Light, Dance, and the Miracles of Gratitude.

Dear Gorgeous,

This morning, for the first time since December 31st, I woke up Joy full. It has been pretty amazing. After months of worry, care taking, exhaustion, wishing to lift your burden, fear and anxiety brought on by grieving you, there it was emanating outward. It isn't that I won't be in shock or back in the depths of the darkest sorrow again, I know I will be, but there it is, now, in my heart, even with the tears I'm crying as I write this. Joy. The miracle of it is that in losing you I thought Joy was dead forever. Our entire life together had been about Joy. We recognized that from the start, even inviting family and friends to join us in our shared joy.

Our wedding invite (designed by Julie Winter, photo by Cathy Reda-Cheplowitz).

Why the change of heart today? It could be a very dark day instead: outside it is stormy, I'm in quarantine until just before Thanksgiving, the state has just issued incredibly strict social restrictions until December 15 due to Covid as numbers exponentially rise, and there is a hospice memorial for you and the others lost this year...my list could go on but instead Joy found me and I'm going to hold onto it tightly today.

I know this Joy is about light, love, risk, dance, and you. 

I recognize that the shift started in motion last Saturday. I took a bold step and wired up new lights on the garage—a task, you the electrical-mechanical engineer usually took on. Thankfully, you had prepared me for months before your death on how to fix things at home. This was my ultimate test beginning with finding and turning off the appropriate fuses at the breaker box, right through to rewiring, and turning everything on! 

Following that big step on Sunday, I drove your little red Honda, the one that brought me so many tears just a few weeks ago, down to Peace Village to visit Judy. Four months ago, due to anxiety induced by grief, I couldn't even drive, but there I was, top down, experiencing you—your joy, your confidence, your delight in well designed cars and the open road. Then and there I knew the Honda was now both of ours until I can no longer care for it.

My introduction to the Honda on a Rochester date 2005

Those two steps were precursors to the inner peace I would find when I arrived. I had time to find my center, reflect, cry, be cared for and fed, practice Tai Chi, walk, sleep (for the first time in months), be part of a community, and most importantly spend time reflecting on our love and considering the deepest questions posed by your dying in Judy's powerful presence.

Judy on one of our walks

Dusk at Peace Village

On one of our walks

The most wonderful gift was that Judy led me in meditation every day. For the last 3 years, meditation and prayer enabled me to meet the challenges of your cancer and my knowledge that eventually l would lose you to it. Two months before you died and up until this week, I had lost the ability to meditate. My mind was that of a wounded animal: alarmed, constantly searching for you, a jumble of pain. With Judy and since, I found that center again. In one very powerful meditation you and God simultaneously filled my soul. I could feel you both enter as separate souls. It felt as if my inner self was holding onto two powerful electrical currents...my heart like Superman compacting coal into gold. It lasted but moments as my strength wasn't Herculean, tears streaming quietly down my cheeks. That's where I first encountered my true Joy of holding you both there beyond time and space.

Found on one of Judy and my walks

Found on another of our walks

Just noticed this morning, between our dinner chairs,

a heart holding a symbol of eternity holding a smaller heart within. 

During my stay with Judy, we reflected on the nature of miracles. I made this simple connection: miracles are all around us but in order to witness them, we need the ability to notice the smallest instances and bits of our daily living. We need to be open to accepting the improbable with no judgement of where or how. It is then that gratitude can fill us releasing hope. You always found God, not by the name of God, but that which is God. You continually found your peace in nature. It was your go to place and how you confronted your darkest moments, you'd beam with an inner Joy that you then spread to others. It enabled your silliest self and your most giving.

Since your death, I've been silently noticing all the improbable: your name in the clouds multiple times but first on the day before your funeral, hearts along the way, gifts you've left me, and bits of you that I've never known about such as your cross country journal or those I've forgotten and then rediscovered like the infinity necklace you gifted me with long ago. When I miss you most, I turn time and again to photos and videos of your silliness. You always loved that I laughed at your jokes. And now they bring you back to me in such a wonderful way. They bring out my gratitude that you were my lover, my partner, and always my soul mate.

After I had your chain fixed, I thought I should have an infinity charm made for it, then last night I rediscovered you had already given me one.

The last night I was at Peace Village was the day prior to the Buddhist and Hindi celebration of Diwali. I was asked to help decorate. It's akin to Christmas and New Year, a Festival of Lights celebrating the goddess Lakshmi. It seemed incredibly fitting for our journey.  As Lakshmi heralded and escorted her husband Krishna to Earth, with your dying I was like her, your wife escorting you into your next story. During your cancer journey and since, it has been the Virgin Mary who herself escorted Christ in and out of life to whom I  pray for strength.  It seemed almost magical, guided by the strength of women, that my journey to Peace Village began with me installing lights and would end with me decorating for a festival of lights in her honor.

The stage set for Diwali

My last evening at Peace Village, I fell to sleep watching a video from your cancer journey the one in which you are goofing around and entertaining your oncology nurses by dancing with your infusion pole. That is how you faced Stage 4 colorectal cancer—never letting fear or sorrow overtake you, always bringing joy. I awoke the next morning unexpectedly singing "I Hope You Dance". When I went over to the dining area for breakfast, I found Indian music being played, sweets on the menu, the decorations glittering, and folks dancing! They asked me to join in and of course I did! Call it what we may, coincidences, random events, or miracles, I know it was you insisting I follow you.

That is what has filled me with Joy today. The miracle of you and God entering my heart, the miracle of your Joy, the return of our Joy to me, noticing what I notice and the gratitude for having your love and a life spent with you. Importantly, the guidance and love of friends is what is carrying me to my next story. 

As we have always promised each other, I love you Honey for eternity plus 70 and around again with gratitude for the miracles.