The Burning Raft

You must judge a man by the work of his hands. ~ African Proverb

I loved Jim’s hands. He was a tall, lanky man and his hands were long and lean, his fingers elegant. Like the man himself, his hands were quiet and not overly expressive while he was talking. The gestures were spare and gentle. What he did with his hands was more important than what he said with them while talking, and what he said with his hands when he wasn’t talking was most important of all.

I knew that I loved his hands, that I had always found his hands attractive, but I was struck by how affected I was by the memory of those hands in the weeks immediately following his death. I was sorting through some items in Jim’s desk and came across an old work glove, stiff from overuse. I stopped before throwing it away. I slid my own hand into the glove that had once held his and felt immediately connected to him through the glove. There were many things I was able to give away or throw away in the first few weeks after his death, but I have not yet parted with any of his gloves. Winter gloves, work gloves, gloves he wore while doing the computer work that used to cause him so much pain, I cannot be parted from any of them.

Jim’s hands keep coming to my mind in many ways. Hands, after all, can represent many things. According to J.C. Cooper in An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols, Quintilian says, “The hands may almost be said to speak. Do we not use them to demand, promise, summon, dismiss, threaten, supplicate, express aversion or fear, question or deny? Do we not use them to indicate joy, sorrow, hesitation, confession, penitence, measure, quantity, number, and time? Have they not the power to excite and prohibit, to express approval, wonder, shame?”[1] Hands can be raised or placed on another person in blessing or benediction. They can be raised to swear an oath or ask a question. Hands can be laid on the heart in an expression of loyalty or devotion. They can symbolize generosity – “a helping hand”, they can give stability or support – “to offer (or to lend) a hand”, they can give greetings, they can heal, and they are the first expression of tender emotion when you hold someone’s hand. It is this last I heard from several different friends, at different times, when I told them the story of my reaction to his gloves. “It’s like holding his hand,” each one said.

In Jim’s life as an artist, his hands were important tools. They sculpted, drew, or painted with delicacy and precision. Even in his digital art, which he started in 2011, he drew on an iPad, not with a stylus, but with his finger. While the medium lacked a physical presence, the creation process was very physical for him. He would expand the image on his iPad with two fingers, draw in the detail or shading he wanted with the tip of his right index finger, and then pinch the image back down to its normal size. It was a painstaking process, but I find it interesting that his digital images were created in a very physical way, with a hands-on interaction with the tool and the medium.

As my husband, he loved me with his beautiful hands, both in physical intimacy and in the other parts of our lives together. His beautiful hands were always a turn-on for me, whether viewed in a sexual context or when I was observing him work on his art or around the house. Jim was a good amateur handyman. He fixed plumbing and did minor repairs and he had a special talent for patching plaster that he had developed over the years, first in his apartment, and then in each of our two houses. Again, those detailed, patient, precise hands fixed what was broken, formed and reformed whatever needed to be built up, and labored for our home and for us.

While I miss Jim’s quiet, reassuring presence continually, I also find that I often miss the hands that supported me and helped me as my partner in life. When I had lower back spasms two and a half weeks after his death, there was no one to drive me to my medical appointment, pick things up at the grocery, rub ointment into my skin, take care of the many little things around the house that need to be done, or just bring me a fresh cup of coffee. Jim cared for me in so many little ways. There were so many moments of kindness in my life with him, moments when he touched me with reverence and love, times when he picked up work that I was unable to do, days when he helped me or healed me with his hands, weekends that he did work on our home and for us. Even now, the house is covered with plaster patches that he never had a chance to sand and repaint. Between the patches are his drawings and paintings that I hung back up in case visitors came by. I am surrounded by the work of his hands.

The night Jim died, the funeral home director gave me Jim’s wedding band. Without thinking, I slipped it on my own hand. I had taken my own rings off sometime during the evening as was my habit. Thus when I woke up the next morning, only Jim’s wedding band was on my left hand. I’ve kept it there since then, held in place by my own rings. In this small way, my hand is still held in his, but it can never truly fill the place that his hand has left empty.

[1] Cooper, J.C., An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols. p. 78. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978. (https://archive.org/stream/B-001-014-059#page/n78 , accessed 26 May 2018).

I found the book Mondo Boxo by cartoonist Roz Chast on the bookshelf last night. From “The Flan Man” in this book of cartoon stories came Jim’s description of the quantities I could make when cooking: too much, much too much, and horse-choker. I smiled for a moment and then it hit me: I don’t know how to be who I am without Jim.

I married Jim shortly after I turned 24. It did not feel too young at the time, although I often said we might have waited but I knew I would not change my mind about him. I also said I was sorry that he had to be married to me when I was 24. I was a baby. Aside from a single semester when I lived on campus at college, I had never lived away from my parents. I moved from my father’s house to my husband’s apartment. My ever-patient husband then had to learn to wait for me to grow up.

And grow up I did. Eventually. In fits and starts. We stayed together and we were committed to each other and to our marriage and we worked through problems when they arose. We were Married, with a capital “M”. Married before the earth cooled, as my friend Keith used to say. We had no children, so we were always just us. Time was sometimes described as “BU”, which was “before us”.

When we married, Jim had just turned 30. He had adult friends. I technically had adult friends, that is, friends who were over the age of 18, but Jim’s friends were real adults. Some of them were married. Some had children. Some even had step-children. Some of them owned homes. They had real jobs and they were fully established as people, or so they seemed to me.

As I was looking at Mondo Boxo on the shelf, I realized that I had spent my entire adulthood, my true adulthood, that is, as the wife of James Upright. I have no concept of myself as an adult who lives on her own, because I never did that. And my interests and my sense of humor developed and grew during the time that I started dating Jim at age 22 and throughout our marriage of 27 years.

Despite all of that, I don’t see my identity as being that of Jim’s wife. I always felt that I had an individual identity as well as being my married self. For us, two did not become one. Two became two plus. Two individuals and a married couple. I am not just Jim’s wife. I am a Senior IT Manager at a multinational corporation, a daughter, a sister, a cousin, a friend, a researcher, a writer, a baker, an arts enthusiast. I am many, many things. But who I am as a person, my sense of my individual identity at my own core, was profoundly shaped and molded in my early adulthood by my relationship with Jim. What strikes me as funny, what I think is unjust, what captures my interest, all of these things are wrapped up in almost 29 years of shared memories and life together.

A psychologist told us once that we had a very strong intellectual bond. That feels like a good description of our relationship. We were far from being the same person. Jim was incredibly steady, calm, slow to anger, thoughtful, and one of the most intelligent and well-read people I have ever met. I am scattered, energetic, easy to anger, empathetic and emotional. Jim was deeply introverted. He sometimes described himself as “imploding” at parties or in crowds. I am somewhat introverted, in that I really need my alone time in order to regroup and function, but I am more comfortable in groups than he was by far and I get involved in things and volunteer and invite people over to the house. Despite those differences, or perhaps because of them, Jim and I connected at a deep level. I knew just what would make him laugh and was usually the person who started the joke, but Jim would build on it with me, the two of us in a frenzy to say the next thing that would make the other laugh a deep, strong, belly laugh. We had a score of jokes between us and a sort of shorthand for calling them up. I thought of myself as a funny person because, and only because, Jim laughed at me. Jim always said that I “notice” things, but my pleasure in noticing was in being able to point something out to him.

I have years of career left, I own a house, I like to travel, I do historical research and sometimes I do translation work and I give lectures. But who am I? The person who laughed at my jokes is gone. The person who shared with me when I geeked out about some random topic, like my historical research, is no longer here. There is no one to discuss ideas with, no one to point something out to, no one to text a quick idea or a funny word usage I heard or to make up a pun for, knowing he would groan and then laugh. There is no one to watch my face as Jim did. He knew when I was building a funny idea and that if he could just be patient for a minute, it would come out and we would laugh and then he would be able to build on it and we’d be off on a fantastical journey into topics more and more warped and ridiculous until we really and truly ended up on the floor, we were laughing so hard.

And now? Who am I? I was never just Jim’s wife. Of course I am my own person. Of course. It’s obvious. I have my own interests as well as our shared interests and that continues. Still, Jim was my audience of one and we were a party of two. Without my partner, without that one person whose brain could fire on the same lines as my own, I know who I am, but I don’t know how to be that person. When I lost Jim, I lost the part of myself that lived in our “plus” as well as that part of myself that lived only in him. I have gone from “two plus” to a “one minus”. I don’t know how to be whole.

My husband, Jim, had been an artist and homemaker for the last 10 months.  This change in the structure of our lives and who had a salary and who did not was always part of our master plan, but it kicked in a few years ahead of schedule when Jim was laid off in June of 2017.

While I went to the office every day, Jim wrote and he created.  He took care of the house.  He cleaned, he cooked, he shopped.  I still took care of our finances, but he did the lion’s share of the housework, the laundry, etc.  I love to cook, but Jim insisted he was going to take on the work.  He refused my offer to cook a couple of nights a week so he could focus on his art.

When he died, I was left in a role that seemed like a traditionally “male” role instead of the role a woman would typically find herself in.  I was lost in my own kitchen.  I couldn’t find anything.  I didn’t know what food we had, what in the refrigerator was still good or what was in the pantry.  I hadn’t grocery shopped in ages, aside from running into the store for one or two things.  I couldn’t find the cleaning supplies.  I didn’t know if I needed to buy more cat litter or trash bags or toilet paper.  Being lost in my kitchen was especially odd for me, as I had been a chef during the first part of our marriage.

At the same time, there were traditionally “male” things that I couldn’t do.  I didn’t know how to change the light bulb in my own kitchen, in a house I had lived in for more than 11 years.  When your husband is over 6’4”, you don’t change a lot of light bulbs.  I need a stepladder to reach the fixtures; he could just reach up and do it.  Within 72 hours of his death, I was standing on my neighbor’s porch, holding a halogen light bulb and thinking, “How many widows does it take to change a light bulb?”  Too soon?  I giggled to myself thinking how Jim would have laughed at that.  My neighbor, Brad, came over to help me, with instructions that he had to TEACH me, not just do it for me.

I’ve since changed a few more light bulbs.  (Why do we have so many halogen light fixtures in this house?)  I’m going to have to do things I haven’t done before, like patch the cracked plaster in the office.  I’ll learn, I will.

In the meantime:

How many widows does it take to change a light bulb?

Oh, honey, not a one, not if there is a big, strong, handsome man living right next door.

 

 

May 9, 2018.  Normal day.  I got up early.  I had to be at the office for an 8 am meeting, so I caught the 7:12 bus downtown.  Jim was still sleeping when I left. Around 10:45, I checked my personal email and saw we had an invite for an event the following weekend.  I sent Jim a text message:

At 1:10, I let him know I had sent him my free/busy schedule.  He didn’t respond, but he often didn’t answer right away.  At 2:45 , I told him that my evening meeting had been cancelled, so he’d know we didn’t have any conflicts on my time in the evening. Then at 4:51: “on bus” and finally at 5:24: “Marburg”, a street near our home.  This last was to let him know I would be home in about 2-3 minutes.  He usually started looking for my text message periodically after 5 and would open the front door for me.  No response, but it was not that unusual for him not to have his phone with him.

As I approached our house, I saw the lawnmower in the front yard.  The grass was partly cut.  I was annoyed with him.  Why didn’t he start mowing earlier so we could spend the whole evening together?  The front door was open, with just the glass door closed.  Our windows were open.  I could see him sitting on the screened porch, taking a break from mowing.  I called to him and he didn’t answer.  Sleeping?  I couldn’t see his head.

I whispered to myself:  “Oh no.”

He was leaning to one side, his eyes partly open, his mouth open a little, his hand hanging down, fingers curled. I looked to see if I could see his chest rising.  I called him again.  I touched him.  Cold.  I reminded myself to breathe.

911.

I gave the operator the wrong street address.  I said, “my husband is dead.”  I said he had been dead a while and I hadn’t tried to resuscitate.  She asked if I wanted to stay on the line with her.  I said no.  I hung up.  I immediate sent a message to my neighbor and friend, Mary, who is a nurse.

I have always been one of those people who stays very calm during a major crisis.  Small problems cut me off at the knees, but major ones and I get very still.  I corrected my typo. Because Mary would not understand what I was telling her?  Was she going to think I called 912 and find that odd?  I didn’t cry.  I didn’t scream.  I asked my neighbor to put my lawn mower away.  I said, “Jim is dead.  Please put away my lawn mower for me.”

Mary came at a run from two houses away.  She looked at him.  She felt for a pulse.  We went into the living room.  The police came.  They asked questions.  They looked at his medications.  They wrote things down.  They asked more questions.  They said there was no evidence of foul play.  They asked more questions.  They explained again.

“Does your husband have a drinking problem?” an officer asked me.

“No, but he likes beer.  I think he was taking a break,” I said.

“I noticed there is an empty wine bottle and some beer cans on the porch.”

“No, probably beer.  The wine bottle is old.”

“Would he have been drinking wine by himself in the afternoon?”

“He doesn’t have a drinking problem, he has a cleaning problem,” I said.

I worried that I was being too flippant and the police were going to think I had killed my husband.

I cried a few tears, but managed to get them quickly back under control.  I saw neighbors outside talking to the police.  Why is my life a freak show?  My husband is dead.  Why is it anyone’s business what is happening here?

I sent my manager an email from my phone to tell him what happened.  I cancelled an upcoming doctor appointment via text message.  I felt calm and lucid.  I was managing.  I thought I was managing.

The staff from the funeral home arrived.  Did I want a few minutes to say goodbye?  No.  Just no.  As it is, now, five days later, I can just barely remember the way he looked sitting there, dead, the beautiful blue of his eyes just visible in his partly open lids.  I would have loved to see his eyes one more time.  I would have loved to touch him one more time, to hold his hand, to kiss him just once more, but I could not carry that memory of him with me.  Jim is not a dead man and I refuse to remember him that way.

I went upstairs to my room while his body was being removed from the house. Mary came up with me. I made a list of people to call. I adjusted the list of people to call.  I sent FB messages to people whose numbers I couldn’t find so I could call them later.  Once everyone but Mary had left, I started calling.

My mother.  My sister-in-law.  My sister and my nephew.  Our friends.  Mary stood in my kitchen washing dishes while I made call after call.  I left a voice mail when I didn’t know what else to do.  People called me back.  It seemed like I called for hours.  It was closer to one.  I apologized to people for the bad news I was giving them.  I got tired of repeating the story and was annoyed to have to retell it:  mowing lawn, took a break, died, don’t know why, dead when I got home, did not try to resuscitate, yes someone is with me.  I listened to cries, to screams, to cursing.  I cried as I gave the news.  I spoke.  I couldn’t speak.  When I could speak, I apologized again.

I finally convinced Mary to go home.  No, I didn’t need her to stay over.  No, I didn’t want to stay with her.  I appreciated the offer, really I did.  I reassured her.  I promised to text in the morning first thing.  I just wanted to sleep, in my own bed, in my own house.  I went to bed.  I answered two more phone calls.

Then, there in the quiet, with the lights off, I turned on my stomach and I howled.  Deep.  Guttural.  Anguish.  Despair.  Over and over again into my pillow, I howled.  Into the void. I howled, knowing that howling was pointless, knowing that howling would not change the situation, knowing that no one would hear my howls, knowing that howling provided no comfort.  I howled with my whole body, like a wolf, crouched on all fours, unable to and unwilling to stop.

 

My husband of 27 years, James Blacklaw Upright, died in our home on Wednesday May 9, 2018, sometime between 11:30 am, when he sent me a text message: “Sounds good” and 5:27 pm, when I arrived home from work and placed the emergency call to report his death. He was 57 years old.