A year

Christamighty, I’m behind, and this is very obviously the next post to write, and I just … well, I don’t have a plan. Let’s see what happens.

May 20th was the anniversary of Charles’s death. It was a Saturday, so I’d planned a gathering for Sunday. I really wanted it to be Charles’s old crew, the friends he’d made back in his restaurant days – plus close friends and neighbors. Alas, the ones on that list that I don’t see as a matter of course were largely out of town or unavailable – so it was a small gathering of the usual suspects.

The crew of ladies who’d been so helpful the week of the funeral all raised their hands to help with this, too… in fact, Patti basically said, “I can come in the night before to help” and I was like, no, there’s not that much to do, and she rephrased, “I’m coming in the night before”. OK, then.

Basically, the plan was pretty casual – no candle ceremony or speeches or anything. There were two things I wanted to happen: give everyone food and drink and space to hang out and reminisce, and to make it easy for people to take stuff away: Charles’s clothes and random items.

I’d run a food/drink list by the ladies, and ever-practical Renee fired back with, “yes, do that, lose, this, that’s too much food, do this instead”, all of which made complete sense and which I ran with. I ordered a sandwich platter and some pesto pasta salad from FreshDirect, had the standard chips, salsa, hummus, crudites, cheese and crackers, and other stuff. Susan picked up the booze for me, and Tessa was bringing cheese. And I was going to cook, too!

So I spent the time from Monday night’s concert until Saturday getting various things ready (thank goodness, my housecleaner’s every-other-week day was that Wednesday, and I basically avoided the nice parts of the apartment from then on). And Saturday, I brought a lot of boxes down to the storage closet, and brought a lot of different boxes (including 6 boxes of cookbooks) back up.

Patti picked up Tessa on the way in and, as planned, I met them outside and we went to the cemetery together. I don’t think they’d been there since the day of the funeral. (I’ve now been to the cemetery with others several times – it’s nice, but I really need to also go alone so I can not be self-conscious when I talk to him.) So, despite pouring rain, that was a nice thing to do, and then we did some grocery shopping and went back to my place. Renee and Susan came over and, after snacks, we all went to the Queensboro for dinner, which was fantastic. They all know me there, of course, since I’m there at least once a week, but my buddy Luis was our waiter and he and Tessa had a lovely conversation in Spanish at some point, that was cool. Then back to the apartment, and Tessa and Renee and Susan headed home eventually and Patti and I went to bed.

Patti and I got up the next day and I did the two “Eric can cook” things I’d planned – little frittatas in the muffin tins, and eggless banana bread. The banana bread was easy and came out just fine – the frittatas took a little more effort and didn’t quite get cooked as much as I like, and also had too much spinach in ratio to the other ingredients, but, later, guests told me, unprompted, how good they were.

The other three ladies came over early, and niece Allison showed up early as well with her gentleman friend, John, and I set them all to work. First, Susan and Renee set up a couple of folding tables in the office and laid out the ‘stuff’ (mugs, candelabras, old wallets, a chess set, etc.) and the cookbooks. In the master bedroom, John assembled the portable clothes rack I’d bought and they laid out all C’s clothes on the bed and on that rack. (and of course, as people ran into things they wanted for themselves, they put them aside. Although Tessa, for some reason, thought that the ties in my closet were up for grabs, and I had to stop her from stealing them, heh.)

We assembled the food, including a simple salad and fruit salad, and Tessa had brought cheese, and I made a pitcher of cosmos ready to go, and we set up the dining room and coffee table with all that.

And then the party started, although almost all the guests were already there – the only others were my neighbors Richard and Maryam and Josh and Mariah, who came downstairs when they were available. And there were lots of mimosas and cosmos drunk, and coffee and tea and food eaten, and a lot of really interesting discussion. (Richard is a college professor, Allison teaches middle school Maryam is a kindergarten teacher, and Patti runs school-focused art programs, so a lot of education talk.) Everyone took a tour of the ‘stuff room’ and the ‘clothes room’ and quite a lot of stuff got taken, although way more stayed behind.

And it was a lovely afternoon, and people wrapped it up at a reasonable hour. Tessa and I dealt with the dishes and the food and I moved the clothes from the master bed to the guest bed and then she took off and that was that for that.

Next morning, I moved the leftover ‘stuff’ to the dining room table so I could return the folding tables to the basement, and so I still had the stuff and clothes laid out, just in different spaces so they didn’t get in my way. Since then, my housecleaner has come again and taken ‘stuff’ and a lot of the clothes. I invited the co-op building staff to come up, more ‘stuff’ taken and one of the porters took a lot of the clothes to send back to the Dominican Republic. The ‘stuff’ is gone now – the few bits left thrown away, the cookbooks are going to the book sale this weekend, the rest of the clothes are going to Miriam’s church, and it definitely feels like a checklist item on the ‘moving on’ checklist is being checked off.

But what about, oh, hey, what does it mean that a year has passed?

Well, I always had it in my head that I’d give myself a year to be a mess with no pressure, and I’ve pretty much given myself that year. But, although I’m still a mess, I need to be in ‘this is normal now’ mode, and pay more attention to money and my own stuff. Actually, a lot of focus these past few months has been on my own health – physical therapy, exercise, and finally starting to put in the work to lose weight.

I think my relationship with Charles now is, of course, missing him, but remembering how wonderful he was and how great our relationship was. I’ve never been in a weeping and wailing ‘why did you leave me, I can’t go on without you’ mode. I know why he left us – and I know it wasn’t his choice and I also know (except deep in my lizard brain) that it wasn’t my fault. And of course I can go on without him – part of what we treasured about each other was independence and self-sufficiency. Am I happy that I’m going on without him? The “without him” part sucks. The “going on” part, yes, that is good. Especially since part of “going on” is relying on the lessons I learned from the 27+ years of our relationship, and how much he taught me so I’m now so much better a person than I was. And to honor him and be his representative on Earth, which means.. well, I’m figuring out what that means day to day, but generally opportunities present themselves, I recognize them and run with them.

I somehow have managed to take care of this apartment for a year without it falling apart, and have a routine down now. I’ve made some changes, will continue to make others, but there’s no rush. One thing was clear as I put together the gathering – Charles very much set up our home to be a place to welcome guests and to entertain them, and although I’m not nearly as skilled as he was in doing that, the home itself does half the work.

(also I’ve learned, to my bemusement, that I have friends and family who will totally step up to help me when I need that. And it’s time to start paying that back, and forward.)

A relationship, no matter how wonderful, is work and there are always inherent tensions that you live with and deal with as the price of having the wonderful relationship. And I can’t say that I’m sorry that those tensions are no longer there. There are benefits and drawbacks to being in a relationship, and there are benefits and drawbacks to being single. And I have every intention of enjoying being single, much as I’d rather not have, um, ‘gotten single’ the way I did.

I keep meaning to create a permanent section of this website to honor Charles, and that will come. In the meantime:

Charles’s obituary and memorial page.

The funeral week posts.

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