Diary of a Widower

So where is she now?

SATURDAY, December 12 – My alarm clock was set for 5:15, so that I’d be up well before the boys. I felt the need to meditate. It’s been 49 days since Jennifer’s death. Her Buddhist friend N had written me to explain that according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Jennifer – or her soul – would now be entering the next phase of the bardo.

Forty-nine days after her first passage, her consciousness finally undergoes the process of reincarnation. This is our last opportunity to do something for her.  Meditation is one way of helping the roaming spirit to achieve the most positive reincarnation.  N also added that he was not entirely convinced that this was true.

And I certainly wasn’t… and yet, like N, I felt that, at least, we should not let this moment pass. So, I knelt down on my meditation cushion to wish Jenn a good journey, but on this day I never actually reached a meditative state.  In spite of my frantic efforts. I was trying much too hard to breathe slowly in and out, in an effort to achieve a higher level of awareness.  It was hopeless. Read more…

Getting rid of her clothes

SUNDAY, November 29 – Sleepless night. The first since Jennifer’s death. I stagger to the john and try, in vain, to piss away yesterday’s skid marks. Then, I happen to see the shelf with the toilet freshener and some candles. There’s also a mug with a toothbrush, and a little jewelry box with two tampons. I’d never noticed them before.

I throw them all out. Stubborn traces of a past you have no desire to erase. Jennifer always saw to it that the house was spic and span and I cling to that thought.

Then, a grin appears on my face. Just look at me, cleaning house. Who would have thought it?  I start on the second drawer of her dresser, then the third, followed by the bottom one. It’s not easy. Understatement.  I feel as if I’m doing something furtive.  As if any minute someone could walk into the room and catch me at it. But at what? Read more…

Taking over Mom’s tradition

SATURDAY, November 28 – I start the day by preparing two breakfasts and taking the dog for a walk.  I’d rather have taken the day off and the boys understand that, but when the youngest looks up at me with that innocent look on his face and the oldest announces that I’m the only person on earth who can make a ‘super bagel’, then I capitulate.

But my weakness was conditional:  I demanded the ‘last bite’.  They agreed, and this was a biggie. The last bite had always been reserved for Mom – no discussion.  Last bites were consumed by no one else but the woman who had brought them into this world and by the woman I was married to.

Once in a while we’d forget, and Jennifer would pretend to be shocked, offended or just disappointed.  Oops, sorry. Then we’d look for an excuse:  so scrumptious that we totally forgot about the last bite.

It was a family tradition, and one that was firmly anchored:  Last bite was for Mom. Wherever I was, I would automatically spear that last bite, to give to Jennifer.  Even in the office canteen or in a restaurant during a working lunch, I felt the urge to hold up my fork. Here, the last bite.

For you.

At the dining room table Jenn and I fantasized about this Nolan tradition.  How it would continue for generations, how our children would initiate their grandchildren in the tradition of ‘the last bite’.  I hope that it will become a culinary legacy and that I will continue to feel that automatic reflex at the dining table.

Sander just gave me his last bite. I thanked him with a kiss. We didn’t say anything.  It felt right and it was delicious.

21:15 – Holy shit. I’m feeling totally devastated.  Have I just dropped into a yawning chasm of emptiness?  I remember my mother’s loneliness and desolation after the death of my father. As such, I began busying myself with things that were doomed to be counterproductive.

Cleared the top drawer of her dresser. Panties, bras, lingerie… straight into a garbage bag.  I don’t want to think of anyone else wearing them. I wouldn’t want that. It was beautiful underwear intended for her body and no one else’s.  Out it goes.

Aha, one empty drawer. Next, I changed the queen-sized bed, evenly dividing the sheets and blankets, which wasn’t necessary, since she no longer pulls all the bed covers over to her side. I have the bed all to myself.  I can snore as much as I want to.  No one there to give me a kick.  No one who finally retires to the spare room and, over coffee the next morning, makes it clear to me that I really went to town last night.  There’s none of any of that, merely the emptiness of the night ahead of me.

Tomorrow I’ll empty drawer number two.

Her last words in her diary

SUNDAY, November 22 – A month since the accident. That’s how milestones are created. I clearly remember the day that Sander was exactly one month old.  That was another Sunday morning, August 27, 1997.  Jenn was breastfeeding him and I went to the front door of our house in Weehawken, New Jersey, to pick up The New York Times from the doormat.

The latest news was splashed across the front page:  Lady Di has been killed in a car accident in Paris. Like the rest of the world, we were in a state of shock. We sat there on the bed with the baby, who knew nothing about life and death, happiness and unhappiness, and who did nothing but drink ravenously at his mother’s breast, occasionally looking around with those big brown eyes of his. Read more…