spoke to about Tomas. I told her about Henry’s visitations, how I felt that Henry wanted a body to be in, because he had lost his body so suddenly, how I wondered if Tomas would be the body. I felt like a crazy person even thinking these thoughts aloud. I told Maya I wanted to ask Tomas if he would do this.
“That seems like a good plan,” she said, as calmly as if I were telling her about a job-search strategy. “I don’t think you are crazy. In the path of Tibetan Buddhism I follow, there is a great understanding about the place where Henry is now, the in-between place.”
Tomas made me a cup of tea in his warm kitchen.
“Henry visits me every morning,” I said. “I can feel him when he visits. I know it sounds crazy, but I feel him in a physical way.” I couldn’t look right at Tomas, so I stared at the ceramic tea mug. The glaze was a lustrous, warm green.
No backing out now.
“I feel like he needs a body to be with me. He liked you so much. He trusted you. And I trust you. So I want to ask you.”
I cried, because of the cascading relief of speaking to him at last and also because I was ashamed, sure that Tomas would think I had lost my mind. But Tomas did not push me away. He listened,hugged me, and said, with a strange laugh, that he would think about it.
He was leaving the following day for a two-week visit to see his mother in Costa Rica, where we’d traveled. I wished I were going. I wished Liza and I were going with Tomas to lie on a beach for two weeks to stare at a blue sky and the waves and dip our feet into the warm sea. I drove home, hoping that I wouldn’t feel like a complete fool the next day.
Henry always said I was neurotic and moody. I couldn’t deny it. I had suffered from depression since the gray autumn following our April marriage in 1989. After struggling with Prozac and Zoloft, I settled on Wellbutrin, which worked well with only moderate side effects. A year before Henry died, my doctor had added an antianxiety drug, Celexa. Henry had insisted I take this medication; he said my anger was “out of control.”
I wanted to go off my medications so I could maybe have sex with Tomas and actually feel something. Henry and I had worked our way around the side effects, but Tomas was a young man; he wouldn’t understand, or have the patience. The colorful pills in their amber plastic vials pleaded with me like rejected friends from the shelf in my medicine cabinet. They had been loyal companions, it was true, but I needed to feel like a young woman again, with a young woman’s nerve endings.
I stopped taking them. The surface of my mind remained calm under a milky, overcast sky. Stunned, I kept waiting for the shattering depression and anxiety to return, but instead there was calm. I was sad but calm. I was pressing forward, one foot in frontof the other, taking care of my child, eating a bit, working, and paying bills.
Tomas would return soon. I was excited about that. I was stunned to feel excited about anything. When I read his e-mail notes, I tried to imagine his life in Costa Rica, based on my memories of our own short visit: the warm sea, the breeze under the palm trees, the rain forest, where exotic birds sang and blue morpho butterflies slowly flapped their delicate wings as they sipped nectar from colorful blossoms.
A cold wind rattled my office windows, as if someone were trying to get my attention from outside. Instinctively I glanced over at the wooden urn filled with Henry’s ashes, positioned in front of the window, now illuminated with late afternoon winter sunlight. I had loved that man whose ashes were in the urn, though he had been an exhausting companion.
And then my eyes opened wide, as after a long and restorative sleep.
I understand now.
I understood the cause of my anxiety. I understood the nature of my depression. Though I had my fair share of Jewish neurosis, the source of my calm was Henry’s absence. Some tightly wound ball of twine
“That seems like a good plan,” she said, as calmly as if I were telling her about a job-search strategy. “I don’t think you are crazy. In the path of Tibetan Buddhism I follow, there is a great understanding about the place where Henry is now, the in-between place.”
Tomas made me a cup of tea in his warm kitchen.
“Henry visits me every morning,” I said. “I can feel him when he visits. I know it sounds crazy, but I feel him in a physical way.” I couldn’t look right at Tomas, so I stared at the ceramic tea mug. The glaze was a lustrous, warm green.
No backing out now.
“I feel like he needs a body to be with me. He liked you so much. He trusted you. And I trust you. So I want to ask you.”
I cried, because of the cascading relief of speaking to him at last and also because I was ashamed, sure that Tomas would think I had lost my mind. But Tomas did not push me away. He listened,hugged me, and said, with a strange laugh, that he would think about it.
He was leaving the following day for a two-week visit to see his mother in Costa Rica, where we’d traveled. I wished I were going. I wished Liza and I were going with Tomas to lie on a beach for two weeks to stare at a blue sky and the waves and dip our feet into the warm sea. I drove home, hoping that I wouldn’t feel like a complete fool the next day.
Henry always said I was neurotic and moody. I couldn’t deny it. I had suffered from depression since the gray autumn following our April marriage in 1989. After struggling with Prozac and Zoloft, I settled on Wellbutrin, which worked well with only moderate side effects. A year before Henry died, my doctor had added an antianxiety drug, Celexa. Henry had insisted I take this medication; he said my anger was “out of control.”
I wanted to go off my medications so I could maybe have sex with Tomas and actually feel something. Henry and I had worked our way around the side effects, but Tomas was a young man; he wouldn’t understand, or have the patience. The colorful pills in their amber plastic vials pleaded with me like rejected friends from the shelf in my medicine cabinet. They had been loyal companions, it was true, but I needed to feel like a young woman again, with a young woman’s nerve endings.
I stopped taking them. The surface of my mind remained calm under a milky, overcast sky. Stunned, I kept waiting for the shattering depression and anxiety to return, but instead there was calm. I was sad but calm. I was pressing forward, one foot in frontof the other, taking care of my child, eating a bit, working, and paying bills.
Tomas would return soon. I was excited about that. I was stunned to feel excited about anything. When I read his e-mail notes, I tried to imagine his life in Costa Rica, based on my memories of our own short visit: the warm sea, the breeze under the palm trees, the rain forest, where exotic birds sang and blue morpho butterflies slowly flapped their delicate wings as they sipped nectar from colorful blossoms.
A cold wind rattled my office windows, as if someone were trying to get my attention from outside. Instinctively I glanced over at the wooden urn filled with Henry’s ashes, positioned in front of the window, now illuminated with late afternoon winter sunlight. I had loved that man whose ashes were in the urn, though he had been an exhausting companion.
And then my eyes opened wide, as after a long and restorative sleep.
I understand now.
I understood the cause of my anxiety. I understood the nature of my depression. Though I had my fair share of Jewish neurosis, the source of my calm was Henry’s absence. Some tightly wound ball of twine
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