הבל הבלים...הכל הבל

"And we took [the coins]. We spent 'em and traded 'em and frittered 'em away on drink and food and pleasurable company. The more we gave 'em away, the more we came to realize the drink would not satisfy, food turned to ash in our mouths, and all the pleasurable company in the world could not slake our lust...Look! The moonlight shows us for what we really are. We are not among the living, and so we cannot die, but neither are we dead. For too long I've been parched with thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I've been starving to death and haven't died. I feel nothing--not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea, nor the warmth of a woman's flesh." -Captain Barbossa, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl


I am a simple woman with simple tastes. There are a number of things that captivate me. And when something captivates me, I fall passionately, irreversibly in love with it. For example, when I was about eleven years old, I read a book called Il Inferno. It captivated me. I fell in love with it. I fell in love with its author. I read everything that he wrote. And then I read his works again. And then again. Today, you can find all of his works on my bookshelf, including six copies of his masterpiece, La Commedia. I actually became so fascinated by La Commedia that I have stopped reading it for a while after discovering that many of my ideas about God have come, not from the Bible, but from the mind of Dante Alighieri! 
This passionate love of the things that interest me was one of the things that my beloved Marie loved about me. Likewise, seeing her relish the things that interested her always brought a smile to my face. One of the things that I loved most about our relationship was that we both had unique interests, totally separate from the other person. Of course, we would learn bits and pieces about each other's interests so that we could participate in them from time to time, but really, we spent the most time just pushing the other to enjoy that interest to the fullest. She pushed me to become "the internationally known authority on the works of Dante Alighieri", and I encouraged her to attend seminary and become a bishop in the Episcopal church. When we looked at each other, the sky was the limit! In my eyes, there was absolutely nothing that she couldn't do, and that she couldn't do better than anyone else in the world because she had an unstoppable drive for the things she cared about. And when she saw me holding my favorite, duct-taped-together copy of Il Inferno, she knew that my obsessive love of my favorite things could very well lead me to Florence someday, where I would teach graduate-level classes in Italian about my favorite author. 
One of the most painful experiences of this year was feeling that I had lost Hailey in February. She had gone to Texas on January 12th to visit for a few days. Because she had needed emergency surgery, she was delayed in coming home, and was gone for just over a month. She arrived home on February 13th, just in time for Valentine's Day. I've never cared about that ridiculous holiday; Russell Stover Chocolates and Hallmark invented it just to make money. But I was in love, so I went all out. For the first time in my life, I ventured down the Walgreen's card aisle. I bought candles. I bought flowers. I made a playlist. I cooked for two days. And I absolutely know that Hailey enjoyed that Valentine's Day, but she wasn't herself. The light in her eyes had dimmed. She tried to enjoy her dinner. She read her card. She wasn't really up for listening to music or staying up late, talking by candlelight and laying her head on my lap. Things I was sure would delight her earned an appreciative, but somewhat forced smile. After her second surgery it was even worse. I read the newspaper everyday, desperately searching for interesting political news to talk to her about. Surely that would spark her interest and whip her into a Libertarian frenzy! But it didn't. She didn't care about much of anything. Exhaustion, malnutrition, and sheer discouragement beat her down. I loved her, but she wasn't my Marie. Her lack of interest and motivation left even the smallest tasks piling up, which frustrated me. Her dampened spirits dampened mine, making us both too sad to do much even on some of my days off. We talked about it and cried about it, and I told her that even though I had desperately wanted her to come home in January, I had had no idea how much I would still miss her even after she was physically back in Tucson. She told me that she was confident that our vacation to California in May would remind her of who she was. She said that she knew it would revive her. I didn't really believe her, but I tried to have hope. 
When I got back from California on May 16th, I brought Marie home with me. The real Marie. Her laugh, her smile, her passion for life--they were all back! And they weren't just the fleeting glimpses that I had clung to in February, March, and April. They didn't just last for a couple of days. Marie was with me all day everyday until she went to Heaven. On the day she died, she was excited to get her surgery over with and to get healed as quickly as possible. She had plans to help me clean out the pantry, to go fishing, to have babies, to go seminary, and to "get old and fat". Even though I was scared, I was also excited to see that she was passionate about getting better. I thought she had given up in April, but May had given her a second wind! She wasn't dead weight now. I would carry her through recovery; she would carry me through the exhaustion. The last time I saw her spirit, she was smiling. 
I am incredibly glad that she didn't know she was about to leave me. I am glad that she was hopeful until the very end. I am glad that I got to spend time with the real Marie. 
But now it's me that has stopped caring. I have felt the light in my eyes go out. I have had three great and all-consuming passions in my life:

1) The Great Outdoors

2) Food

3) Hailey

Now that one is gone, the others have disintegrated. My backpack named Galadriel, once my favorite possession is just a big pile of red cloth now. Who loads a bag with 30 pounds of stuff and lugs it around for 25 miles? My yoga mat has been rolled up in the corner for weeks since my body is too numb to practice asanas. My dozens of cookbooks collect dust. The food in our refrigerator has spoiled and been thrown away. My favorite foods, which Marie would use to entice me to eat when I was too exhausted to be hungry, have become utterly flavorless. The sweet-tea vodka that she loved is no longer used to make her Friday night cocktail; it is used to shut down a mind that races with guilty thoughts.

I search for ways to die. I look forward to rush-hour and late-night drives, hoping that I will be killed in an accident. I hope that my cell phone will give me a brain tumor. I smoke more. I drink more. I stop eating for days. I refuse water for days. The only passion I have is my passion to see her again. 


Everyday people tell me, "You're so young! You have so many wonderful things ahead of you!" or, "You're only 22! You're going to live a long, happy life. You'll meet someone else and have joy that you never thought possible!" I don't want to hear it!!!
The fact that I am young does not mean that my love for Marie was not real or not important! It does not mean that I have no idea what true love is! It does not mean that I have plenty of time to find someone else to spend my life with, who is different than Marie, but equally wonderful! 
My love for her was/is intense! It was/is profound! The agony of her absence is as real now as it would have been if we had been 61 year-old wives, celebrating our 40th anniversary!
This void cannot be filled by days in the wilderness, red velvet cupcakes, Zionist rallies, or even "l'amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle". It cannot be filled. By anything. Ever.