Pinhole Camera

Over the 16 months since Chris has died, I have filed away papers and tried to keep on top of messes without making drastic changes before being ready. While it used to be a frequent occurrence, at this point it is only every now and then that I come across items from before, normal life with Chris or even totally abnormal life but still with Chris. What do I do with these relics of the past???

I found an index card marked up in my handwriting with several Vermont hiking and biking options for our Killington trip in August 2018, hastily booked from the MGH infusion unit. It gave me a long pause. That had been a hard trip for me, a pivotal situation in which I was solely in charge of the details and fun. Honestly, I didn’t feel successful at the time because I was overcome with worries and the weight of “lasts.” It had been hard for Chris, too, since he had been struggling physically and emotionally. Indeed, it turned out to be our last family trip but we made some memories and had simple fun that the kids and I still talk about. I shoved that index card into a safe place, unready to let it go.

Even harder, there are items with notes that Chris wrote. Do I keep everything that he ever touched? Of course not. It wouldn’t make sense to keep some deposited checks with his writing on them, nor a post-it with a password to some unknown account. But let me tell you about something I couldn’t discard. It was a paper with words and phrases like “oncology” and “cancer” and “he struck out” written in Chris’s shaky, unfamiliar handwriting of his last months. There were some dates that didn’t make sense, like his birthday with the wrong year. Surely these notations were made in attempt to hang on to language and number skills as the tumor carried out its relentless assault on his brain. I can almost feel the questions in those jottings – am I losing it? What is happening here?  I kept that paper not as an act of masochism but instead as a witness to Chris’s suffering and his many losses. It feels important to remember how terrible it was for him.

In addition to these difficult discoveries, every so often something good surfaces at a fortuitous time. Several months ago, I had been extremely down and was feeling that I could not continue managing without some help. It was time to work at my demons instead of just flounder, so I rummaged through a drawer looking for a stashed piece of paper with the name of therapists that my doctor recommended. I didn’t find the paper I was searching for, but instead I found something else that changed everything for a while. It was an old note that Chris had written to me in his familiar, strong, healthy handwriting. I had seen it before and forgotten that it was put away in this location; it was not something he left for me to find in the after - there will not be anything like that.

Betsy,

Thank you for a wonderful weekend! Hope you have a great week with your family. I’m looking forward to Wednesday if we’re still on…

Love, Chris

I wish there was a date on it, but that’s not how anyone writes a casual note. (Actually, we don’t often write notes at all in this era of text messages…) Mostly you wouldn’t think to put a date on a little message of care and affection; you simply don’t anticipate that a folded 4x4 inch paper with three sentences will be a treasured memento years later.  I can only guess that it was written in December of 2003. We were engaged to be married in the summer, and I had spent Christmas with my family while he was in the Boston area. After I returned, Chris presented me with the sapphire and diamond ring we had chosen together. Maybe the day he gave it to me was the “Wednesday” he was anticipating.

The discovery of this note instantly brought me relief. I could clearly picture Chris’s smile, I remembered his sense of fun, I felt his love for me. Even my overheated, tortured mind that wants to convince me that I deserve this painful mess couldn’t deny those things.

Chris was incredible and he loved me. He chose me. The horrible events did transpire but, more importantly, the wonderful was not imagined.

It all happened.

This note was like a pinhole camera, blocking out overwhelming rays of sadness, regret, and missing, allowing only pure love to shine through. Just like a rudimentary homemade solar eclipse viewer, the note focused the image of Chris’s love in a way such that I saw and felt it safely, reassured of its solidity and lasting truth.

Chris does not exist in the same way but, following the laws of conservation of energy, his energy could not be destroyed. It had to go somewhere. As the life left his body, Chris’s love and energy dissipated into that quiet room, into the atmosphere, and they can never end.

All I could do then and now, on this evening many weeks later, is hold this uncomplicated love note, look at the pinhole projection of Chris’s love, and try with all my might to reflect the purest message of my own love for him back out into the universe. I hope that his energy collides with mine and still somehow delights in that dance.