When this blog posts on Friday morning, it will be the thirty-fourth anniversary of the weekend Bill and I met.<\/p>\n
That particular weekend, starting on Friday June 21st, 1985, I had been invited to do a poetry reading of After the Fire at a Widowed Retreat for newly widowed individuals sponsored by WICS\u2014Widowed Information Consultation Services of King County. \u00a0The invitation had come to me in a round-about fashion.<\/p>\n
After the Fire was first published in the fall of 1984 as part of a church project. \u00a0At the time I was living in Bay Vista, a building with commercial space on the first six floors and residential space above that. \u00a0(Any resemblance to Beau\u2019s digs at Belltown Terrace is purely coincidental, right?) \u00a0There was a flower shop in the lobby of the commercial space run by a guy named Jim Hunt. \u00a0He took a few copies of After the Fire to sell on consignment and sold one to a woman named Diane Bingham who happened to be a grief support group facilitator for WICS. \u00a0She passed along the book to some of her support group members, including a guy by the name of Bill Schilb whose wife, Lynn, had died after a seven year battle with breast cancer on New Year\u2019s Eve of 1984\/85. Let\u2019s just say he wasn\u2019t particularly impressed.<\/p>\n
When Diane invited me to come speak, I agreed, but I was also terrified. \u00a0My first novel was due to be published at the end of June, a week after the retreat, but at the time, other than doing practice talks in my Toastmaster\u2019s Club, I had done zero public appearances. \u00a0Not only that, this was a widowed retreat and I wasn\u2019t exactly a widow. \u00a0My husband had died of kidney and liver failure in lat 1982, two years after I had divorced him. \u00a0So what business did I have talking to people who were still married at the time their spouses died?<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s just say, at the time my former husband died, there wasn\u2019t a whole lot of sympathy going around. \u00a0One of the men in my office said, \u201cHey, you divorced the guy, so what\u2019s the big deal?\u201d \u00a0After that, I pretty much did what I could to stifle.<\/p>\n
The retreat was held at a YMCA camp over on the Hood Canal. \u00a0When I got to the registration table on Friday evening, I voiced my concern to one of the counselors. \u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t worry about it,\u201d she said. \u00a0\u201cIf you feel like grieving, do it here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bill showed up for that weekend\u2019s retreat as well, but not necessarily because he wanted to. \u00a0Several of the older women in his grief support group wanted to go but were afraid to drive there, and he offered to be their chauffeur. \u00a0We may have seen one another in passing during the Friday evening festivities, but it wasn\u2019t until noon the next day when we were actually introduced and herded to the same dining table at lunch by someone who happened to know us both. \u00a0I was distracted all through the meal because I was nervous about the upcoming poetry reading. \u00a0How nervous? \u00a0When I was done eating, I jumped up and starting clearing the table before some people were even finished with their plates. \u00a0For me that\u2019s always a bad sign.<\/p>\n
I did the poetry reading that afternoon. \u00a0There were fifteen or so people in the audience. \u00a0The guy I had met at lunch wasn\u2019t among them; he was out on the beach, treating himself to a solitary walk.<\/p>\n
That evening after dinner the choices were these\u2014an egg race or a grief workshop. \u00a0Since I had been told that grieving was okay, I chose the latter. There were probably thirty-five to forty people seated in a circle when I stepped inside the room. \u00a0Nervous about not quite having my ticket punched to be there, I grabbed a seat next to the facilitator. \u00a0For starters she said we needed to go around the room and say our name, our spouse\u2019s name, what they died of and when they died. \u00a0Since I was seated next to the facilitator, I started the ball rolling. \u00a0\u201cMy name is Judy and my husband\u2019s name was Jerry. \u00a0He died of chronic alcoholism on New Year\u2019s Eve, 1982-83.\u201d<\/p>\n
Half way around the room was the guy I\u2019d met at lunch. \u00a0He said, \u201cMy name is Bill. \u00a0My wife\u2019s name was Lynn. \u00a0She died of breast cancer on New Year\u2019s Eve,1984-85.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boom. \u00a0Just like that we had that date in common\u2014New Year\u2019s Eve.<\/p>\n
Then it was time to share. \u00a0Since I had given myself permission to do the grief work, share I did. \u00a0I said that I had divorced my husband in 1980, prior to his subsequent death in 1982. \u00a0Since no one was ringing my doorbell at Bay Vista, obviously my life as a woman was over, so I was raising my kids, writing my books, and making the best of a bad bargain. \u00a0Then, once it was Bill\u2019s turn to speak, I wanted to hear what he had to say which was \u2026 well \u2026 nothing. \u00a0Not one word.<\/p>\n
When the workshop was over, I was mad as hell\u2014at him. \u00a0There was a bonfire outside where people were roasting marshmallows, and I went looking for him with a chip on my shoulder and blood in my eye. \u00a0\u201cSo what are you?\u201d I demanded. \u00a0\u201cThe strong silent type?\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never forgotten what he said in reply. \u00a0\u201cNo,\u201d he answered, \u201cit still hurts too much to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within minutes I was literally sobbing on his shoulder. \u00a0He stood there with one hand on my waist, trying to figure out what he should do with that other hand. \u00a0He told me later that when he heard me share that \u201cno one was ringing my doorbell,\u201d the thought that went through his brain was, \u201cHey, I could fix that.\u201d \u00a0And he did.<\/p>\n
The next weekend he came to the grand opening party for Until Proven Guilty. \u00a0I had given him a personal invitation, but he wasn\u2019t on the \u201cofficial\u201d guest list, so he had to talk his way past the designated doorkeeper, my daughter.<\/p>\n
Over the next few months, we did a lot of talking, sharing our grief work together. \u00a0In terms of months, I may have been two and a half years ahead of him, but in terms of facing up to grief, we were very much on the same page. \u00a0We talked about real stuff. \u00a0We had both been raised with solid Midwest values, so we had a lot in common there. In the course of those long talks, I assured him I wasn\u2019t the marrying kind\u2014that I had tried marriage once and I wasn\u2019t very good at it. Intent on maintaining a \u201cmeaningless relationship,\u201d I was shocked when he had a job offer the would have taken him to Grass Valley, California. \u00a0And then I realized that if this really was a meaningless relationship, I had no right to be upset that he might be leaving. \u00a0And when he didn\u2019t take the job, I was overjoyed.<\/p>\n
On the 16th of October, we had pizza with my kids and then went out for a glass of wine, just the two of us. \u00a0He had told his secretary at work that he was going to ask me to marry him that night. \u00a0She bet him I\u2019d say yes. \u00a0He was pretty sure I\u2019d say I had to think it over.<\/p>\n
When he popped the question at a long gone bistro in Pioneer Square, my reply wasn\u2019t what either he or his secretary had in mind. \u00a0\u201cWhen?\u201d was all I said, and the when happened to turn out to be December 21st, one day shy of the day we had that lunch together at the Widowed Retreat.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a poem in After the Fire called Fog. \u00a0It goes like this:<\/p>\n
I walk in fog<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s velvet touch caresses me<\/em><\/p>\n And hides the hurt.<\/em><\/p>\n Beyond the fog,<\/em><\/p>\n The sun shines clear and bright.<\/em><\/p>\n I must keep moving, I have earned the light.<\/em><\/p>\n For me, the sun broke through the fog that weekend thirty-four years ago, and it\u2019s been shining ever since.<\/p>\n PS \u00a0For those of you who are very sharp-eyed readers, the name Jim Hunt probably jumped out at you because it sounds slightly familiar, and there\u2019s a reason for that. \u00a0After 1985, I lost track of Jim for a number of years, but we reconnected in the nineties. \u00a0When Bill and I bought our current house here in Bellevue, Jim was our interior designer. \u00a0For years he\u2019s masterminded our Christmas decorations, and for the past two months he\u2019s been directing the action of folding the art and furnishings from the Tucson house into this one. \u00a0So the fact that Jim Hunt happens to be the name of JP\u2019s and Mel\u2019s interior designer is purely coincidental, too. \u00a0Right?<\/p>\n Sure, and if you believe that, I\u2019ve got some ocean front property in Arizona!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When this blog posts on Friday morning, it will be the thirty-fourth anniversary of the weekend Bill and I met. That particular weekend, starting on Friday June 21st, 1985, I had been invited to do a poetry reading of After the Fire at a Widowed Retreat for newly widowed individuals sponsored by WICS\u2014Widowed Information Consultation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1877","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-uh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877","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=1877"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1881,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions\/1881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}