Meaning, I had found my writing as a calling.

Bob died and was buried two days before Christmas in 2004. Then the third part of my new life began. It has been going on for over fourteen years now. The two of us left, Rob and I, were in deep grief and did not have much to say to each other. He was working the night shift doing medical transcription and he slept late because of his schedule.

I would sit in silence each morning, and still do. I was grieving but relishing the relief of no longer being a worn-out caregiver. At the end, Bob and I experienced a deep separation. He was going home and I was staying. He was only in hospice four days, thank God. We were more than ready for the suffering to end.

A mystic by nature, I have not found the world to be of much interest to me since his death. Instead, I have pondered the mystery and sorrow of this world. I have poured my thoughts into my body of work. I call it that because if you were to pile up all of my essays, they would run into the thousands.

I do not channel them; I am not able to do that. But I write like quicksilver, not wanting to know what I will say next. And so this note is written in blood and tears, like my life has been.

Wisdom is a great comfort to me, much more so than human companionship. I imagine Bob is busy on the other side. I have two clay angels on my mantel that my neighbor gave me last year. One is tall like Bob and the other small like Laurie. Rob and I are tended by their presence.
The two of us left have worked out a relationship that is evolving as I get older. He is wonderful at encouraging me to do anything I want and I seldom want anything big. The last adventure I had was going to Amsterdam to hear Leonard Cohen. He is a Master for me and his wisdom sustains me daily. I had a glimpse of him in a dream last night.

Love remains. How could it be otherwise?

Vicki Woodyard