In late June of 1985, I was invited to do a poetry reading of After the Fire at a retreat for newly widowed folks.\u00a0 The retreat was held at a YMCA camp on the far side of Tacoma, and I went there with a good deal of misgiving.\u00a0 Yes, the book told the story of the loss of my own spouse, but at the time my first husband died, we\u2019d been divorced for a year and a half.\u00a0 The other people attending the retreat were all still married when their spouses died.<\/p>\n
At lunch that Saturday, one of the attendees introduced me to a man named Bill, \u201ca guy you have to meet,\u201d but I was nervous about my upcoming poetry reading, and to say I was distracted during lunch is something of an understatement.\u00a0 And when I did said poetry reading, Bill didn\u2019t show up.\u00a0 No surprises there.\u00a0 For him that day, less than six months after the death of his wife, what he needed was a solitary walk on the beach.<\/p>\n
That evening, after dinner there was a grief support workshop where people, gathered in a circle, were supposed to say our name and our spouse\u2019s name, along with when and how they died.\u00a0 In the course of those introductions, I learned that Bill\u2019s wife, Lynn, had died of breast cancer two years to the day after my husband died of alcoholism.\u00a0 They both died a few minutes before midnight on New Year\u2019s Eve.\u00a0 Needless to say, I was struck by that coincidence.\u00a0 Later, still in the circle, we were expected to share.\u00a0 I recounted that I\u2019d been on my own for five years.\u00a0 No one was ringing my doorbell at Bay Vista, so obviously my life as a woman was over.\u00a0 I was raising my kids, writing my books, and making the best of a bad bargain.\u00a0 Then, having shared my story, I waited to see what Bill would say.\u00a0 He said NOTHING!<\/p>\n
So when the sharing session was over, I went looking for him.\u00a0 I found him out by the bonfire, roasting marshmallows.\u00a0 I marched up to him with a chip on my shoulder and demanded, \u201cSo what are you, the strong silent type?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cNo,\u201d he answered.\u00a0 \u201cIt still hurts too much to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those were our opening lines.\u00a0 Within five minutes, I was literally crying on his shoulder, thinking to myself: This is so stupid, but it feels so good.<\/p>\n
And it was good.\u00a0 I\u2019ve retold the story countless times over the years, how we met on the 21st of June, the longest day of the year, and married on the 21st of December, the longest night of the year.\u00a0 As I write these words, it\u2019s thirty two years to the day.\u00a0 So Happy Anniversary, right?\u00a0 WRONG!<\/p>\n
We were on the cruise when my editor asked me if I could please write an emergency novella.\u00a0 I came up with the idea of Beau working a cold case in my upcoming novella, Still Dead, due out August 8. While I was writing, I pressed the easy button and gave the old crime a familiar time frame–Saturday, June 21, 1985.\u00a0 No need to check on that detail because, after all, it\u2019s a cornerstone of our family\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
The copy-editing came back yesterday, and the first message from Eleanor, the copy editor, was a bright red block around that date, and a note from her saying that the applicable Saturday in June, 1985, was actually the twenty-second!<\/p>\n
You could have knocked me over with a feather!\u00a0 For more than thirty years, reality be damned, I\u2019ve told the story my way, and the power of storytelling is such that it can completely override facts.<\/p>\n
The upshot is this.\u00a0 Today is June 21st.\u00a0 Bill and I are celebrating our anniversary today, because, regardless of the calendar saying otherwise, it\u2019s my story and I\u2019m sticking to it.<\/p>\n
A very Merry Unanniversary to us!\u00a0 Thirty two years, minus one day, and counting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In late June of 1985, I was invited to do a poetry reading of After the Fire at a retreat for newly widowed folks.\u00a0 The retreat was held at a YMCA camp on the far side of Tacoma, and I went there with a good deal of misgiving.\u00a0 Yes, the book told the story of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-mL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1412,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions\/1412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}