My husband of 47 years recently died at home after a long illness. Multiple System Atrophy, they call it, a name as horrible as the disease itself.  Though the dying really took place bit by bit over the years as Tony gradually lost the ability to do so many things we tend to take for granted such as dressing, walking, standing, and even moving. The actual day he died, the sun had broken the pattern of cloudy days that we’d benn having. Looking out the windows of our high-rise apartment, Iwould watch the tide of the Hudson River go out with the morning, then returning in the afternoon, as regular and natural as breathing.

But then, the sun had set, producing a deep pink and blue-gray glow over the New Jersey Palisades on the other side of the river.  Our son and I had been sitting on each side of Tony’s hospital bed. He was lying, peacefully with eyes closed, but with breaths getting shallower. The oxygen machine made a soft whir.  His face was turned slightly towards the window. I watched the tiny lights of planes glimmering as they flew over the Palisades, heading for their landing at La Guardia. Tony suddenly opened his eyes, looked directly at our son and took his last breath. It was the most peaceful, beautiful death imaginable. He had been calm and pain-free for two days. One couldn’t hope for a better outcome now that his long suffering was over, but nonetheless, it was heartbreaking. 

Through it all, I thought of the opening lines of John Donne’s poem, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning:”

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say,

The breath goes now, and some say, No.

Tony, a virtuous, good man, suffered in life, but was ultimately blessed with a good death. His breath went out to the universe the evening of December 12th. I don’t know where souls go, unlike those people who are certain about heaven and hell or that an afterlife exists somewhere else, where all friends and loved ones can be together.

The date seemed so significant, and not just because it was a full moon. The evening of December 12 reminded me of another of Donne’s poems, “A Nocturnal Upon S. Lucies Day.” In the early seventeenth century (which used the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian one we’re used to), December 13th, also known as St. Lucy’s day, was considered the winter solstice, the shortest day, the longest night and the turning point of the year. Donne’s poem mourning the death of a beloved person (perhaps his wife, though she died three months earlier) takes place during the evening of December 12th.  To me, there is not a sadder poem. As evening moves towards midnight and the solstice, the speaker gives voice to his immense grief:

For I am every dead thing,

In whom Love wrought new alchemy.

For his art did express

A quintessence even from nothingness,

From dull privations, and lean emptiness;

He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot

Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

Though, he says, the year (and life) will renew for others as the sun moves into Capricorn and the days lengthen, the vital spirits of the earth returning, his “sun” will not renew.  In the depths of loss, he feels he is “every dead thing,” as if he (rather than the beloved) has died, and is in the grave.

But death is a strange thing—and the feelings it brings to the survivors are so varied, so complex. Donne’s attempt to express inexpressible grief, a grief that (like God) is beyond words, is stunning, wrenching, though my students have sometimes found the hyperbole comic. But surely such terrible, inconsolable grief is what one might experience with the loss of a child, or the tragic and sudden death of someone young, with so much promise unfulfilled. Is grief ever too much? For me, there is both grief and relief, sadness and liberation. Profound and deeply contradictory feelings. Maybe many people have had this response, even if they may hesitate to admit it, or feel guilty about it.

I feel sadness, but no guilt.

My first reaction when Tony died was, “Thank God.  He is finally at peace—and so am I.”  I was so grateful that his suffering did not last any longer.  Indeed, I had been praying for months, “Please God give me strength, and please give Tony peace”—by which I actually meant, “let him die,” “take him to you if you exist.” When he died, it was such a relief—a relief for him, but yes, also a relief for me.  I would no longer have to run out and get his supplies every day, struggle to take him to so many doctors, tend to his many physical and emotional needs.  I had wonderful aides, but I still was his primary caregiver. I was no saint—sometimes losing my temper, driven by frustration and fear. Still, I was his chauffeur, the nurse dressing his wounds (the diabetic ulcer on his ankle, the wound on the toe that went down to the bone and if I couldn’t get it to heal a doctor threatened amputation), the nutritionist and chef planning and preparing his dinners (always balanced and colorful, the Mediterranean diet, minus the wine, which I drank), and finally the therapist that he talked to as he tried to come to terms with the state of his life. It was so hard helping him do the spiritual work that, I hope, allowed him to die in peace.

I was, also, relieved because, with his death… now I was free! I could live again, having put much of my life on hold for four and a half years, even as I continued to work full time, fulfilling my professional obligations as a teacher.  I would now be able to go to movies, to live music events, even dance again; I could meet friends for dinner rather than having to be home by 6pm. I could freely travel to visit my lovely granddaughters, to conferences and not stress about having to find aides to be with Tony 24/7 for the entire time I’d be away.  But now? Freedom!

I remember our last Passover, the spring of 2019. I had decided to make a simple Seder, a stripped down version, with only the minimal, requisite things on the Seder plate. No elaborate meal.  Just my homemade chicken soup with tasty matzo balls for dinner. That would be it.  But as I started reading the Haggadah, I suddenly said loudly, “I can’t do this! I can’t celebrate the Exodus from Egypt, deliverance from bondage, because WE ARE NOT FREE!”  And closed the Haggadah, moved on to the soup. Tony was trapped in his progressive neurological disease, which he had done nothing to deserve and which also held me in a form of bondage. I just could not do Passover this year.

So Tony’s death feels like a liberation for me. Sometimes during the day I feel good. There are, even, moments of happiness--as when I see the sun rising higher each dawn, now that the solstice has passed.  Once, after an icy snow the night before, I looked at the trees, all sparkly silver in the morning sun, and I felt gratitude to be alive, privileged to witness this beauty, which would soon melt.

But my sense of relief is punctuated by grief, sadness that wells up unpredictably.  The night Tony died, the people from the funeral home came to take away his body. They wrapped it gently in white sheets, covering his body and face. Then they lifted it onto the stretcher, onto a body-bag, which they efficiently zipped up.  The sound was so harsh. I looked at this beloved, brilliant person, who only a few hours before had been alive, and now he was just a thing, hauled away like garbage, or an evil person, even though I knew he would be treated with reverence by the Jewish man who would perform the Jewish ritual (tahara) of washing the body before burial and the people assigned to sit by the body so it would not be left alone.  As soon as the funeral home workers left with my son accompanying them downstairs as they carried the body out, I let loose with the primitive howl I had so long suppressed, having been told that I must keep my spirits “up” when I was with Tony, otherwise I would bring his “down.” 

And so it goes, relief alternating with grief, and will go on for some time, I’m sure.  I am grateful he is no longer suffering. I don’t miss what he had become at the end, especially when I remember the handsome body wasting away into its skeletal frame or the witty, literate man no longer able to read or speak. But I miss what he was at his best; and I cry when I think of the many losses and indignities he suffered, so bravely and nobly, in a way I don’t think I could possibly have.

Those waves of intense sadness and tears come unexpectedly. They come more frequently now that several weeks have passed. So long as I’m busy, so long as it’s daytime and the sun is shining, I’m okay. But when the sun goes down, when night falls and I sit alone, it’s another story. Then I grieve.

About a year ago we got a hospital bed for my husband, moved it into the bedroom and shoved the king bed we shared aside. He lost his ability to walk after he’d fallen in the bedroom and hit his head, resulting in a small brain bleed. At first I thought I’d still stay in the room with him, but it wasn’t long before I couldn’t stand sleeping there any longer. I just couldn’t rest with his mumbling, a noise he made whenver he moved his restless stiff legs on the plastic-covered mattress. So, I moved into the second bedroom. He didn’t like being trapped in the hospital bed, with its side rails, but it was where he would be safe. He didn’t like me in a different room, either.

One evening he took off his wedding ring. I was startled, but he’d been losing weight for some time from his disease and assumed he might’ve been afraid it would fall off. Or, was he no longer comfortable wearing the wedding ring in a greater, symbolic sense? I wondered whether he was separating from me, divorcing me in a small way, even as he was becoming increasingly dependent on me.

A month ago, he wanted to take my ring off after a tough confrontation. He needed to be moved to the bathroom; I couldn’t move him, lift him, take care of him. And as I tried and kept failing, fearing he was going to fall or that I’d hurt myself, I kept shouting. Both of us got angry and by the time we were resettled in the living room, he was mad and said, “we are not compatible.”  He stopped talking and groped at my finger, trying to brush off my ring.  “What, do you want me to take off my ring?” Yes, he nodded.  “Well, I’m not going to, damn it. Not ready for divorce, after forty-seven years.” (Though, secretly I thought I’ve had enough!)

He used to say in early years of our marriage, whenever he had a bout of depression, “I want to be alone.” Sometimes he didn’t even want to read in the same room. There were times he didn’t want to go to the movies, or to a party, and I’d have to go by myself.  Now he wants me around all the time, though I’ve got to leave for work, which helps to keep my sanity!

When I realized I had to arrange a burial plot, (you have to plan for the future even if you’re supposed to live in the present), I asked him the difficult question, “where do you want to end up? New York? Connecticut? Illinois? Minneapolis?” After much prodding he would finally say, “I don’t care, I just want to be next to you.”

So I had to not only decide what to do with him if he died first, but also where I wanted to have my final resting place, as they say, though I had no idea where I might be living when the time came. Would it be New York? Would it be Champaign-Urbana Illinois where I’d taught and lived for so many years and still had friends? Would I want to be near my son and his family in Minneapolis?  The future is unpredictable. All that is certain is that some time the separations will come. Life feels like an extended, improvised dance where we repeatedly connect and detach, until the final separation in which we lie alone.

I recently went to Minneapolis to visit my beloved granddaughters for a few days. One night, from his bed in New York he kept calling loudly, “Achsah, Achsah!” He repeatedly asked our aide where I was and this went on throughout the night. He wanted to go to the airport convinced I had gone to Europe or Israel.  It reminding me of when our son was about 10 years-old and would worry I’d go away. Every night as I tucked him into bed, he’d plea with me, “Promise you’ll still be here in the morning, Mom?” This would throw me a bit off guard. Did he not trust me? Did he think I’d leave him, run off, me, the faithful mom who had read him “The Runaway Bunny” when he was a little boy? Perhaps it was more inherently primal.

Well before my husband got sick, whenever I would go out, he would say, “be safe,” as if he feared that if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t return. When I’d go down to Times Square to go dancing to Zydeco or Cajun bands, he said he was afraid I’d get kidnapped.

John Donne, one of my favorite poets, wrote so many intense lyrical poems about love, both human and divine, about his longing to feel connected with God, and the experience of human intimacy and erotic desire. But what stands out to me at this moment in my life is how many poems he wrote about separation.  He wrote “Valedictions” addressed to his lover as he was about to go on a journey overseas. For example, “The Valediction: Of Weeping” and “Valediction: of my Name, in the Window.” These poems express his fear that he will not come back, that he may die, even as he tries to assure his beloved that he will return. He gives her instructions making her feel as if stability will enable his safe return. A kind of magical thinking.   

His most famous valedictory poem “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” opens with death, bringing up the subject that the lovers most fear:

    As virtuous men pass mildly away,

   And whisper to their souls to go, 

Whilst some of their sad friends do say 

   The breath goes now, and some say, No: 

So let us melt, and make no noise, 

   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 

A strange beginning for a poem offering assurances that he will return to his beloved, that their love is something higher and stronger. But that first stanza makes great sense to me. Donne reminds us, sharply, of what we don’t like to think about—mortality.  He doesn’t allow us forget that even temporary farewells are like death, a separation. Maybe this is why his great valedictory poems, even as they hope and promise the lovers’ reunion, are all obsessed with dying. For every separation is a rehearsal for death. 

I’m not a gloomy person. I love life, take pleasure in it, remembering Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” urging us to seize the day, with that line: “at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”  But two weeks ago, the doctor said it was time for “palliative care.” Now all I can hear is Leonard Cohen’s achingly beautiful song,“Closing Time,” playing over and over again in my head.