Posts Tagged ‘Joan’s love story’
Valentine’s Day without Robert
My first Valentine’s Day since Robert died seemed to be going unexp
ectedly well — a deep and stimulating phone conversation with a close friend, time alone reading and dancing in my exercise room, dinner out with a dear and delightful woman pal, excitement about feeling my life force emerging strongly.
Then I came home. Alone. Lit a candle. And started to cry.
I remembered Robert lighting a candle in the same candleholder I was using. I saw his dear hand lighting it, the hand that would touch me soon. I heard his soft voice, saw his smile. I wrote in my journal memories of seven years of Valentine’s Days, especially the languid afternoons making love as daylight turned to evening and to night. Finally, even the candle would burn down, flicker, and go out as we held each other and continued to kiss in the dark.
Tears streaming, voice wailing, I put down my journal and picked up a book of poetry, American Primitive by Mary Oliver. A friend, Uta, had given it to me on Robert’s birthday, 4-1/2 months after he died, with this inscription:
Dear Joanie,
She is one of Robert’s favorite contemporary poets.
You are very special to me and when you read in this little book, Robert will be with you. He loves you very much.
I had to put down the book when I read this:
…Now you are dead too, and I, no longer young,
know what a kiss is worth.
(photos by Robert’s son Mitch Rice)
Six Months after Robert’s Death
I’ve written about losing Robert to multiple myeloma last August and taken you with me on many of my steps forward. I return today, six months after Robert’s death, to check in with you again. You have been marvelous, posting comments here and emailing me privately with your warm messages and your stories.
If you’re a new blog reader, I’ll update you briefly. Yes, this blog is — almost all of the time — about sex and aging. The reason I wrote Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty and started this blog was because I found great love in later life — I was 57 and Robert was 64 when we met. My work changed from writing about health & fitness to writing and speaking about sex after 60. I decided to face full-on and speak out loud against our society’s stereotype of older-age sex/love/dating as unseemly and icky.
Robert and I had seven years together from first kiss to last and I still feel him with me, especially when I teach my line dance class, where we met and where we continued to dance.
I’m dedicating whatever it takes to the process of grieving and moving through grief. Here are some of the tools and helpers I’ve found since I last wrote Discoveries Helping Me Move Through Grief three months ago. In case this helps you or lets you help someone else, I share them with you:
I’ve learned plenty from the counselors from both Hospice (Rick Hobbs) and Kaiser (Connie Kellogg) and although sometimes I entered their quiet rooms thinking I’d never stop crying, they accepted me with compassion and skillfully taught me ways to cope.
I took an amazing full-day workshop from Joe Hanson, author of Soaring Into Acceptance (available from the author). Among many gifts of that day, I was able to change my one-sentence “story” from “I lost the love of my life, and my life is and will be empty without him,” to “I found the love of my life and learned how to experience love fully, and I take this with me on my path.” (Joe will be repeating this valuable workshop, “The Power of Acceptance,” on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2009, in Larkspur, CA, near San Francisco. I heartily recommend it.)
I’m in a Hospice spousal bereavement group. The best part is getting to know other people who experienced the same kind of loss at roughly the same time. Because of the confidentiality of the group, I can’t disclose much about it, except that it’s helping me move forward. I recommend taking advantage of everything Hospice has to offer.
I’ve continued to reach out to loved ones and to new friends and welcome them into my heart. Being close to people who understand me balances my need for a lot of solitude. Extending help to others who need it balances the help I need to accept from others.
Each month gets a little easier.
Yes, I’ll write that next book. Writing still brings me joy, and I’m no less committed to the mission I’ve established here. For now, I’ll continue to indulge in short spurts of writing and when I’m ready, I’ll take on the book I’ve been planning for more than a year.
Thank you for your compassion and confidences. Keep those comments and emails coming, even if I’m not as quick to answer as you came to expect.
Warmly,
Joan
Ashes to the Wind
Yesterday would have been Robert’s 72nd birthday.
A year ago, we spent his birthday hiking the craggy Northern California coast which he loved, watching the waves crash over the rocks, holding each other as if we might never have this experience again.
Yesterday Robert’s family and I retraced those steps. The day was blustery and cold, the ocean silver green under grey skies instead of the sunlit blue it had been a year ago.
I sprinkled some of Robert’s ashes, and the wild wind sucked the ashes into the air in a dancing cloud. I did it over and over, my tears turning to laughter as each time the ashes took flight, like a magic trick, then disappeared into air.
(photo by Mitch Rice, Robert’s son)
“Can I vote on your marriage?”
“Can I vote on your marriage?”
“Straight but not narrow”
“Give love a chance”
“Please let my Dads stay married”
“Marriage is defined by commitment, not genitalia”
These were a few of the signs carried by almost 2,000 people who marched yesterday in Santa Rosa, CA, part of an effort around the country to protest California’s passage of Proposition 8 banning gay marriage. Our own Sonoma County voted 66% against the proposition, but the state as a whole passed it.
Why was I there? I am committed to the belief that we should all be equal under the law — which seems so obvious that I am horrified, mystified, and embarrassed that Prop. 8 passed.
Beyond that, I had the profound and exhilarating experience of marrying— spiritually and legally — artist Robert Rice, the great love of my life. I know the depth, the joy, the emotional power of making that commitment.
Why deny the legal right to that same experience to committed couples who happen to be hardwired to love someone with the same genital configuration instead of the opposite?
I just don’t get it!
We marched yesterday, a rainbow of ages, colors, sexual orientations, united by one firm belief: equality under the law. Some walked nimbly, others were assisted by canes or crutches. Some pushed strollers, led dogs (often with their own signs or stickers), played instruments, or held hands. Many of the protesters were elders, I was happy to see, both gay and straight.
An amusing distraction was a man who carried a Bible and a sign that proclaimed, “God hates shrimp! (Leviticus)” In case you don’t know, the same book of the Old Testament that some people use to “prove” that God hates “sodomites” also includes this: “Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.” In case you want to pursue this, visit the website devoted to this. (In case that makes you nervous, it’s a parody.)
I interviewed several elders about why they were there:
Liz Basile will be 81 next month. She left the Catholic church because of its positions on priest celibacy, abortion, and birth control. “I voted no on 8 because it’s just not fair,” she told me. “I’ve had two divorces – what did I do about the sanctity of marriage?”
Whitey Sterman, age 79, has two gay sons. “But I’d be here even if they weren’t gay,” he said.
“I think I’ll die still perplexed about why anyone cares what I do with my genitals,” Harley, a 68-year-old artist told me. Harley (who was a dear friend of Robert) is in a committed relationship with Hamlet Mateo, also an artist. “If I had waited for approval to be myself, I could never have lived my life.”
At a small group discussion afterwards, a grey-haired woman described the joy of being able to marry her partner of 15 years last October. Though she is dismayed that her marriage is no longer legally valid, she told us, “My marriage didn’t start last October, and it didn’t end on election day,”
I welcome comments on this and all my blog posts. If you’d like to comment but don’t know how, click here. It’s easy, really! If you have a website or a book related to the subject of this blog that you think we’d benefit from knowing about, feel free to include name and link. (No feeble excuses for blatent advertising, though, and no links to drugs or sites that I might consider questionable. If in doubt, ask me.)
Many thanks to Emily Evans for taking the photo above.
For more about this march, view a gallery of 17 photos by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat’s Kent Porter and read the Santa Rosa Press Democrat’s coverage of the march.