As you can see from these photos taken just outside the house where I stay when I’m at the beach, Valentine’s Day is BIG in Mexico. The streets are lined with these stalls encouraging lovers to pay homage to love.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’d like to publish Chapter 11 of my book Lessons from a Grief Diary. It’s all about wanting heart and finding it, albeit not in the manner I might have chosen. This particular segment was written in February of 2002, although most of the events it describes occurred earlier. I was sure I’d published at least excerpts of this chapter on an earlier blog, but if so I didn’t tag it as I can’t find it among my 1,666 earlier posts, so if you’ve already read it, skip this one over! And happy Valentine’s Day! I’m spending it with friends at Lora Loka’s restaurant and then later going to a celebration of recovery from Hurricane Patricia in the town Plaza.
Finding Lost Heart in Mexico
Although he was a poet and a sculptor, my husband Bob was not an especially romantic man. When he gave me a book of poems for my birthday a few weeks after we met, he admitted that he’d actually bought it for his old girlfriend, but just hadn’t had a chance to give it to her. A book of poetry wrapped by his own hands with a red licorice whip bow was romantic, but a leftover present from an old love affair was like discovering on your wedding day that the ring your husband has given you has the name of his first wife inscribed in it.
That first gift, however, was romantic compared to what happened every Christmas and birthday after we were married. It became my responsibility to see that Bob gave me the correct gift. He’d start complaining weeks before the actual event. He didn’t know what to get me. I was so hard to buy for. He would stew and fuss and I grew to dread the advent of any gift-giving event.
“Forget about it,” I’d say. “Just don’t make me responsible for my own present. Being blamed and fussed at for weeks prior to the event ruins it for me. I’d rather not have anything.”
Usually, what he would do would be to put off gift buying until the very last minute. The day before Christmas, he’d charge down to Main Street to try to find the perfect gift at the feed store, the sporting goods store or Walmart–which furnished the sum total of shopping experiences in the small Wyoming town where we always went to visit my sister and mother for the holidays. Then he’d return home with gift wrap and a large plastic bag of ready-tied bows. All Christmas Eve, he would wrap gifts, then peel off the adhesive strip of each bow and slap it on the gift of choice. My mother, who had been married to a man who provided very well for us but who didn’t do Christmases or birthdays, was much amused by my husband’s concentration as he did his annual Christmas wrapping chores. She found it humorous and touching and it did much to endear him to her.
Yet in the gift I was likely to find a combination screwdriver, pliers and corkscrew or comfort pads for my shoes. One year he gave me all-weather perspiration- wicking socks, another year, a table saw that he said really ought to be kept in his woodworking studio, since it made too much of a mess for my cleaner jewelry studio. Was Bob inventive, talented, funny, handsome? Yes. Was he romantic? No.
The Christmas of 2000 was to be the last we’d ever spend with my mother. Bob did his yearly last-minute shopping, and I was the recipient of the usual assortment of stocking stuffers wrapped in paper with self stick bows. But at the end, there was an extra small package under the tree for me. It was a large silver brooch with flames shooting out from around a central heart locket which opened for a picture. It had been made by an artist in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where we were planning to go in January to check it out as a possible place to live for a year; but he’d purchased it in a Berkeley, California, ethnic art shop. I was much touched by this romantic gift so uncharacteristic of my husband and put his picture in it as soon as we got home. Since it was too large and heavy to wear every day, I hung it on a banner on the wall in our bedroom.
Our January departure was first delayed when I needed to have major surgery. Then, as I had begun my recuperation, my mother went into the hospital and passed away within the week. And so Valentine’s Day found us still in California. When Bob showed up with two presents, I was surprised. One was a mini box of Russell Stover chocolates–my mother’s favorite food on earth, and I did honor to her by inhaling the entire box at one sitting, as she would have done. But the second package was a red wooden heart with white wings and a cord on top for hanging it. I hung it from Bob’s flying accordion sculpture that hung from the ceiling of our den. A wall switch turned on the blinking lights and the music for the accordion and as the wild polka music pounded out from the accordion, the heart swayed a bit. Two hearts within a few months of each other after 15 years of sweat socks and tools? Something was up, I thought.
Soon after, Bob’s mother went into the hospital in Michigan. Of course, we put off our departure one more time while he flew to Michigan. He sat by her bedside for ten days before she died. It was starting to feel as though something was trying to stop us from moving to Mexico using the direst means possible. When he arrived back in California, Bob said he felt like if we didn’t just pick up and go, that we’d never make it to Mexico, so we did just that. Leaving our house only half-packed up and unrented, we threw clothes, camping stuff, art supplies and books into the van and took off for Mexico.
There we spent probably the happiest seven weeks of our marriage. Bob, who had initially hated San Miguel and wanted to leave after our first day there, ended up wanting to buy a house there. “How did you know that this was what we were supposed to do?” he asked.
Although we’d meant to check out several potential sights for our supposed one year stay in Mexico, we had spent the first six weeks of our initial seven week pretrial in San Miguel. With ten days left before we had to be back in the States for my Mom’s delayed memorial, Bob suggested that we check out Lake Patzcuaro and Chapala, just to see something different before we returned to the States.
We “did’” Patzcuaro in one day, but upon arriving in Ajijic, we made the mistake of idly looking around at houses. The first house we looked at, was Bob’s dream house: perched high in the hills overlooking Lake Chapala, it looked like it had been sculpted out of clay: fluid lines, all round corners, high domes and one glass wall overlooking a terrace, pool, natural sulfur spring-fed jacuzzi and the lake itself. “Oh yeah, Jude, Let’s buy it!” said Bob.
“Bob, we can’t buy a house in Mexico,” I said. But our weekend trip turned into a week and by the end of it, we’d bought the house. The price of the house was almost exactly what we had inherited from our mothers. And so all of the sadness, disasters and delays that preceded our trip were what ultimately made it possible for us to do what seemed to be necessary to prepare for a perfect retirement for Bob. I loved the house, but it is not what I would have chosen for myself. I was sure that the pool and jacuzzi, which I ‘d probably never use, would be high maintenance. It was some way out of town–a good 15 minute drive–but Bob loved it and promised to do all of the pool and hot tub maintenance himself. If he couldn’t live in his dream house at age 70, what were we waiting for? I’d been wanting him to slow down and his whole body seemed to be urging him to do the same. He’d been exhausted for the past few years as he strove to keep up the same pace we’d kept up for the past 13 years–making art, traveling all over the Western U.S. to sell at arts and crafts shows, carrying heavy sculptures and displays, doing 11 hour setups and four hour tear downs, packing the trailer, driving long days to the next show or home to make more stuff to sell. It was exhausting for me and I was sixteen years younger than he.
The day we signed the final papers on the house, we headed back to the U.S. to attend my mother’s delayed memorial and to attend my school reunion and Bob’s family reunion. Then we went back to California to finish packing up the house and studios. As we emptied the house, we stuffed the van with the next assortment of items to take to Mexico. By the day of our second moving sale, the van was fully packed. We were ready to take off within the week. But two days after the moving sale, the doctor gave us the news that Bob had pancreatic cancer. He died at home three weeks later.
“I think you should go ahead and move to Mexico,” Bob said a week before he died, and that is what I did two months after his death.
Anyone who has lost a spouse knows that it is a surreal experience. You cannot quite believe that everything you do you do alone and for yourself. You keep expecting your partner to enter the room. Every sound seems to be announcing his arrival. Then you remember. I was exhausted from the two months of details that preceded my departure from California: Bob’s memorial, getting the house rented, the studios cleared out, disposing of Bob’s complicated possessions, pictures, clothes, tools, old love letters, a lifetime of journals. Just the paperwork of dealing with the deaths of Bob, my mom and his mom took a month on the phone and going from office to office. My life felt like a blur. California was like quicksand I’d never escape. When I finally drove away, my van packed, my only company our 14-year-old cat Bearcat, I felt only exhaustion, grief, fatigue. I could barely keep my eyes open all the way to L.A., fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow in the motel, then drove on the next morning to pick up a friend in Phoenix who would drive the rest of the way with me.
In Mexico, I dealt with my grief. Totally alone, I built an altar on the fireplace in my bedroom. I kept a candle burning there 24 hours a day next to my favorite picture of Bob. I propped the silver locket Bob had given me open next to it to show another face shot of Bob. For that four months, I mourned alone. My only friend was the Mexican woman across the street who pulled me out to Guadalajara, to the markets, to fiestas, to get my hair cut. I went along, but I felt like none of the life I was experiencing related to me. My furniture consisted of an air mattress, packing boxes and six folding canvas chairs from Walmart. I ate what my housekeeper cooked. I swam, I sat in the jacuzzi and imagined I was Bob looking out over the lake. I couldn’t believe that I was the one here in this house that had been picked as the perfect retirement house for him. It was heartbreaking that he hadn’t had even a week or a month in his dream house.
For some friends, it seemed impossible that I had chosen to mourn Bob totally alone in this place where no one knew him, but for me it seems appropriate. Mexico has much to teach us about life. Here, dead loved ones do not vanish into a void. Every year, they are celebrated and communed with during the Day of the Dead. Altars are constructed which hold the favorite food and objects representing the passions of the dead. The fact that I had eleven small seed-shaped urns on my mantle which would hold Bob’s ashes and which would soon be passed on to his kids and sister when they came to help me scatter my urn of ashes in the lake, did not seem maudlin or strange here. And so I fast developed the habit of talking to Bob. At times I would cry, pound the wall, kiss his picture–do all of the things we do to alternately augment or suppress sensation. Twice I thought I saw Bob. Once he was hurrying across the street holding a guitar. I pulled to a stop and backed up, but saw only a foot disappearing into a house. Another time, I glimpsed his profile in a restaurant, but when I saw him full face, Bob vanished as the man turned back into himself.
Then came the advent of my first Valentine’s Day without Bob. I was well aware of the day fast approaching. There were hearts for sale everywhere– on cards, balloons, flowers, t-shirts, boxer shorts and piñatas. Every restaurant advertised Valentine’s special menus, clubs had special music. It was as hard to overlook Valentine’s Day in Mexico as it was in the States. Yet I had no Valentine.
I’d already lived through my first Christmas with no stick-on bows, my first New Years, the anniversary of my Mom’s death, his birthday. There were going to be lots of firsts. Our anniversary was looming in the near future. But for now, there was just Valentine’s Day to get through.
The cat always woke me at sunrise, demanding his early morning smelly fish breakfast. Not exactly the most appealing beginning for a day, yet I was used to it. I dished out the goods, then opened the glass door that opened out from the kitchen to the front terrace. When I did, I saw something bright roll from the step, brushed by the door bottom. I searched for it in the hierba buena which grew beside the kitchen door. Saw a scrap of red, pulled it from the bushes. It was a tiny egg-shaped chocolate wrapped in bright red aluminum foil covered in silver hearts.
I could hear Lourdes opening the front gate. Had she put it there?
“No, Señora.”
Pasiano’s broom whisk whisked on the back patio. Had he put it there?
“No, Señora.”
The origin of the heart-covered chocolate has remained a mystery forever since, but I still have it. It sits in the palm of a carved wooded arm and hand I bought from a woodcarver who had carved it for a Santo, but was willing to sell it to me. The arm is on the bookcase near Bob’s picture. I choose to believe that however the heart covered egg came to be on my doorstep on Valentine’s Day, that it was Bob who somehow engineered its appearance. Next to it is balanced the red wooden winged heart he gave me on our last Valentine’s Day and the silver heart locket from our last Christmas. Since then, it has been joined by two stones in the shapes of hearts that I have found on the shores of the lake where I walk every morning, along with a portion of a flip-flop cut into a circle to be used as a fishing float, pulled into the shape of a heart by the tight cinch of the rope which held it to the net, and another small plastic heart–all items found on walks. Above them is the picture I took last week of the beach cow with the perfect black heart on its rear leg. They are all messages. I don’t look for them nor do I depend on them. But I am comforted that my husband, turned romantic so late in our marriage, might somehow continue that message after death. Whether I am finding what he hopes for me to find or whether I am finding what I need to find, it is all the same. I sit here in the house I have grown to love living the life I’d meant for him; but instead, it is a next life provided for me by my husband, my mother, and his mother.
Together, they have led the way, provided the means. And lest I forget this, either they or I provide an occasional reminder: a heart hidden in beach mud, on a stair step or on cow hide. Whether it is spirit or my wish to believe in spirit cannot be known rationally, but a few months ago, I found a silver heart locket for sale in a local shop. Turning it over to see who made it, I read the artist’s name. “Judith Roberts” it said. My name and my husband’s. When I got home, I looked at the back of the heart locket on my shelf. “Judith Roberts” it said. Bob had purchased it in Berkeley, California, and I had brought it back home to Mexico, not knowing that it would furnish the house where the spirit of our union would continue to live.
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