I just spent a week at a yoga retreat on the Big Island of Hawaii.  I’ve gone to this yearly retreat for decades, though I have missed some years, including last year when Mark was fighting cancer.  

    This is the second year that our yoga teacher has scheduled a week at a new location on the north end of the island.  The retreat house is slightly more rustic than your usual Hawaiian mega-resort hotel but is graceful and comfortable, with the feel of a sprawling Mediterranean villa.  The guest rooms are simple and painted in rich deep colors.  A stand of pines separates the back of the hotel from a a cliff overlooking the ocean.  Nearby a small herd of goats wanders and forages, and in our yoga room, facing the ocean, we can hear the occasional lowing from nearby cattle.  Colorful birds flit around the open-air dining area, hoping for crumbs.

    And nearby there are special stones…

    According to local lore, King Kamehameha convened his council in the ravine that is now a short walk from the hotel, to develop his strategy for uniting the islands.  There, a ring of irregular massive black stones, half buried in the earth, circle around a mound.  Other stones dot the rolling terrain, including a special grandmother stone which sits apart from the council group.

    I was told that this is a site where the veil between worlds is very thin.  The stones, they say, speak, give counsel.  It is best, we were told, to approach the stones with a question.

    I am of many minds about these types of beliefs.  I am a skeptic, but I try to keep an open mind.  After all, holy sites exist all over the world, representing a plethora of religions from the well-established to the obscure.   Miracles and answered prayers are their mainstays.  The Catholics have Lourdes; Buddhists make pilgrimages to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery; the list goes on and on.

    I was curious.  How do the stones answer?  Did they put words in your head or mumble on the wind?  Would there be a vision?  Would it be like the Oracle at Delphi, where an obtuse phrase would be delivered and might give an answer, or might not?

    A fellow yogini who seems to be very intimate with the stones approached me after breakfast on one of our last days.  “The stones told me that you should go down,” she said.  “I’ll go with you and show you the stone that is special for me.”

    Well…okay.

    I admit to entertaining some irreverent thoughts at that point.  I envisioned the stones with cartoon talking balloons over their heads, saying things like, “You tell Steph to come on down.”  But it really didn’t seem like an invitation I could refuse, so I followed her along the rutted grassy path down into the ravine.

    I leaned back and settled against my stone where she had directed and left me.  Did I have a question?  No, all I had was the familiar bruising jagged ache that has accompanied me since I lost Mark.  The morning was fine and breezy, the rock face capturing the warmth of the sun.  I closed my eyes and breathed deeply.  The world came wildly and fully alive, with the chittering of birds, the rhythmic cooing of doves, the buzz of insects.  Wind rustled the grasses, and I could hear the distant groan of farm equipment engines.  After about twenty minutes, I strolled back up the path.  Well, I thought, no stone conversations for me.

    And yet…something changed.  Since Mark died, every recollection of my last hours with him, as his breath abandoned him and I sat, stunned, next to his lifeless body created a sharp stab of pain that was almost impossible to bear.  I think I was having a post-traumatic stress reaction, because these memories came with a rush of adrenaline and horror.  But after my visit with the stones, just then, I realized that I could remember those hours with sadness but with a new  peace.  It may not sound like much, but it was a tremendous change.

    So did the stones do this for me?  Or was it the entrancing Hawaiian setting, showcasing the vitality of the life of the planet all around me?  Or was it my week with loving, joyful, accepting people?  I don’t know.  I just know that I am healing now, and that, in itself, feels like a miracle.


    


    


    


    


    


    

    I’ve passed the eight month milestone since Mark’s death, and these months are the blink of an eye and an eternity.


    I’ve been sitting down with a new friend, T, occasionally for coffee or happy hour.  She and I first met through mutual friends at an outdoor movie screening one evening in our local park this summer.


    We don't have too much in common, other than that we’re about the same age—and the unhappy coincidence that her husband died a few days before Mark did. We stared in each other’s startled eyes when we first realized what connected us.


    When T and I met a few days ago, our conversation turned, as it usually does, to our losses and traveling through grief.  Despite the differences in our background, we’ve walked the same road.  Although we’re just a sample of two, and thus hardly a scientific study, our experiences and impressions are remarkably parallel.  We are both surprised when we have long conversations with old friends, and they don’t mention our husbands.  I think our friends want to be kind and are cautious about not upsetting us, but we both miss the comfort of hearing others remember them.   We both have moments when we mentally send out “Enough already, I’m done with this, come on back now,” messages to our husbands.  Even now, we sometimes forget that they’re gone and are never coming back.  When my plane touched down on my recent trip to a yoga retreat, my first fleeting thought was, “I should text Mark to let him know I’ve arrived,” followed, of course, by the stab of pain when I remembered.  


    But the worst, we agree, is the overwhelming aloneness.  It’s a very specific sensation.  T has lots of family in the area, and she (like me) has a son who is currently living at home.  I feel well-connected in Seattle now, with friends I’ve gleaned from volunteer work, pottery classes, my writing group, my hiking group and my book group. Friends from Alaska come through Seattle frequently.  I’m busy.  But what’s missing, the gigantic tear in the fabric, is that T and I don’t have our Special Someone, the person whose bond with us provided such richness in our lives.  Mark was my sounding board, my cheerleader, the person who reasoned with me when I was heading out on a strange tangent.  


    And of course, Mark was there in the night.  I still ache for the soft huff of his steady breath and for the warmth of his sleeping body against me.  My book group just read Our Souls at Night by Kent Haru.  This longing for connection in the night, for intimacy, is at the center of this novel.  I wanted to throw the book across the room when I finished it.  (Luckily I restrained myself, since I was reading on my Kindle.)  The final passages are so grim and hopeless, as if there is no possibility of escaping the loneliness of the widowhood road.  I don’t buy it.  I may not be there yet, but if I didn’t believe that there were better times ahead, I don’t think I could go on.


———————--


    Slowly, bit by bit, my house is taking on the quality of “mine” instead of “ours.”  As time passes, I make changes, and I’m acutely aware that each acquisition, each discarded item, each move of a piece of furniture reflects a small step into the future.


    The last remnant in the house of Mark’s illness and struggle was the cache of Ensure.  It represents one of our last desperate efforts to pump some nutrition into him, before the doctors told us that his stomach had been eaten away by the cancer, and there was no way he could absorb food.  I had two dozen or more bottles stashed in a closet, rapidly approaching their expiration dates.


    On Saturday morning, I toted them over to the local food bank.  I wove between clumps of customers in the long line to get to the door, those waiting huddling under dripping umbrellas or just letting the steady, light rain fall on their hoods and scarves.  The kitchen staff at the food bank were happy to have the Ensure; it was on their “wish list.”  I pushed the bag into the kitchen aide’s hands and hurried away.  


    And then I started to cry, tears just slipping down my face, right there in the car.  I was so eager to get that bag out of my house and yet, the dilemma is evident…each step forward into the future is also one more step away from my life with Mark.