When people go away, you’re left holding a big, leaky bag of emotion and sadness and it can be hard to know how to work through that—as I heard a screenwriter say in a public radio interview recently, “we rummage around through the shrapnel” and wrestle with our thoughts of who they were and who we are. In our case—a friendship and marriage of nearly 42 years—it all becomes a play of many acts on how we wound up at the end of all those years, for better and for worse.
For me, the clearest lesson of my loss is how much I took for granted in our years together. I hope I can make up for that by honoring his memory and genuinely cherishing all of the good people who travel with me in my remaining days. It is also the case that when you lose people you’ve labored intently with and cared for deeply, you come to see everybody else around you in a different way: You appreciate each of them more—or not at all. It becomes very clear how little time there is to waste in the remainder of one’s life. If there is still time for me to be a better person, I want to be a person who vibrates with life and yet also listens carefully to other people—and whose world expands with consciousness of a purpose beyond themselves. So, there is that job ahead for me and it is one of the reasons I need to get on with what can some days seem like my limitless grieving of Kenneth. It has taken me over four months to write notes of appreciation for the nearly 400 condolence messages and remembrances of Kenneth’s life we have received since his death. I am astounded by the quiet but lasting impact he had on so many lives. Their words and he, himself—his core kindness, gentle authority, and natural talents—are a far surer testimony of his value than any of the “treasures” that cluttered—and the tribulations that challenged—many of his last days. We chose a drawing Kenneth had done of his own hand from one of his many sketchbooks to reproduce as acknowledgement cards.