Learning What We Don't Want to Know

Learning is largely a voluntary affair. We pursue the things we want to know and take the steps to learn them. Then there is the stuff we don't want to know. What I call involuntary learning. What does it feel like to lose a job? Undergo chemo? Bury a child? Those things that forcibly insert themselves into your life like foreclosure or violent crime. What is that like?

I found out. It was two-years ago today that I became a widower. It was the worst day of my life—and that was with the knowledge my wife's battle with early-onset Alzheimer's only had one outcome.

(Prior to that, I learned what it was like to be a twenty-four/seven care-giver. The stress and fitful sleep aside, that was only the second-hardest thing I ever did.)

You see, my wife was the most luminous soul I had ever met, and to my utter disbelief she liked me. She thought I was funny and smart and nice. Not counting the six-months or so we worked together before becoming a couple, we spent something like twelve-thousand twenty-one days together. For me, she was it.

Naturally, it wasn't all unicorns and rainbows. No marriage is. For example, frustrated one day by my bottomless enthusiasm for washing and waxing cars, she said to me (as only a wife can) “If I put the %$#@! bathroom on four wheels will you clean it then?”

Yeah, she could be a pistol. More often, she was the person who couldn't continue a walk because we'd come across a rabbit who'd been critically injured by a car and who wouldn't sleep until it was attended to by a veterinarian.

Or the one who whipped up a pan of double-chocolate brownies while I was in the backyard one hot summer afternoon, attempting to clear it of bindweed.

So yes, taking care of her was a no-brainer. And to my eternal surprise, it gave me a sense of purpose I had never known. Her descent was a slow one, which gave me time to adapt to the latest round of changes. And unlike many Alzheimer's patients, her personality never altered. There was no acting out, no violence.

We were largely able to continue our lives as a couple. We continued to make our weekly trip to Jewel and go to Lincoln Park Zoo and the CSO and just be together (something which I now understood had an expiration date).

The Great Recession had kicked us down a long flight of stairs, to the point where we lived in my parent's basement. But even that misery contained a silver lining: she was next to me. Things like holding her hand, kissing her hair and having her in my arms became impossibly redolent. Decadent, even.

She was an island of comfort in a sea of shit.

Nothing changed after the onset. The here and now—having her with me—was everything.

The emotional contours of care-giving feature guilt. Exhaustion. Anger. Hopelessness. Self-doubt. Endless adjustments. Even after my wife had entered hospice, I reflexively responded to her CNA's remark that I was a good care-giver with the thought “Then why isn't she getting better?”

The cruel reality, newly reinforced, haunted me deep into the night. Tears and vodka flowed.

Yes, I was learning.

It shouldn't have been surprising that my wife, who was probably the most-intelligent person I had ever known, was still teaching me.

Then, on a damp, overcast Thursday afternoon, she was gone.

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Death brings with it a whole new understanding of the word 'forever'.

It answers questions, such as how can survivors hand over ludicrous sums of money to people they believe can contact their loved ones?

It makes you wish for incredibly mundane things. Things like sitting next to each other watching TV. Or hearing a giggle—one last time.

Depending on your spiritual inclination, it may even challenge your notion of the afterlife. For example, even as a lapsed Lutheran, I refused to believe my wife was just...gone. How could all she said and thought and felt—all that she was—just be gone?

The answer, of course, is that it isn't. It's in me.

Lucy? You were a place.

And whenever I was with you, I was home.