Frank's friends

There were a dozen familiar faces that I could not have been happier to see on Saturday. They were members of the 20th Maine, all attending the dedication of Cherryfield's new Veterans Park by the river.

I knew that May 19 was the date, but I also knew I was planning to be elsewhere that morning. Actually, I managed to be elsewhere-and-done in time to get to Cherryfield for the dedication event, complete with cannon fire.

I loved the 90 minutes I spent with all of the 20th Maine members. He was even recalled by Kathy Upton, a 20th Maine civilian member and organizer of the park dedication, in her opening remarks. I arrived too late to hear that, but others told me as soon as they saw me.

"Frank would have been here," I told Paul Dudley, the group's president who had raised his sword to me when he saw me turn up. "I know," Paul responded.

Frank rarely missed a 20th Maine occasion in his 20 years with the group. Being among the other members was something he could always count on. Sometimes I went with him, over the 10 years we had together. But more often, he went alone to his weekends away.

This time, yesterday, it just felt as if Frank was back among his friends.

It gets better? Really?

Then how come today was my teariest day yet?

Maybe because it's late May, and I drove into New Brunswick. Maybe because Frank and I used to go into Atlantic Canada every June, very deliberately. If we didn't go to Canada on his birthday, June 9, then we went on our anniversary, June 21. We just always made sure that we were celebrating something, whenever we crossed the border.

Can't say we ever went the same place twice, in our eight years of Canada-gazing every June. On our first anniversary, we went on a late-afternoon whim to Grand Manan. We felt lucky to catch the very last ferry of the evening out of Blacks Harbour.

We also went, through the years, to Saint John, Campobello, St. Stephen, St. Andrew, Prince Edward Island and Fredericton. We'd go for either dinner or an overnight, or both, or even longer. And last year, when Frank was sick and we were on our long trip across the country, our last overnight before returning to Maine in mid-June was at Helen and Larry LeDuc's cottage in Gananoque, Ontario. See? Canada in June, again.

Separate of anniversary or birthday trips, Frank and I also crossed the border at Calais three other times -- twice for Ukulele trips to Liverpool, Nova Scotia; and once more to Liverpool, Nova Scotia, for an exploratory trip for Ukuleles-planning. Someone's got to check out Nova Scotia over a four-night Labor Day weekend, and Frank and I made sure it was us.

Today I had a meeting with a marathon organizer in Saint John. Route 1 from St. Stephen to Saint John is just rolling in beauty. So, the tears started, and carried me all the way to Saint John. Then they hit me on the return trip, too. Always in June, New Brunswick would be blooming with lupines. But there weren't any lupines on this trip, and no Frank, either.

Four months, already

" I don't know how you do it," the woman coming toward me in the grocery aisle said. I had greeted her with a smile and a hello as we angled our carts out of each other's way. I don't know her name, but she knows mine. She is one of the bank tellers at the Machias Savings Bank. We chit-chat when I see her every week or two, but I've never actually told her all about Frank and me. But she knows my story, as I suspect hundreds of other local people know, too. From the first day of the awful, terminal diagnosis, we made a decision to be very public about how we would deal with it.

"It's four months tomorrow (meaning, since he died on January 17)," I tell her. "And I don't know how I'm doing it, either."

I really don't. I have no answer for "how you do it." You just go through the day, one moment at a time. You get from one meal to the next, one meeting to the next, one message to the next. When the day is done, you're relieved, because you got through it without a meltdown or a crisis. If such a thing were either public or private it wouldn't make a difference. One would be as hard to cope with, as the other.

You don't have a choice in doing any of this. You just make up your days as they go, hoping not to get too unbalanced. You hope you are pulled together enough to be in others' company.

If today marks four months since the evening I held him as he died, I can't say it feels any better than it did at the three-month, or two-month, or one-month point. The day Frank died is as vivid as ever. And I hope it stays that way.

A place for everything ...

... and everything in its place. That's certainly how my mother in Maryland lives, and it's what Frank strived for, too -- neatness and orderliness.

So I have had to struggle all these months with a very pressing and personal question: What do I do with Frank's collection of Civil War books? He had a fair number when I met him. But he also was a life-long user of libraries, so he had read far more Civil War books than he owned. And once my family knew about his love for anything Civil War, he was given many more through the 10 years.

As a 20-year member of the 20th Maine Co. B regiment of re-enactors, all of Frank's colleagues also had every Civil War book ever published. When he was dying, he said several times that he wanted his buddies to have his books. Some of them visited toward the end, and Frank always asked them to take away some books. But they were polite and declined.

The estate sale happened too fast, before I had a solution about Frank's book collection. To cope, I simply put up the sign: "Civil War books not for sale." I still didn't know what I'd do with all of them ... until yesterday.

Two of the members of the 20th Maine group, Kathy Upton and Cara Sawyer, are both librarians at the Cherryfield Library. They joined up as civilian women in September 2009, when they and the Cherryfield Historical Society organized "Living History Day" in the town. The 20th Maine was invited, and Frank took part, I remember.

In a few days, Frank's Civil War collection will have a new home at the Cherryfield Library. I knew I just needed time to figure out the right thing to do.

Cherryfield is also home to Peter Duston, a dear friend who appreciates Civil War history, too. Peter is the one who played Taps on his bugle at Frank's military service in Augusta on March 27. And Peter knows Cherryfield's own Civil War history by heart, because twin brothers from Cherryfield who served are buried in the town's cemetery. And on May 19, members of the 20th Maine are returning to Cherryfield for a re-dedication of the graves of those special Civil War soldiers.

Back to blue

As far as estate sales go, this one was fabulous, from my perspective. Of course, I'm supposed to be the weepy widow who can't let go of memories and things. And moving out of the home we made together is supposed to be a most difficult transition.

But -- nah. It's all been good. Stuff sold, I got money, tons of people walked through, tons more came back for Sunday's continuing sale.

After most of the selling took place on Saturday, I realized that some things -- some blue things -- hadn't left the house in the rush. Blue had been the reigning color in the farmhouse in Franklin, where Frank had lived for 20 years before our lives came together. So we made blue our decor from the start, and received many blue things from my wedding shower nine years ago. Blue towels, blue sheets, blue bedspreads, too. But when we moved to Machias, the interior was already cranberry, so I found a wallpaper that made our home-lives work around a cranberry-and-gold combination. Our blue stuff wasn't featured in any way. (Meanwhile, people continue to comment on my choice of cranberry-and-gold wallpaper, as recently as the weekend sale).

Once I shift to Lubec, I'm bringing back everything blue. I snatched out of the sale items all the leftover blue tablecloths, placemats, napkins, dishes and serving ware that hadn't sold on Saturday. Blue is back in my life again, in a way that I can remember Frank and all the blue touches in his farmhouse when we first met. I love that.

Stuff

It's all so strange, getting rid of stuff.

Tomorrow I am poised to get rid of all kinds of stuff. It's all the furniture and stuff that filled our home for the last nine years. Frank was living in a huge, rambling farmhouse in Franklin when we met in 2001. We had to pare down much of that, including the contents of a barn, when we moved in 2003. But with our 1860s, 12-room house in Machias, we couldn't fill it fast enough with the things we gathered together.

We were auction-goers. He had an eye for pocket watches, wall clocks, mantle clocks and, later, standing clocks. They all are wound with keys. I doubt that Frank ever owned any timepiece that used a battery. Me, I liked to leave an auction with little things that ended up on shelves. That, and globes. I have at least 14 big-sized globes.

Much of our stuff is going in our estate sale, set for Saturday and Sunday. Some things are simply not being sold, and those will travel with me to my pending new home in Lubec. But very strangely, I am okay with most of our stuff walking out the door -- and likely mostly to strangers.

Having a 12-room house filled with furniture and things that we enjoyed finding and bringing home together  -- those are the memories that I'll take with me. The stuff can go to others.

What I told the cat

This morning, I told the cat, "It's getting to be okay."

Did I really say that?

I am sure I was talking only about getting ready for the furniture and house-decor sale ...

Sorting through

There are so many things that I never thought I could do with respect to Frank's illness. How would it feel, I wondered, to come to the point where he would be so sick, that he could die any day? How would it feel on the day he died, or how would it feel to plan his funeral? How would I manage in the days and weeks after the funeral, after everyone had gone home, and I had no one but myself to talk to?

I'm still having those thoughts: How would it feel to be three-and-a-half months into Life Without Frank? It feels lousy, to be honest. Every day has an emptiness.

Now I've arrived at something I also never wanted to do, getting rid of his stuff. All of his clothes remain upstairs, his many three-piece suits still on hangers in the walk-in closet. His bureau drawers are as full as ever, with all his T-shirts and handkerchiefs and socks all folded as neatly if he'd be wearing them tomorrow. And his shoes are all lined up in a row, just as if he'd chosen to wear a different pair today to match his suit -- the brown versus the black, for example.

The clothes are one matter and, I understand, perhaps the last thing a widow wants to take care of.

In the meantime, I am working through taking care of much of the rest of Frank's things. From his 30 years in Maine, and in the 10 years before that, starting with his Navy years, he kept most of everything. The most meaningful of his things have gone back to his family. But still, there's more. And, even though I'm having a two-day sale for most of our furniture, and most of what we acquired together, I'm not ready to part with everything. Not yet, anyway. Not yet at all.

The moments we never expect

Someone I barely know told me this morning that her husband died of leukemia two years ago.

So I opened up some more, and listened. And she knew all about the last months of Frank's life, because we had been so public about his illness from the start.

She shared that she had known Frank a little before his illness, too. She had been part of a knitting group, and the other women had talked about Frank's pattern for double-knit mittens. So she approached Frank, and very freely, Frank gave her the pattern, too.

That was Frank. He loved to knit for others, and he loved to share his patterns with others. It was unexpected this morning, then, that someone else I barely knew could remind me of something so wonderful about Frank.

"Souvenirs," the song

Mike Shannon, Frank and I had about three months of a morning ritual about five years ago. Mike was living with us while he and Kathleen looked around for the perfect house. We'd sit together in Frank's office for coffee and conversation, while Frank read the paper and mused about the world.

Mike brought me coffee this morning. Still in Frank's office, we had a good time talking about old times and new times. I told him about my "widows-to-windows" thoughts, and he pointed out a great line in a Steve Goodman-John Prine tune: "Broken hearts and dirty windows make life difficult to see."

Here's the full song, "Souvenirs." Mike, who has had some amazing experiences in his lifetime, says that Goodman and Prine sang this song in his living room in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, while he prepared supper, in spring of 1977.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOTbg39-I5Q

Appearances

Even though I am smiling and laughing and getting things done on the outside, I am crying on the inside. Then, when no one is around, I get to cry on the outside, too.

Just the right words

I  have been keeping family and friends apprised of my "Life After Frank" with emails now and again, as the days and weeks turn into months. Yesterday I wrote about the quick sale of the house and my intended relocation to a rental in Lubec. A very dear friend, 92-year-old Shura, provided just the right words in response.

Shura was Frank's former mother-in-law. I do not suppose she would mind if I make her words public here. When Frank knew he was dying, he reached out to her, even though he had not been in touch for more than 30 years. She (and Frank's ex-wife Jennifer) responded immediately, and those long-ago relationships were renewed and cherished both ways, for the last nine months of his life. Frank and I got to see Shura and Jennifer four or five times, during 2011. And I visited them in New York just last month as I drove back from Indiana, to see through the house sale.

Yesterday, Shura wrote me just the right words:

"Katherine- I am not astonished but deeply impressed at the way you are going about rebuilding your life. You are a doer. You are helping yourself immensely by recognizing the emotional dimensions, as well as the practical and future-oriented ones, in which you are engaged. We take our lives with us as we go forward on these difficult laps of the journey- and our self-awareness, as well as that of others, is a tremendously positive and helpful factor- both in the "healing" (which is another concept that takes thought and adaptation) and the planning processes. 

You are a DOER- and I'm filled with admiration. Love ya,baby! Shura"  

Changes, continued

ESTATE SALE
May 12-13, 10am to 3pm only
5 Free St., Machias

Downsizing 12 rooms of furniture and household decor, hostess and kitchenware. Good taste, good stuff (including four sofas, new recliner, etc.) Clothes, books, bedding, basement discoveries, too. Nearly everything goes. Prices firm on Saturday. 263-4838.

That's going in the local weekly in time for the next issue, out on Tuesday.

All seemed fine as I wrote the ad and emailed it, except for the moment when I went out to the deck to chat with my friend working on the roof.  The song on his radio? "Me and Bobby McGhee." Yes, the one with those words, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Ordinarily, I love that song, and so did Frank. But this morning, it put me into tears again. Just gotta get used to all these changes that I'm living through.

Changes

The advice for widows we hear at every turn is largely: "Don't make any major changes for the first year."

Well, I've gone against all that advice. In the last 33 days, I have
-- arranged to have a new roof put on my house and take care of some interior fixes;
-- put my house on the market, priced to sell;
-- got an interested buyer in the first person to walk through; and, today,
-- signed a sales agreement.

I haven't even left myself any time to breathe between now and June 4, when we have a closing. By then, I need to locate a new place to rent (in a town I like very much, 30 miles from here). I also need to downsize from 12 rooms of furniture, to a one-bedroom lifestyle.

Amazingly, I am okay with all of this. The biggest change in my life -- losing Frank forever -- has already occurred. I am now in a position to plow through the next set of changes and challenges. Selling the house has nothing to do with "too many memories" here. It's all about realizing that I no longer have Frank's income. Changes this dramatic have to happen. I just have to learn to live differently now, in so many ways.