“…This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”
-Shakespeare, Sonnet 73
Mike preferred his poetry recited aloud, from memory.
Even when he was reading poetry alone, relaxing in our little “library/music” room, he’d read it aloud, to himself, to hear the rhythm of the words, and feel the breath within them.
He wooed me with poetry, recited on an answering machine (see, “Academy of Ancient Technology, recording devices, cassette.”)
Early in our marriage, when I was stressed out from the job, and the commuting, and the worries of providing for Mike and our child, he would read aloud to me, in bed, to help me sleep. He had a beautiful reading voice – smooth, gentle, beguiling, soothing. And I’d be out like a light in five minutes.
I could make requests of him – “tell me that one about the butterfly,” or “find me that Wallace Stevens poem” or “which sonnet was the one about the summer’s day?” and he’d know, immediately, and recite that poem to me. He rarely remembered a word I said to him, but he remembered every poem he loved, and recited them to me. By heart.
May 2, 2018, would have been our 26th wedding anniversary.
And I forgot.
The significance of the day didn’t hit me until, in the midst of my “maintenance Mom” morning, checking our child’s calendar for the day – do I need to make a lunch, should I send money, I better remind about taking the phone, etc. – I saw the date, and it registered.
Although we were married on May 2, 1992, we actually met on April 27, 1990, and always considered that our “real” anniversary.
Twenty-seven was Mike’s favorite number. His birthday and our child’s birthday both were on the 27th of their respective months, and there were a bunch of other significant 27s in his life.
So last year on April 27, which would have been the 27th anniversary of the day we met, I took myself on a kind of memorial tour, visiting the place we first met (although I knew it would be closed for remodeling) near our old neighborhood in the city, now so built-up and gentrified as to be almost unrecognizable to me.
But something about marking that 27th “real” anniversary seems to have caused a sort of release -not closure, exactly – but a lessening of the need to mark such such days or to make an effort to recognize their significance.
This year on April 27th, which would have been our 28th “real” anniversary, there was a gala benefit for the organization that provides our child’s day program. I raced home after working a full day at the warehouse, zipped through shower and hair, and whipped on infrastructure to support the new dress, fresh and wrinkled from its Amazon package, and headed out to the train in a Lyft and splurged on a fancy car ride home (because the late trains stop at every single stop and take forever and I can’t do that late at night anymore).
I had a blast. The food was great, the music was fun, and I sat and chatted with a nice couple who were very kind.
On May 2, after I realized what day it was, I was driving our child to her train, and a song came on the radio that I think of as a message to me from Mike: One Call Away, by a kid named Charlie Puth.
And thus began another round of car crying, trying to hold it in so I wouldn’t upset our child, who seemed to sense the song was significant to me, and actually let me listen all the way through.
There’s a line in that song, “Superman Got Nothing On Me,” which is the reason I hear it as a message from Mike – because the first Christmas without him, when for the first time in years I had no man in the house to buy presents for, I bought a present for the Bulgarian, knowing that he would never come to pick it up, and that he would never tell me where I could send it to him.
It was kind of a joke, but significant to me because it was significant to Mike.
It was a Superman sweatshirt. I still have it, wrapped and ready, and I put it under the tree at Christmas to remind me of my ridiculousness, and of my last best year of loving Mike. There’s a story behind it –
When Mike was around 5 or so, as he told it, he was hit by a car in his dicey west side neighborhood. A little friend of his, a developmentally delayed friend, raced over to him, as Mike remembered it, leaned over him as he lay in the street with a fractured skull, and said, “don’t worry Mike, you’ll be OK. You’re superman.”
And in the middle of the remodeling job I put Mike through as he was enduring his illness, just to give him a nice kitchen for as long as he could use it before he died, there was a moment when I was nagging the Bulgarian about fixing something or other, and he, as usual, was patiently enduring it, saying he’d fix it.
“How?” I said.
“Magic,” he said, teasing me a little, reminding me of my ridiculousness. Of course he’d fix it.
And just at that moment our child blurted out, “you’re Superman,” to the Bulgarian.
I didn’t think our child knew who Superman was, but there it was.
And now here’s Mike with, “Superman got nothin’ on me,” from the next world.
But Mike, dear, even though you are only one spiritual call away, I can’t “run into your arms” as the song suggests.
Hence, the car crying, on what would have been our 26th wedding anniversary.
I took the rings off shortly after Mike died. Death had done us part, and I didn’t feel right clinging to the rings. I wasn’t married anymore. Mike was gone.
Since then, I’ve had some kind of weird arthritis in both ring fingers – starting on the right, where I wore my engagement ring after we were married, and switching, seemingly overnight, to the left, the wedding ring side. I guess I should see someone about it – I can’t bend that wedding ring finger all the way, and it is swollen and it isn’t getting better like the one on the right did, and if I accidentally whack it on something in the warehouse it hurts like hell.
Mike, hon, are you hanging on? Are you doing this to my wedding ring finger? Is this some kind of not-letting-me-go? Are you angry I took the ring off? Because at this rate I’ll never get any ring, much less my wedding ring, back on that finger.
Maybe it’s me, doing it, subconsciously. Maybe it is a reminder that it is time for me to let go – I don’t know. I certainly feel as if I am being pushed, shoved, hustled, into the next phase of my life, whatever it may be, starting with the job, that clearly came to me though divine intervention of some sort.
So I’m moving on, as much as I can. But I am grateful that I can remember the sound of your voice, dear, reciting poetry by heart, and that I can see you as clear as day, in your favorite places at your favorite moments, both when you were well and when you were dying, in and around this house and yard.
Even if the significance of days and dates begin to fade, I am so grateful, loves, that I still have you memorized, by heart.
Read that sonnet, number 73. Remember that every person you love, you will lose, “ere long.”
And may you always be able to remember those people you have loved, by heart.
Until my next post, I remain, your loyal, humble, devoted, etc.,
Ridiculous Woman
Ridiculouswoman 