This week is Thanksgiving and there will be an empty seat at my table.

The third Thursday of November had always been our favorite holiday. I loved cooking the food.  But Thanksgiving dinner now has another meaning since it was the last real meal my husband ate. 

I’m coming up on the third anniversary of his death on December 12, 2019. After a cruel progressive illness, Tony died at 6 pm, turned to the west-facing window, where if he eyes had not been closed he would have seen the planes coming over the Hudson River on their way to LaGuardia, their lights sparkling in the dark winter sky.

My mourning had already begun several years before, caring for a person who month by month was losing so much. We knew there was no cure. It was just a matter of time, which honestly seemed endless, and so I hoped it wouldn’t be too long before he died.

When the time came, I felt a deep relief. It was over. But then two men arrived to remove his body. Seeing him put into a black bag, lifted onto a stretcher, and wheeled out, only then it hit me. He really was gone, zipped up into something that could have been a garbage bag. I let out a howl, a sound I could never have imagined.

The funeral was beautiful and simple, conducted by my beloved rabbi and Hazzan (Cantor). The burial was in a small old cemetery 35 miles away, surrounded by woods and some snow on the ground.

Peaceful.  

People have different ways of “moving on” after the death of a spouse. Some people leave the old place and buy or rent a new one. I bought colorful velvet cushions and soft oriental rugs, making a new nest to hibernate in for the winter. Then Covid soon hit, making my isolation even more intense. 

When would it be time to get rid of Tony’s things, his belongings? What do you cast off and what do you keep? It’s been almost three years of this process and it’s still goes on. The first step was easy. But then there were his special coats and jackets, things he splurged on in NYC, which was a new life for him.  Holding these items while about to donate, I saw his body in them, so each thing I gave away prompted another small mourning - all of those tiny moments accumulating became easier to handle emotionally, (sort of), but you feel like it’s never really over.   

I am a keeper (not a hoarder, that’s different). I keep my connections, my friends—have never thrown one away, even when they have left me behind. My childhood was not happy, with a difficult father who absorbed all of my mother’s energy, leaving little for me, but even so, I keep some of my parents’ furniture that I’d loved, making it anew, transforming it into something that gives me pleasure, but also helps me forgive things from the past. There has to be a way to both let go while holding on to what matters.

Having had a long marriage with Tony for more than 35 years, I cannot discard everything. 

Just before that last Thanksgiving, as we sat on the sofa companionnably watching TV, Tony suddenly took off his wedding ring and threw it across the room towards the door. I knew he was done.

What to keep, what to let go—the story of our lives, of living, and yes of growing while getting older. 

Today, the bed goes. Our old mattress is shot. I am replacing our huge king size bed with a queen. I feel bad, throwing out yet something else from our life. I know I will not sleep tonight. 

Saying goodbye, again and again. The mere repetition of these goodbyes are also remembrances, as if the person still lives in our mind, deep in our memories (only disappearing if we lose our memory). Neuroscience surely must have something to say about this. 

For the last few years, the days passing by with Covid, I felt I had no future (ominous words that one of Tony’s doctors said about turning 70). It wasn’t depression, but I just couldn’t get rid of that feeling. But last summer, a mere four months ago, I felt a seismic shift upon returning to Illinois for a month, where I have friends and a house I hadn’t seen for at least five years. I spent lots of time sharing food and wine, fully immersed in present happiness, but also starting to worry less about whether I had much of a future.

The house needed work, more than just a new (expensive) roof. My wonderful son encouraged me saying, “If you love being here, do it! Do what makes you happy!” And that moment turned me around. If I was going to renovate part of my home, I would do it the way I wanted, finding beautiful (but sustainable!) wood floors, colorful oriental rugs, blue ceramic tiles, feeling the artist within me newly alive.

I found pleasure as I envisioned “my” home, which had been “ours,” but no longer. I realized doing this project—renovation in more than one sense—provides me a sense of a future to enjoy, even while honoring the past.

When I return to that house, (aka, my house), in another month, it will still feel like home, just renewed and more beautiful. Just the thought makes me happy.

Tony would have wanted that too.

One day I said to a good friend I’d known for some time, “I love you.” "I'm very careful about the word love," was the reply. Then silence. I felt like I’d been slapped in the face and the warm feeling of connection went cold.

There are so many kinds of love. I love my family; I love my friends; I wept when my dog died; I love watching sunrises and sunsets; the clouds form over the Hudson River; or when a rainbow suddenly appears, as if by magic. I love cooking and sharing food and wine with friends. These things give me a wonderful expansive feeling inside, something that transcends my solitary self. Yes, the word “love” is often so overused that it has become drained of meaning. You don’t have to say the word to show love.

I’ve been thinking a lot about love, particularly in our world where there is so much hate. Where families, communities, and our nation are divided. Where violence repeatedly erupts. We rarely go a day without hearing of gun violence. Gun sales, even of military-style assault rifles, have skyrocketed. Some of those who want to make the U.S. a “Christian” nation believe violence will be necessary. There is talk of “civil war”— and the chatter is escalating. In Europe, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the bloody war that followed shows no sign of ceasing. War, Division, Hate. These are the antitheses of love and getting worse all the time.  

Social Media platforms like TikTok, Twitter, or Instagram are not the solution. They have their uses but all too often fuel hate, make people young and old feel bad about themselves, and help spread what is euphemistically called “disinformation.” Why not just say lies? Because many people seem to no longer believe in “truth?” Because we are afraid of making the offenders even angrier?

Currently, I’m getting ready for the fall semester. I will be teaching two separate courses, one on Milton and the other on Donne, perhaps my two favorite writers from seventeenth-century England. They still have something to say to us.  Milton’s great epic Paradise Lost tells us that war erupted even before human history started, before God created earth and humans. Satan (the Hebrew word means “adversary”) rebels against God because God promoted the Son. Satan wants power and glory. We never see a peaceful heaven. And peace on earth is short-lived. Before the Fall, Eden is a place of harmony between Adam and Eve (even if they are not exactly “equal”). For a brief time (just days?), there is also harmony between humans and the environment, between heaven and earth. But Satan is coming—the walls of the Garden of Eden cannot keep him out. The Fall precipitates universal death and war, conflict between Adam and Eve, war between people, environmental disasters, rapacious animals—the world as we know it. In the last two books of the epic (a history lesson) Michael says War and Hate will continue until the end of time, with things getting worse and worse. How depressing. Yet Milton won’t leave us there. He insists on ending his epic with harmony between Adam and Eve restored, with love, as they walk out of Eden into our world, “hand in hand.” Love — the possibility of love between human beings is all we have as we walk through the world. Love and hope are what we need to survive.

Perhaps that’s ultimately what I try to teach.  

Donne, one of the greatest lyric love poets, always witty, is very different from Milton. But like Milton, he disdains those who love power and seek power over others. Donne’s lovers in their little rooms, or in bed, make love not war. Donne’s famous poem “The Good-Morrow” contrasts explorers and adventurers who seek new worlds (colonial domination) with the lovers (lying in bed looking at each other, their souls and bodies awakened). Together the two are a whole world: “where can we find two better hemispheres,” Donne asks, “without sharp north, without declining west?” His lovers embody (at least for the moment) wholeness, not division. 

 Is it any accident that the Hebrew word “shalom” (“peace”) comes from the root meaning wholeness or completeness?

Love, wholeness, healing.

Now I’m back in New York and at work. I’m in touch with good friends here. Will the feeling of renewal last? With the pressures of work, the city, and the world, it’s hard to say. Yet, I feel somehow changed by loving and feeling loved.

The Hebrew Bible says the heart is the seat of wisdom and I believe that is true. Feelings from the heart connect us with each other. It’s the only antidote I know to ward off all the despair, grief and hatred in the world. The heart also moves us to action, to do everything we can to fight these dark forces. 

And so I return this semester, once again, to teach my beloved students and grateful to be doing so.

It’s my most powerful antidote.