Valentine's Day brought news to me that could not have shown the vastness of the heart. My dear friend Katherine, who was just with me last month helping with "the move", said yes to Robert's proposal of marriage. I worked with Katherine when her husband died suddenly of a massive heart attack. I watched her live through the hours, days, months and now years of living a life without her husband. Two + years ago she met Robert, I began to hear more and more about him, and was one of the first friends to "check him out". I could see from the first moment that they were just wild about each other. Grown ups trying to harness amazingly strong feelings and hormones and desire. They were just so very cute. That first meeting led to dinners out, music, a vacation in Maine and many phone calls and FB posts. Last night Robert asked Katherine to marry him, and she said YES.
Yesterday at Noon I got a text from my friend Kathy. She was in the emergency with her husband Irv, he had just finished a final round of chemo was so glad to be done, and then for several days he was not feeling good. The doc's and Irv and Kathy couldn't distinguish "the normal" of post chemo days and what was happening. Yesterday it was clear what was happening was not normal. This morning Irv died. I still can't really process that he has died, I can't process that my dear friend Kathy has lost Irv. I am so sad and concerned and mad that he is gone. Kathy and I spent a long time on the phone this afternoon -- listening, letting her know how much I love her, how much I loved Irv, how special it felt to have had a friendship with them both. It does not always happen that you get to have a fun adventuresome relationship with your initial friend and then want to and then do develop a separate friendship with their spouse. Kathy and I met in our work, from the first time we meet I knew that I really really liked who she was and was delighted when we crossed from work friends to life friends. I have stayed at their house, they have stayed at mine. We went to "camp" together in Maine. We had lots of other adventures on our list. Irv lived in Lambertville before they got married. I have gone to Lambertville with them both. I wanted to move to Lambertville. I drank my first martini at the Boat House
with Kathy and Irv. Irv was a character, his mind was like a bee hive, filled with so many amazing quirky, awesome and sensible things. He was a sailor, and he built boats. I often thought about my husband and then life friend who also sailed and loved to be on the water. I loved watching how his entire self shifted as he settled himself in his boat. I wanted to go on the water with him more, I am so sorry that I will not. Irv loved Kathy, not in a way that just leapt out, but in so many little gestures. They had a rhythm with each other. I appreciated how they navigated. I am sorry that Kathy will be without her navigation partner.
Kathy is at the Boat House with Nancy, I wish I could have gotten myself there, but I could not. I let Kathy know that while she is surrounded by people who knew and loved Irv, I would be sure to make a really good martini here in my house that Irv so much wanted to see. I will make a toast to them both. To Irv in his boat on the other side without pain, without doubt, with just the good. To Kathy who will go on, who will honor Irv and do her grieving and loss in however it is that she will do it.
And for me....I am here. In my very new house. I am feeling this wide wide range of what happens with our hearts, the expansiveness of the joy and the depths of love. The burden of a broken heart. I am sending love to all of my friends who have lost their partners to death, to loss, to change. I am sending love to my friends who have traversed that loss and found a new way and full life that seemed so unattainable some time in the past.
I am sending love to my friends and family. Embrace today it is all we know we have for sure! It is Friday I am feeling the joy and the heartbreak and it is all real and just what I have for today.
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