A Walk in the Graveyard

I am back from a very helpful visit with my sister and brother-in-law in London. Jane and Ralph took great, nurturing care of me - feeding me, letting me be lazy, making plans for going places that I would enjoy, and taking long (for me, not for them) walks in various neighborhoods in London. For the first time in 2 or 3 years I let someone else take care of me.

A short walk from their home is a huge graveyard. It is multi-cultural, perhaps multi-denominational, but definitely it is large and ostentatious in places. It is the perfect place for long and quiet walks during the week. Jane and I went there once and then I took a walk there by myself one day.

On the walk with Jane I asked her to tell me about a time she remembered that Dennis was not sick. Dennis and I were together for 10 years; Dennis was sick for 6 years. Although I fell in love with a healthy man, I was having a difficult time remembering him without an aid to walk, a diaper or a fight needing to be fought. I needed to hear something else.

She was not able to remember much either, but did remember him both being aggravating by his over-indulgence of me one Christmas and by being fun at a baseball game that she indulged him in one afternoon while I worked.  We never found a non-ill memory, but did finally get to a place in our walk where we were just plain laughing or simply living our lives in the moment.

A while later I walked again by myself. It was a place in London where I could talk aloud to myself, a very rare commodity. I talked, yelled and cried and no one noticed. Finally I sat down on a bench, generously provided by someone who was honoring someone else they loved. I told myself it was time to move forward, to plan a life by myself.

I can, and do, miss Dennis daily. Sometimes I miss his complaining, his whining and other days I miss his stories and his laughter. But I know that I must move forward. And I want to move forward. And there is really no other direction to go.

Ann