Note: The music selection is Michael’s last completed composition. It is the score he composed to accompany my video of Ode to a Whistleblower, which was played at Daniel Ellsberg’s tribute during the 2023 Whistleblower Summit on National Whistleblower Day.
Two Years Without
Two years ago today, the bottom fell out of my world.
One moment, I was bantering with Michael, my soulmate husband of nearly thirty-two years, after he chided me about sweeping away the cobwebs on the front porch—or, as he half-joked, “destroy[ing] the spiders’ homes.”
Minutes later, he had collapsed, thousand-yard–staring past me with his back propped up against some cushions on the living room floor.
I won’t rehash the details of that morning. You can read my original post about it here.
The short version is I called 911 immediately and began administering CPR a minute after his collapse. I felt relief when he gulped several desperate breaths and thought I was saving his life.
The paramedics arrived within seven minutes. After thirty-five minutes, one of the police officers pulled me aside to explain they had exhausted their protocol for attempted resuscitation and he hadn’t had a heartbeat the entire time.
That was when the shock took over, my disbelieving mind still thinking Michael would make a surprise comeback. He couldn’t be gone that instantly without warning. It felt outside of reality, outside of anything I had ever experienced.
I didn’t know there was a special category of grief called traumatic grief, which is grief plus the traumatizing shock of sudden, unexpected loss.
That’s probably why I still can’t watch someone performing CPR without tears welling up—whether on screen or even in a hilarious educational demonstration like I witnessed by Dr. Mark Trozzi at the Better Way Conference.
During the agonizing months that followed Michael’s death, I didn’t know if I would make it through a day without wailing.
I did the only thing I knew how to do: I wrote. And I shared my scribblings with you as they gushed out.
And somehow, that helped many of you with your own journeys through grief, loss, and healing. And knowing that helped me, too.
Eventually, a day came when I didn’t cry. I don’t recall exactly when. I know I was still crying daily at four months in, when I wrote:
Four months into this long night’s journey into day, I find myself questioning at moments, How am I even functioning?
The wailings are less violent and frequent now. I no longer walk around feeling like an overfilled mug, ready to spill at the gentlest jiggle.
I keep wondering if there is going to come a day when I don’t cry. And then I wonder if I will feel guilty when that day does eventually come. Maybe I’ll get through a whole day and realize I haven’t cried. And then another day.
I’ll probably feel like I’m betraying Michael, but then I’ll remember that’s what he would want for me. He wouldn’t want me to suffer. He would want me to bounce back and keep fighting, which is what I’ve done, what I’m trying to do.
People always talk about how the first year is like this, the second year is like that—and then in the same breath say no one’s grief is alike.
All of that is probably true, as contradictory as it sounds. Grief follows patterns, but each person’s instantiation of that pattern differs.
The days wash into weeks, the weeks into months, the months into years. The boundaries are ambiguous, amorphous, elusive.
I guess I could say it was around a year by the time I wasn’t constantly feeling like I was stepping off the curb into air, reflexively starting to share something with Michael before I realized he wasn’t there.
And then I realized he was there—he is here—and I started talking to him more often, sharing as I was inspired to share, seeking his guidance, and laughing with him at inside jokes. I started noticing synchronicities that felt impossibly coincidental, some sending me on scavenger quests to convey a spine-tinglingly precise message.
As a highly logical being who requires empirical evidence for incredible claims, I can’t pretend to explain these experiences. All I know is the synchronicities began occurring often enough that I opened my heart to the mystery and began treating them as communiqués from Michael.
Like what happened last Wednesday with my friend “Stacy,” who has been helping me with yardwork and handywoman tasks. She’s the one who fixed up Michael’s car for sale (the one a scammer tried to swindle me on, but then carma struck back).
While repairing a light switch with faulty electrical wiring in the living room, Stacy asked, “Do you have a wire cutter?”
This triggered a cascade of synchronicities that became almost comical. Below are the texts1 I sent a loved one as the events unfolded:
Stacy got back a little while ago and is still working on the electrical stuff. She needed a wire cutter, so we looked in the garage and tool chest, then I checked [Michael’s] workshop. No luck.
I thought of his portable toolbox in the entryway where I have the digital collage from his funeral. As I was removing that, I asked Michael to help me find them. When I opened up the toolbox, there they were along with a bag of standard wire connectors, which I had never heard of until an hour ago when Stacy asked if we had any and then showed me a pic on her phone. They were too expensive at Blackbird, so she skipped getting them. Plus there’s some voltage testing equipment and another tool Stacy had just been researching but couldn’t afford. She said Michael has my back. We both started crying.
She just came back and said she needs some snippers. She reached in and found exactly what she needed.
She also found the garage door opener in the living room tool chest I have been looking for for two years. It needed one CR2450 and two CR2016s. I found a bag in the linen closet with exactly those plus one more CR2016. She put them in and they worked. She just has to figure out how to set it up again. But it just happened that I had found the manual for it an hour earlier when she’d asked if I had an electrical layout for the house. I remembered the manila envelope we’d been given when we bought the house and amazingly knew exactly where it was. No electrical layout but the garage door manual we would need an hour later.
I think I’ve only looked in that envelope a couple times since we moved here in 2015 so had no idea what was in there.
And the tool she wanted has FLUKE on the case 😆
I checked my phone after we found that stuff, and at the top of my screen was an avatar with a pic of Michael and me I haven’t seen for a long time. Turns out it was associated with [an old email] account, which I haven’t sent from for years so never see it. Only today, an old client emailed about a photo license and used that account, so my iPhone showed that avatar for my reply.
A few weeks before that, I experienced another episode of stringchronicities while searching for a card to give my mom for Second Mother’s Day (First Mother’s Day took place while I was a bit harried before my New England trip). I’d remembered buying a second card I couldn’t resist when I got the first one so went hunting for that. Below are the notes I jotted down as the hunt progressed:
I encounter something [what thing?] while looking for wrapping paper for my mom’s belated Mother’s Day gifts that makes me think of a quote/scene [which one, again?] and I realize, “Michael is thinking the same thing.”
“You are always with me,” I say to Michael.
Later, I hear the line “I am always here” from My Hero, and I know it is from Michael.
[a little later]
I couldn’t find Scotch tape, so I went hunting for a sticker to seal the tissue paper on one of my mom’s gifts closed, but things are not where I expect them … and the debris is now spread across the dining table in various containers in the flux of mid-organization.
I reach into the first container, and to my amazement, I discover a sealed Varsity heart sticker, and it is exactly what I need and even better than what I’d hoped for, and I realize it is a gift from the past, almost certainly from [our best friend], that had been sitting dormant until the precise second in history (future) it would be most needed and appreciated.
Looking for the second Mom card I was going to save for next year but was so excited to give her and realize I can do it on Second Mother’s Day later today [after sleep] …
Then looking all over for the greeting cards I had recently consolidated but are no longer in last-known place due to previously mentioned cleaning/organizing of desk and mid-organizing rest.
After searching in all the containers and bags of mid-organized supplies, I say, “It’s gotta be around here.” Then I reach into a slate gray cloth bin, slip my hand underneath the cardboard envelope with a UK return address, and pull out the Ziplock bag of the consolidated cards I was looking for. I open up the bag and start to look at the top one (sideways) but stop myself and instead go to the back, which turned out to be exactly the Second Mother’s Day card I was looking for.
It was like I was flowing seamlessly with my gut brain, fully attuned to the thousands of clues my microbiome had absorbed without my conscious brain’s awareness.
Just as I open the card with Sharpie S•Gel pen in hand, I see the closing line in elegant contemporary script (the kind that looks like it would be used to typeset a jewelry brand name): Happy Birthday.
Oops. Good thing I didn’t use this for First Mother’s Day. I could have accidentally given her a birthday card then. But that also means it is no longer appropriate to give to her for Second Mother’s Day. I will return it to the perfect place from which I found it in the hopes that my synapses will have formed a groove for me to return to before my mom’s birthday.
As I’m returning the card to its spot at the back of the card bag, I see a row of three Papyrus gold hummingbird (or hummingbird gold?) stickers.
“Those are the stickers I was looking for!” [see above]
The dark chocolate bar, another gift in arrears from [our best friend], had one bar missing out of three in an open wrapper sitting in one of the gray cloth bins, waiting to be found by me when I was feeling decadent enough to try a bite while knowing I may be risking a migraine, but I’m okay, and it was delicious, and I’ve enjoyed another bite since. [Postscript: I did get a migraine the next day.]
I pick out a different card for my mom, this one being second from the top. It features Renoir’s Storm Clouds over a Lake (ca. 1890–95).
Another Morgan Library card, I notice.
“I’ve gotten so much pleasure out of these cards,” I thought.
These are the cards I bought at the Morgan Library gift shop after I’d spent a couple hours on a wild book chase looking for the Morgan Library because Anne Gibbons had told me it was a booklovers’ dream. I overshot my destination on the subway in one direction and then another, guided by street saints who kindly directed or even walked me to my destination each of the dozens of times I got lost or didn’t know which subway stop to get off on or to even tell which subway stop we were arriving at.
Each lostness became an opportunity to meet and talk with another avenue angel, which would become the fireflies of my New York trip.
If you will forgive an intrusion from the present, below are some of the street saints and avenue angels I met while staying with Vera Sharav in New York after attending the Better Way Conference in Rhode Island.
I first met the above street saint, a Jamaican musician, during my jaunt to the Morgan Library. He was approaching a pigeon with his rolling cart, and the pigeon refused to budge. We made eye contact and laughed as he gently rolled the cart around the pigeon. Later, we reconnected in the subway station, where I was lost, once again. He let me know I was in the wrong station and offered to walk with me since he was headed in that direction. We enjoyed a lovely conversation for several blocks until I arrived at the right station. I learned he had been living in New York for several decades, prior to which he had lived in Japan for several months while performing as a musician.
I met the next avenue angel, an off-duty security guard, shortly after the Jamaican musician while I was lost in another subway station. He helped me study the map and figured out I was in the wrong station (again). He looked at his watch and said he had some time and then offered to walk me to the right one. We strolled and talked for probably fifteen minutes, discussing how important face-to-face connections are to combat the dehumanizing propaganda. We even touched on how COVID policies had been intentionally used to disconnect, separate, and isolate us. As I expressed my gratitude for his kindness, he talked about how he was just doing what he would like someone else to do for him—in other words, an avenue angel living by the Golden Rule.
During a later subway trip while I was trying to figure out which stop to get off on and how to even tell which street we were arriving at, I struck up a conversation with this street saint visiting from Turkey. Fortunately, he was getting off on the same stop I needed, so I just followed him when the time came.
This happened numerous other times as I criss-crossed New York to various appointments, including an encounter with a twinkly-eyed French woman who had been living in New York since the seventies. We got to talking and discovered we are both relatively recent widows. I began tearing up as we spoke. I only wish I had gotten her photo along with the photos of so many other street saints and avenue angels who helped me throughout my week in Manhattan.
This sweet avenue angel even has a halo behind him. We met on the subway as I was once again trying to figure out which stop was closest to my destination. He was getting off in the same area, so I just hopped off with him. We enjoyed a delightful conversation, and he expressed appreciation when he learned I use my writing to fight tyranny. Like with almost all the street saints and avenue angels I met, I shared a bookmark with my Substack on it, so I can only hope they signed up. (Any of them who did, please reach out as I would love to reconnect!)
This feisty avenue angel was a retired teacher who helped me get on the right bus. We sat together and talked about the dismal state of education and her work with an educational organization that was preparing for an upcoming conference. She helped me spot the right bus stop when the time came, and we bid farewell.
Now back to my previously recorded entry …
Back to the Morgan Library. When I entered that lavish museum, I asked the museum entry-taker[?] how much admission was, only for the first time registering there could be a fee, it having been so many decades since I’d been to a paid museum.
He said it was twenty-five dollars. I grimaced, having already determined not to spend any more money than absolutely necessary as the trip was already more than I could afford, and I didn’t want to continue racking up more debt.
The entry-taker pointed me to the parts of the Morgan Library where I could go without paying, the gift shop being one of them.
I then spent the next forty-five minutes browsing greeting cards, finding a stack of delightful bibliophilic and artistic cards, paying $14.70 for them and thinking I got off ten dollars under—only to discover there was a whole ’nother section of the gift shop, and this was laden with another dazzling array of cards.
The instant I began browsing, I found two [uniquely meaningful cards] that were beyond perfect for [a dear friend], then some lion ones, then a tiger one, then an Alice in Wonderland card, then a fairy tale one—not necessarily in that order. And this Renoir card I had picked out for my mom.
And now it is time to write in it.
That’s the end of the meanderings I recorded after midnight on June 27. As I was working on this post and inserting the photos of street saints and avenue angels (oh, how I wish I had captured them all now), I recalled how at the beginning of my trip, after I had changed planes at the Seattle Airport and sat down in my seat, I looked down at my wrist and realized it was missing my Love Abides watch.
I informed the stewardess, who helped me search for it and made an announcement to the passengers to look for it after the plane landed. I later filed a lost claim at the Seattle Airport. I kept hoping some airport angel would find and turn it in, but no sign yet.
Barbara Pescan’s Love Abides has been my favorite poem for over two decades, and I always turn to it in times of loss. Several years ago, I decided to have Joy Sparks create a custom typewriter keys watch with that title.
I had no idea how much weight that phrase and the watch itself would later carry, becoming symbolic of Michael’s abiding love in the wake of his absence.
Now I had lost that symbol, my naked wrist a continual reminder of the deeper loss it echoed.
I had worn that watch at Michael’s funeral along with my yin-yang fingerprints pendant cradling his ashes.
I also wore Michael’s yin-yang bracelet, which I would later lose for several months, finally discovering it on the bench in our entryway, ecstatic to be reunited with what I thought I had lost.
And just now, as I was writing that paragraph, I suddenly remembered the inscription I’d had engraved on Michael’s tombstone, a line from the James Trapp translation of the Tao Te Ching: “No-one is ever lost.”
A little over a week ago, I was driving home from a gathering of kindreds. It was late and dark and I knew I was approaching the street where Michael and I had lived for sixteen years, the longest we’d lived anywhere and the most saturated with memories.
The last time I’d driven by our apartment—while taking my mom to a doctor’s appointment—I’d burst into tears as I passed the parking lot.
I braced against the emotional wave I feared was about to strike.
A minute later, I realized I’d somehow driven past the street without realizing it.
I’d been spared the breaker, but then I found myself swept up in the tide of the song playing on the CD I’d popped in when I started the car: Beirut’s Elephant Gun. Even though Michael had never listened to it as far as I’m aware since I discovered it on my own, I knew it was something Michael would love.
I listened to the lyrics while driving away from the town holding most of our memories and broken dreams:
If I was young, I’d flee this town
I’d burn my dreams underground
As did I, we drink to die, we drink tonight
Far from home, elephant guns
Let’s take them down one by one
We’ll lay it down, it’s not been found, it’s not aroundLet the seasons begin
It rolls right on
Let the seasons begin
Take the big game down
Let the seasons begin
It rolls right on
Let the seasons begin
Take the big game downElephant, elephant gun
Elephant, elephant gun
Elephant, elephant gun
Elephant, elephant gunAnd it rips through the silence of our camp at night
And it rips through the night, all night, all night
And it rips through the silence of our camp at night
And it rips through the silence, all that is left is all that I hide
I can no longer hide from the grief. It swells up and engulfs me. I begin sobbing while saying aloud, “Hi, Love.”
I feel him say, “I am always with you.” I blink through the tears all the way home.
After losing my Love Abides watch, I realized it was appropriate that I had lost the material symbol of that message. It was a reminder that even in the absence of a physical presence, love abides, and nothing can ever diminish that.
Michael may be physically absent, but his hisness remains, and he will always be with me.
Postscript
As I was nearing the end of this essay, I realized I’d better check the audio file I’d uploaded for Michael’s composition Ode to a Whistleblower. I wasn’t emotionally prepared to listen to it, so I just played a second of the beginning and then skipped to the end—only to discover a lengthy blank space.
Since I am already nearing midnight and am rushing to publish this while it is still July 21 (for me), I had to race to truncate it. I uploaded the aif file I exported. When I entered the settings, I discovered Substack had generated a transcript. It read:
[music]
Amen.
Thank you.
That seemed so beautifully appropriate for this post, I screen-captured it.
Then I discovered the aif wouldn’t play in my browser, so I had to quickly export an mp3 and replace it. This time, a “Thank you” had been inserted after “[music]” in the transcript.
This reminded me of something I recorded Michael saying on April 5, 2017, at 5:45 pm. He was sharing that his only two prayers are “Thank you” and “Whatever you want.”
Remembering that Love Abides ends with “Amen,” I say aloud as I type the closing lines of this piece:
Thank you.
Whatever you want.
Amen.
Love Abides
by Barbara Pescan, Morning Watch: Meditations
Often we are found in our grief and comforted
calmed by some kindness
brought alive again by beauty
that catches us undefended.
Even when the sun is most thin and far
even at the hour the storm is at its height
we can go through
renewal nests within sorrow
love abides, even beyond anger, beyond death.
We are held in an embrace invisible but infinite
moving with all creation
between wholeness and fragmentation
moving always toward the one.
Small joys and great sorrows pass
and we, with steps uncertain, move on
to whatever is next
but continually seen, heard, held
by Life infinite and remote, intimate and abiding.
Love, do not let us go. Amen.© Margaret Anna Alice, LLC
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I corrected a few typos/autocorrections because I’m anal about editing, but I am also anal about accuracy so am putting this note here to reconcile the tension between verisimilitude and ease of reading.
