I am always stunned by the strength of the emotions I feel when I stand at Jane’s grave. I expect the tears and the sadness. I have come to accept–though I do not completely understand–the flashes of anger. Sometimes there is this overwhelming feeling of failure. Other times, I feel this powerful sense of understanding.
It is always quiet in the cemetery. Sometimes there is a military funeral off in the distance but the bugle call only adds to the silence. I have watched graves being dug–but somehow the sound does not break the silence. It is a place where all the noise seems to have been sucked out of the world–a silent vacuum filled with emotion and vision, but not sound.
When we visited her mother’s grave, Jane talked about how her mother said it is always cold there. Fifteen months into this solitary journey, I know the truth of that statement. Even in the heat of summer there is a chill that runs through the air and the ground. I see my lover as she was–sometimes frozen in place as the young woman I married–sometimes frozen in the form of our last trip together–sometimes in the form of the last days in the hospital–sometimes in the form of the woman in the casket–sometimes in the form of the woman in my arms as we snuggled on the couch.
There is an etiquette among the visitors. We try not to intrude on each other’s grief. But there is also a sense of shared understanding. We water each other’s flowers, nod at each other when we pass by–even sometimes share a word or two. But we are each locked in our own grief. We each know the burden the other carries and are careful not to add to it. We lighten it when we can–but it is a solitary place.
I remember learning how to die on stage. The director talked about how much energy it takes to die–that death consumes all of the body’s reserves–and still hungers for more. But grief devours energy as well–more slowly, perhaps, but with an insatiable hunger that I do not have words to describe. I fight sleep as long as I can–but once asleep my body resists all calls to awaken. In the morning, I struggle to get out of bed.
Every day, people join the dead. Every day, people join the grieving. Women become widows, men widowers, children orphans. There is no word for parents who lose children. What a terrible thing it must be to have a loss we cannot put a name to.
People die in a multitude of ways: accidents, drownings, heart attacks, strokes, diseases, cancers. Each death creates a coin of suffering: on one side are the dead, on the other, the mourners.
I know we all die. But, to quote John Donne, “Every man’s death diminishes me.” And some diminish us more than others. The loss of our parent, our child, our spouse diminishes us in a greater way than other deaths. And when that death might have been prevented–when it comes too soon…
People sometimes tell me they are amazed at what I am doing to fight cancer in general–and Jane’s cancer in particular. There is nothing amazing about it. This loss, in this way, is painful. I cannot stop my pain–but I may be able to prevent–or delay–yours.
We are all our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.
