THE LONELIEST YEAR ON THE PLANET

JANUARY 2014:

I was a brave girl, walking through the cemetery alone for the first time after the funeral. The area is small by today’s standards but only about one-third occupied, one hundred years old and owned by the synagogue for members and their families.

Located in a clearing adjacent to a wooded conservation area, the cemetery distinctly reflects the changing seasons, surrounding the rows of historic and more recently installed headstones with colorful foliage in the fall, evergreens in winter, cold rains in spring, and dried grassy patches in summer drought. There is no water source other than rainfall in the isolated natural surroundings.

I reached the hillside where my husband had been buried in early December 2013. I tried to summon his presence there, as I felt I could and should do. But I must have been numb inside. I stood there, just to stand there, waiting for something to happen, in the month after the catastrophe.

Was it because there was a marker the size of an index card poking out of a pile of dirt? When the others already had their massive stones carved in tribute, standing at full attention over their dead?

I did not want him to suffer this indignity. I madly scoured the hillside for rocks and carried them through the mud to arrange at the head of his plot.

In the process, I ruined a pair of fine red leather gloves. No matter to me.

APRIL 2014:

One early evening some months later, I decided on a whim to go to a movie, just like we had done countless times over the forty-one years of our marriage.

We always laughed at the time we were first admitted at senior citizen rates. We thought we’d have to show ID, but the cashier barely looked at us, being four decades younger, and the middle-aged couple at the window looking just like her parents—or maybe her grandparents.

I felt brave this time too, entering not only as a senior, but as a single instead of one of a pair. I laid down my cash and out came a phrase unfamiliar to me, “Just one ticket, please.”

I pulled open the theater door and entered the darkness. I anticipated the worst outcome, that returning to the bright light outside, nothing would look right—same as when I walked in. I claimed my seat in an empty row and stayed for the entire movie, through the credits.

When I walked out, I experienced a slight surge of—was it confidence? I didn’t feel elation, or even that I would make a habit of it. But I knew that I had done something important to start the new life that lay ahead of me. I promised myself that I would flex my lonely wings again, sometime soon.

When I exited into the lobby, I ran into two couples who were waiting for the next show. I recognized them from an organization we all belonged to for many years. They asked me in a tone of social cheer, “What did you see? What did you think of it? It’s good to see you getting out!” . . . blah, blah, blah.

I stood there as if hit by a bullet, hurled back into the shell-shocked state I had fought to overcome these last months. I felt exposed, as a woman alone, on a date with—myself.

As they spewed forth a stream of pleasantries, I thought to myself, but did not say, “I’m alone today. My husband died just before winter, and winter wears on. Did you give a thought to me—let’s call the widow to join us, she might be having a hard time?” I felt shut out of the closed circles of couples that had been my way of life. Would I have done the same if I were in their position? Maybe before, in my blissful unawareness of what loss does to you—but now, never.

Of course I didn’t say any of those things to these nice people whilst I felt my temporary flame of victory sputter and die. I drove home, my feelings raw, my anger and my grief raging, just like in the earliest days of being totally and utterly bereft, right back to the first vision of my dead husband, the starting point.

So this is what’s in store for me—but for how long? These early days must last longer than I’d been led to believe. A few small victories come, then they go, and don’t help like you expect they should. How was I to know?

The year like no other.

DECEMBER 2015:

The unveiling customarily takes place within a year after Jewish burial. A gauzy material, tied over the headstone to cover the inscription, is torn away during the brief ceremony. Participants gather in prayer and companionship, then share a simple meal in remembrance of the loved one.

The first year went by and I had not yet ordered the headstone. Then the second year. I researched the internet frequently for ideas. My mom had passed away in 2014 and her bronze plaque set down in a cemetery in New Jersey, yet my husband’s gravesite in Gloucester remained unmarked in 2015. I finally contacted a monument company to begin the task in earnest. I wanted a design that would express Paul’s interest in Art Deco, the same style he had used for his business cards.

I labored over the language and design placement for months. I detested the trite and uninspired stock formats in the catalogues. Every time I visited my daughter in New York City, I’d take numerous photos of grillwork, lettering, and decorative carvings on building facades.

Nothing ever seemed right. I was caught in a spiral. I could not get out of it.

Fortunately, I came to a realization that my cousin Sherry, an artist and graphic designer, might be able to help coordinate the elements that stymied me.  When she visited from Paris that summer, we sat on the hill overlooking the unmarked burial plot and figured out what to do. I saw a way forward, a burden lifted.

By December, I was ready, finally, to schedule the unveiling. The day, dreary. The ground, frozen. The mood, subdued. As a circle of people in my life gathered silently in the cold, I removed the covering:

PAUL J. LEVINE  November 18, 1935—December 4, 2013

What I had not expected was how emotional the event would be for everyone there, even after he had been gone for two years. Two long-time friends shed tears as they recalled the solid and generous friendship they had experienced over decades and greatly missed now. Most everyone spoke up spontaneously, one after the other, until all had spoken their peace.

We turned to walk quietly to our cars, leaving the site with its frozen patches of snow likely to persist for months.

I had no idea what to expect for the somber event I had delayed for so long. But then and there, I felt that we had done justice to his memory, and that this was the right time for it to happen, after all.

I felt in step with the rest of humanity in the rite of passage that allowed acceptance to grow, and loss to loosen its hold on me.

JANUARY 2016:

Then, a literal sign of the future appeared, with the calendar turning another page.

I decided to bring intentionality into the New Year. I came up with a resolution to reclaim my pursuit of the liberal arts that inspired me through high school and college. I would accomplish this by joining the Salem Athenaeum, a private library with materials and programs of historical interest, and a discussion group for adults with diverse literary and cultural passions, led by a philosophy professor.

The unveiling, marking completion of the initial mourning rituals, had meaning as a personal passage for me as well. I felt stronger, no longer fearful that a random encounter in a movie theater could throw me back into despair.

But life, an unpredictable mixture of the intentional and the accidental, veered on a collision course between those two opposing forces.

In early January, a thoughtful, soft-spoken gentleman sat on the other side of the table at my first literary discussion meeting. He introduced himself to the group as a psychotherapist, writer, and photographer. That would be David.

Hesitating a bit, protecting my tender heart, I moved one step very carefully ahead of the other. Even so, I decided that I was ready to take on anything that I trusted to be life-affirming, beginning here.

Unbeknownst to me, my life leapt forward in that moment.