One Last Conversation

Hi, Heidi. How are you doing? Are you... happy? In the fullest sense of that term? If I knew you were happy, that would make it easier for me to bear your absence. For a time at least.

I miss you. I wish we could talk one last time—together, that is, with both of us talking: me hearing your voice. I also wish it could have happened at the hospital, one last time.

But our actual last conversation, before you were intubated, was as good as can be. Peaceful and pleasant. Looking back now, it doesn't make sense that it was so. Of course, we were still hopeful then. But you had also received the last sacraments. We knew this was a possibility. How did we hold it together so peacefully and pleasantly then? I don't understand it.

Then, you slipped away into unconsciousness. Then you were intubated, which required being sedated. As far as conversation goes, I guess we quit while we were ahead.

The kids and I are managing, as far as everyday practical matters go. It is my guess that you were worried about that in your subsequent moments of responsiveness, when you could not speak. I have a lot of help. I have figured out Margaret's sleep schedule, more or less. Sorry, but I had to change some family habits to accommodate her. No more late dinners; I have to get Margaret down by 7:30. (Remember you said that one time that she seems to be done with the day at 7:30? You were right.) It has turned out well. Nothing against the way you did it. I just have to do it differently without you.

Oh, and I know all that teething in close succession was a minor cross for you. But for Margaret's sake, I'm sure glad she has all those teeth!

I am slowly figuring out homeschooling. I know I'm not as good as you. But I think I can get close. I have found most of your stuff, both for that, and for all the other things you took care of. It felt like a detective hunt sometimes. But even I have been able to figure most of it out (with help).

As for the grander practical matters... well, that's a different story. Big changes to our life have to happen, stacking unfamiliar on top of unfamiliar, compounding the unreality. I know... or, I'm pretty sure, we'll be OK. But this transition is of course different from all of our other transitions.

You always used to say, in our tough times, "When has God ever stopped taking care of us?" I know. You're right. But, Heidi, this is different. Yes, I know there's a plan. But before, when we were together, we knew what to do because peace always came, to both of us. Now, no options bring me peace. I know I have to act. I know I have to get up and do. But I feel nothing, for any decision. I am apathetic when it comes to the future. No peace. No consolation. Stepping forward when I have to, in a sleepwalk.  St. Ignatius seems to have nothing for me. I have to rely on cerebral prudence alone—my own, and the counsel of others, in moderation.

And of course, this time is different because I lack the person whose counsel I trusted the most. It was not just that all decisions were our decisions, our lives bound up together. It was also that you were the person most like me. So when I felt confused or when I hesitated, your agreement was all confirmation, and your disagreement was strong corrective.

I need you now. I need a little help.

Pray for me, Heidi. I'm a member of the church, too. Your new ministry can encompass me, too.

Three people have told me that they are praying for me to have some kind of communication from you, that "the veil" separating us might become "thin", as one of them put it. Three others have told me that they have received such communications from you already.

Do I want it? I guess. In a bargaining sort of way. You know what I really want: to hold you again, to hear your voice again, to see your smile again. I can't. So I'll take the other, the spiritual communication. But spirit has never before for me felt so foreign to being human. Between death and the Last Day, we have to hobble with half-selves. You have lost your body. I, too, have lost half of what I am. Was.

But can admit that I would appreciate hearing from you, if only to know you're OK, or to have some light on what we should do.

Finally, there is the nonpractical: the emotional, the spiritual, etc. I can't tell you yet, Heidi, that I'm doing OK in that regard. Let me just begin by saying: I am sorry—sorry to you for all I didn't do. All the things I could have done better are coming at me now. I just want to let you know: I know I could have done better.

But I am not worried. I am quite confident that you'll forgive me. I know you loved me so much.

I would say "love", present  tense, but to be honest, this has been one of my crosses lately: I've never struggled so much with the notion of a separated soul. Can an intellect and will still love a husband? Then the pain renews: I am no longer your husband in God's eyes. This keeps hitting me like a wall.

Ok, fine. Can you still love me, and not just the measure of grace that, God willing, is in me? Can separated souls love the particularities of those once bound to their persons by the ties of matter?

I know you still love me, that we still love each other. But the love that took that special form of relationship, the "greatest friendship", "sweet society", and "sharing of domestic life" that is proper to matrimony (Summa Contra Gentiles III, c. 123—that's all over.

Das ist schwer. Beyond my abilities to bear.

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Too much thinking. The vortex is taking me down into what you used to call "doom mode." Back to basics.

I love you, Heidi, And with the noblest part of me, I would be happy to know you are happy and don't need me. But I still need you.

Do you know one of the things I'll miss the most? One of the things that forms the most bittersweet memory right now? You picking me up from the airport. I know I only had to travel away one or two times a year. But no matter where I went, even if it was delightful company or a great event, I always began to long for home about a day and a half into it. And when I returned from home, that first sight of our vehicle at MSP airport, with you in the driver's seat, smiling briefly at me, but then watching the traffic as you neared the curb—that was always such a joy. There was nothing like it.

It is quite easy to build a narrative on why that particular image is coming to me now. It has been a month and a half. Much more than a day and a half. And I long for my home.

Pray for me. Talk to God for me. I'll admit to you that I need help. Perhaps I am being stubborn in my preconceptions that there is nothing that can help me. And when I try to go to God, it is those preconceptions that shut my mouth (though I have no trouble praying the "Our Father"). I feel like I can admit it to you. I need help. Help putting one foot in front of the other. Help doing what's best for our family, in spite of the fact that the future feels like it does not belong. When the facility, promptness and delight of a virtue ethic fails, I guess I have to fall back on a deontological ethic. I only move forward because it is a duty. Help me.

Help me to accept the fact that, despite all the arrangements you and I made together for our children under the impression that it would serve them best, I now must settle for options that, for a long while and perhaps forever, will seem second best. I need help "giving up" a little, and admitting that sometimes, you just have to make do with the way things are. (It was usually I who pointed this out in our life together. And now, here I am, "militating against reality"). I need help to let up a little on living only in the past, as much as I don't like even saying that. I don't want to ask for anything in particular, for all particular possibilities continue to strike me as unacceptable, while I haven't yet fully accepted your passing. So I don't know how I need help. I can only ask. Help me, Heidi. Pray to God for me.

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And I know it's strange to write this down. But, as my students will tell you, if I don't write it down, I don't really think I've said it. Writing is the surest sign of our thinking. The tongue can get away from us all too easily. Writing forces one to find out what they really think. It helps me know what I want to talk about, Heidi.

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