Eleven days after Diane’s death, comes now the perhaps most unsettling part: Adjusting to a quiet solo existence inside our empty home.
I am hungry for the technicolor distractions to continue. They won’t.
My life always has demanded routine, and I am swimming in a sea of uncertainty.
Within hours, the final guest, Diane’s son Jamie, will have gone home to Jerusalem. The clatter and chatter of scores of friends and relatives passing through has become moot and mute.
Guests scrambled for parking passes and soon consumed acres of exotically tasty foods, lavishly prepared by our magnificent neighbor Shulamit.
In other days, Diane would have been in the exact middle, roaming, visiting animatedly with familiar and marginal friends. She loved socializing.
Children dashed up and down the stairways, understandably unmindful of the solemnity of the days.
Streams of religious men bounded up the stairs from the garage for traditional afternoon and evening prayers.
Sympathetic colleagues from earlier years offered their support each day in a vividly alive environment you hoped never would fade.
Lights have been burning in every room at almost every hour. Good.
At the next bedtime, though, the house will be as black as it was when life was normal and Diane slept through the night on my right.
After dressing, I would peek into our darkened bedroom at 3:30 a.m. On the radio, NPR was playing. I would say softly, but not to awaken, “Bye, Baby,” in case she could hear. Sometimes she responded, and those times were the most reassuring.
In recent months, as my wife slugged it out with ALS, she was awake every early morning. She would look up with a wan smile from the glowing light of her everpresent iTablet. Each morning, I worried I was saying “Bye, Baby” for the last time.
All of those distracting slivers of memories now are invisible, having been converted into a mental silent movie.
Bye, Baby.
