I miss my late wife. I miss talking to her, holding her, feeling her warmth and enjoying her affection. I still think about all the things I could have done differently over the fifty years we were together, ways in which perhaps I could have made her happier. When I’m in that space, with those thoughts, I feel blue.
There is so much fabulous music about love and the melancholy of feeling blue. Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Billy Holiday, Mel Torme; Ella Fitzgerald, Samara Joy, Ben Webster, Chet Baker; my playlist is quite long. I listen to them while I do my morning yoga and relax into watery tears every time. It’s a way I’m befriending sadness; another is by spending time in the garden: blue in green.
I like it here in the land of the living, my hands in the dirt and surrounded by green. I’ve been taking care of many of my plant friends for 40 years or more; they’ve traveled with me from one home to another and now live in the new gardens I’ve created over the past year, longtime companions that need me, and new ones, too. The presence of and care for life comforts me. I can’t explain it, really, I just feel connected. Connected to what? Well, something bigger. Or deeper. Something. Maybe it’s the satisfaction of feeling useful.
The Myers-Briggs system categorizes people into sixteen personality types using four binary spectrums: Introversion/Extroversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, and Judging/Perceiving. I’ve always considered myself a “thinking” more than “feeling” type, but experts say as we age our weaker side gets stronger. In my case I suspect it’s more a matter of repression that for too long I ruled over my feelings with a tight fist. Whatever the case, my inner crybaby has emerged and I’m too old not to give in.
I write about my feeling self much more than I used to. I never know precisely who reads it. The pleasant surprise of the last year has been the response of men. Since women are generally more the “feeling” type, I expected they would relate to my words, but I never expected the same from men. I was wrong.
Some of them have lost their wives or companions; some have not but are old enough now to be staring at the possibility. They come up to me while I’m buying fruit in Sonoma Market, acquaintances and strangers who have been moved by my words and want to share their own feelings of empathy and vulnerability. Men don’t easily express their vulnerable side and yet my writing seems to have opened that opportunity. Maybe I feel safe to talk to. Maybe needed. I hope so. I don’t write for myself, mostly, but to feel useful.
When you care for someone through thick and thin, it gets tattooed on your heart. It did on mine. Norma had many medical conditions and multiple surgeries. She had tremendous grit and resilience to rely on. And me. Through it all, I cared for her. My paternalistic side wanted to protect and defend her, keep her safe and away from harm, but living takes its toll, both on people and on plants.
So there it is, blue in green: where the water of love sustains.
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