Valentine's Day

B didn’t much like Valentine’s Day. He found celebrations that required certain activities on certain days to be artificial, but he also respected that they were important to others. B would have preferred to give presents or good wishes because he thought of someone organically, and not because of a day on the calendar. But, then again, B wasn’t so great at following through on how he thought it should be, so he recognized that perhaps the holidays had some good function after all.

Last year for Valentine’s Day we had a sweet dinner at Tryst, in Arlington. At that point, B still seemed like B. He looked like himself, he still had minimal symptoms from cancer, and he was on a break from chemo and its side effects. But, B had blown through his first line of treatment and was searching for what to try next. B had pancreatic cancer and we knew the beast was on the move.

How surreal this dinner was. Dining with my lovely husband, ‘celebrating’ Valentine’s Day together. We talked about the kids and work and memories - the usual. But also, treatment and what could come next. It was Valentine’s Day with the awareness that it would almost certainly be the last one celebrated together - normal, sweet, and terrifying all at once. We were completely aligned in our hopes and fears, and tenderness together.

And yet, how different this event was for each of us. B wanted to to embrace what time he had left, aware that his health could change, would change, at any moment. For me, it was being wholly in this moment, but I found it impossible not think about holidays yet to come with only his memory instead. I had a stomping, screaming “nooooo!” ringing in my brain, but left unvoiced.

Even when B and I were so deeply aligned with each other, there was still this divergence — each of us in the moment but with a different horror over our shoulder. C.S. Lewis writes of this divergence in his memoir of his wife’s passing from cancer, A Grief Observed: “We both knew this. I had my miseries, not hers; she had hers, not mine. We were setting out on different roads. This cold truth, this terrible traffic-regulation (‘You, Madam to the right — you, Sir, to the left’), is just the beginning of the separation which is death itself.” There were many times to come when I felt that we were in the same place but still also in such a different place. I tried too hard to empathize with his experience, but how could I ever truly understand? How could he? It is the way of life, I suppose. We find comfort in our connections, yet ultimately, we each walk our own journey.

——-

For me, this Valentine’s Day is hard, but grief is hard, and this is just another day of it. I am privileged to have had some beautiful dinners with my love.

If you are celebrating tonight, Valentine’s Day is a delightful day to honor love; I wish you peace and joy in your togetherness and I hope you can approach it with a softness in your voice.

To those of you not celebrating, it’s just a made up holiday anyway. :o)