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Wedding without the Groom

This week I’m producing a life celebration for my husband. It’s a wedding without the groom. But I know how to do this. I’ve stage managed countless other events, even memorials before.

When you lose your spouse (every time I say that phrase I think back to Lady Bracknell’s line in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest: “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”) This, in turn, makes me think of Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell which transports me to the pre-Els portion of Jimmie’s life.

(Readers are thinking, How can she have already digressed in the first paragraph? I invite you to peer inside the mind of the recently grieved person. There is no digression too unappealing to explore. In depth.)

When you lose your spouse, precisely at your rawest, most inconsolable moment, well-meaning family and friends ask about whether there will be a funeral. I know that funerals are the norm, but I can’t imagine how people pull them together at that moment. It was only about a month after my husband died that I was able to even imagine how to commemorate his life in a ritual we’ve come to call a “Life Celebration.”

Date. Venue. Guests. Speakers. Outfit. Music. Food. Flowers. Stage Manager. Program. Hotel. Transportation. Video.

This initial list can start the average stage manager panting with anticipation of things to order and to put in order. The list unfurls its own subset of questions that are more or less easy to answer once you’ve established the date, and the venue and have the Production Manager in your communication loop.

But this grieving stage manager had some additional hurdles to overcome. First, there is the sheer entropy of grief, that warm, swaddled state of incredulity; you are actually planning such an important event without the advice and counsel of your best friend. No one to bounce ideas off of, to run things by, to giggle with about what isn’t going to plan.

We pull on experience. Back in December, I began to pull together a guest list, determining that there would be 150 people who might want to come to celebrate Jimmie’s life. By the end of the month, I’d determined the venue, with a capacity of 74. Oops.

This first hiccough added a major need to the main list – web streaming.

So here’s the FB page where the event will be web streamed.

Date: Saturday, January 26, 2019 4PM

Venue: Web-streamed and some live participants

Speakers: There will be speakers!

Music: There will be some music!

Food: There will be some promised-to-be delish food from niece Niki.

Flowers: There will be flowers!

Stage Manager: I’ve hired a former student, Jennifer, to be professional me on the day when I can’t necessarily be counted on to be professional.

Program: There is a beautiful program thanks to my colleague and graphic designer, Chris.

Outfit: I went shopping with my friend and colleague, Tina, an accomplished costume designer. I knew what I wanted – a purple duster to wear over black pants and a gray top (which I already had). We went to Koi in Pasadena, parked in the 20 minute spot in front of the store, went in, bought the purple duster (believe it or not there was one), then retired to a nearby pub for a true English breakfast, complete with sausage and a eggs and a roasted tomato and a pot of tea. Success!

Hotel: Family and friends are starting to arrive today and tomorrow. There will be many opportunities to eat and talk about life and the wonderful man we’ve been so fortunate to spend my life with.

Transportation: Van to take family from hotel to venue. Organized.

Video: Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working with my great niece-by-marriage, Alisa Bargeski, on a video to celebrate Jimmie’s life and work and family. Putting that together has probably been the most satisfactory thing about the process and very healing.

With all these elements in place, the profoundly unsettling fact remains. The groom is gone.

I sat on the couch last night and the stillness of the interior apartment settled around me, wintry wind whistling just outside the glass patio door. I wasn’t weepy, just alone and somehow finally aware of my solitude in that moment. As I said to my dear friend Susan this afternoon, after all those years of knowing that I would be alone, I never visualized exactly what that would feel or be like. Isn’t that strange? But I know I am not alone in my life, that I’m surrounded with the life force of friends and colleagues and family. And I know I’m excited to see them at the “wedding without the groom” this Saturday.

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I’d prefer a puppy, thanks.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not misconstrue this as a secret request for a dog. I acknowledge my luck in having many caring people in my life who would jump at providing me with a new puppy. Please do not.

Have you ever noticed this phenomenon? When you are in the market for a new vehicle, or house, or dog even, you find yourself surrounded by dozens of the brand/style/breed that you’ve been thinking about? It’s been a while since I was in the market for any of those things, but lately I’ve noticed more people around me who have experienced significant loss. I am swimming in grievers.

Obviously, being surrounded by grievers is far less appealing than swimming in eager, face-licking puppies, but no less visceral. When we choose to notice our fellow humans and the all-too human experiences we share, they mirror our own frame of reference. Naturally. Narcissistic, yes, extremely, but also it can be comforting and reassuring.

We’re not alone. There are others who are facing or have faced the exact same thing we are going through. The predecessors can provide spiritual guidance. The successors give us a sense of utility when we are floundering with what we will do next. Each of us copes in our own intensely personal way. It gets better for a while, then we hit a huge grief pothole or icy patch and spin out. No matter how good our emotional snow tires are.

Due to circumstances I’ve begun to feel a bit like a grief vampire. They say that death comes in threes, and she has circled closely to my orbit and plucked away three important people to close friends in a very short time. The rest of my constellation is surely holding their loved ones close and struggling to maintain the apogee of orbit from those of us with loss.

And yet, they’re not. I’m stunned on a daily basis by people’s thoughtfulness, and consideration of what I’m going through. Earlier this week a colleague made me a quiche and dropped it off at work. Last night I took a bath in the light from a candle given to me by a neighbor. One of these days, I will finish the 1500 piece puzzle given to me by a colleague. I will either complete it, or in a fit of pique, will attempt the magician’s tablecloth trick which will end the puzzling for the season.

When comparing notes with my close circle of Widow/er/s, I’ve discovered that it’s acceptable to have begun talking to myself. Mind you, I’m not talking to Jimmie (most of the time), but talking myself through the steps of a given task.

Yesterday, in a moment of self-care, I signed up for a new app called emeals, which was recommended to me by my office-mate, Hannah. Check it out. Despite the cozy picture of the couple cooking together and the fact that it doesn’t cater to singles, it’s amazing. You pick your menus for the week, it downloads a shopping list, and even links to Instacart or other delivery services. I got very excited, picking four things – beef barley soup (slow cooking), grits with eggs and arugula (breakfast for dinner), and a few others. The shopping list was full of arcane items like fig preserves and frozen cheese biscuits that would challenge any half-hearted shopper so I linked to Instacart for delivery between 8-9pm last night.

Then I promptly forgot, realizing at 7:50 as I sorted crew participants for the class that I teach that I needed to be home to receive delivery. I bolted from my office and when I walked into my building at 8:08 I received the shattering news that my 32 arcane-Els-you-will-never-find-this-on-your-own items had been canceled from my cart. I imagined the beleaguered Instacart shopper stomping their feet, then having to return the items to the shelves in a pique of anger.

I spent about 5-8 minutes huffing around the store, looking for someone to complain to (they were all gone) before grabbing a cart, unchecking all the items on the shopping list, and beginning to fill my cart myself. Mindful self care. I calmed myself with the task at hand (filling the empty refrigerator at 8:45PM so I could feed myself). Checking out the other people who did their shopping that late and thinking I spotted a few other grievers in the store. But it could have just been projection on my part.

One day at a time. One meal at a time. Using the tools and technology to ease the process of rebuilding.