Lessons in love

Anyone who ever saw Pascual and I together knew how much we loved each other.  We were very demonstrative.  Hugging, kissing, holding hands all the time.  It was obvious how we felt about each other.

I never realized until after his death how unusual that is for the culture he came from.  All of his friends and family are lovely people.  They hug and kiss hello and goodbye.  But I have never seen any if the couples hold hands or kiss or put their arms around each other.  Funny I never noticed it.  I thought everyone was like us until a Spanish friend of mine pointed out that it is not their way to be demonstrative.

I know it is one of the things Pascual really loved about me.  He liked being hugged and kissed.  It made him feel loved.  I liked it too.  We were very alike in that.  I was thinking about love a lot over the past couple of weeks.  How it endures and sharpens into clearer focus after the death of your partner.

I have come to know that Pascual, in his decision to end his life, was trying to love me the best way he could in his pain.  He made sure I would not be sued.  He signed and mailed off his severance package so I would get the money.  He sacrificed his life so I could have a better, easier life financially without him.

I am having a very hard time with this... how do I come to terms with the fact that he truly believed I would be better off without him.  All of these things have been rolling around in my head for several days now...

I usually wake up and cry.  Sunday morning I woke up with the song Blue Skies, smiling at me... nothing but blue skies do I see... stuck in my head.  I was singing it and Kayleigh said, “you’re in a good mood this morning.”  I thought about it and said that I woke up with it rolling around in my head.  I must have dreamed it.  I have dream soundtracks.

I spoke to a friend and talked to her about how bad I was feeling about the things I’ve come to know about how Pascual thought to sacrifice himself for me.  I spoke of my pain and grief over it, as well as  my difficulty accepting it.  My friend said “that’s love Karan.  It may seem really screwed up to us... but even in his pain and darkest moments... he loved you.  His final actions were of love in protecting you as much as he could.”  I thought about what she said.  It was a different perspective.  Something I could look for the gift in.  He loved me.  I still feel his love for me every day.

I’ve been trying to watch a Star Trek show called Picard on tv all last week.  I kept falling asleep during the last episode.  Like literally 8 times.  So after having my tea, I decided to put the show on and finally watch the end.  Spoiler alert, captain Picard and Data have a conversation about death.  Data wanted his whole life to feel actual love.  He asks Picard to let him go... to let him die.  A doctor was using his neurons to build more synthetic life forms so he was essentially trapped in a hologram forever.  Unable to truly die and move on.  Data says... (I’m paraphrasing somewhat..“we live, however briefly knowing that our life is finite.  Human mortality gives meaning to life. Peace, love, friendship.  These are precious because we know they cannot endure.”  Then while they are having this conversation, the song I’ve been singing all morning, Blue Skies comes on in the room where they are visiting.  Picard says he was upset with Data for sacrificing his life for Picard, when Picard had planned to do the same thing.  Data says, “if you can sacrifice your life for love of me, why can you not accept that I would do the same for you?”

Here is where I lose it.  I’m blubbering like a baby, because Pascual has sent me a very deep message about his love for me.  All I can say in the moment is “Star Trek?! You didn’t even LIKE Star Trek.”  I hear his voice echo in my ear... “No, but you did darling...”

So my day started out with a loving message from him, with many layers of validation so I would see that it truly was him.  He is with me still.  Helping me through the pain.  Sending me comforting messages.  Taking tender care of me as he used to say.  I’m learning to just go with it when these things happen.  And the more open I am, the more I see things from new perspectives.  I miss him so much... but yesterday, for the first time since his death, I actually felt like I am going to make it through this.  Thanks to a love that keeps on... even in Death

Honeymoon memories

Found this little reminder of our honeymoon after the California wedding.  28 days in Hawaii on Maui, Kauai and Oahu.  What a beautiful trip.  Only one brief mention of the trip to the emergency room.

It’s a really funny story... and I need funny right now.  However it is long... just saying...

Sometime between the wedding and the week later when we left for Hawaii, I strained my rotator cuff.  For the first 10 days on Maui I walked around with my arm hurting.  Pascual carries my hot pink purse everywhere for me... and kept suggesting we go to the Dr.  finally I agreed that I would go when we got to Kauai.  I call Kaiser to get pre-approval for an ER visit and they tell me there is a hospital on Maui.  Great.  We just left Maui and are now in Kauai.  They tell me to go to the nearest ER and they will cover it.  I call to get directions to the hospital.  The lady answering the phone says.. “when you come out of airport you go Burger King way or Kentucky Fried Chicken way to Poipu?”  Huh?  “Honey do you remember seeing a BK or a KFC when we turned on the highway? “ He says “No, I don’t recall... “. I tell her we came down highway number blah blah because I couldn’t pronounce the Hawaiian name.  “Well, I need to know if you come da KFC or BK way cause Hawaiian people doan read da numbahs.”  So we figure our we came the BK way..  She tells me to go back to the BK and past the Hilo Hatties and behind that parking lot is the hospital.  Sounds perfectly logical to me and is exactly the way I give directions.  We head off to the ER.  Yes, strained rotator cuff... here is a sling.  Don’t use your arm for the rest of the trip, follow up with your doctor when you are on the mainland.  Ok.  Got it.

Scratch the canoeing trip and zip line tour we had booked, cause I can’t do them now...

The next morning, I wake up and put in my contact lenses... and one tears and rolls up under my eyelid.  There are Louvered doors on the bungalow we are in to let in the trade winds.  I’m shouting “oh my god, it hurts, pull it out!”  Then when he tries to help me I scream “Ow it’s hurting me, don’t touch me, get away.. “  I finally get both pieces out of my eye, and I can’t see anything out of my eye.  Pascual says, “let’s go back to the hospital and have them look at it.”  I start crying.  “No, I’m not going back to the f-ing hospital.”  We are going to our luau we booked.

Mind you we have a snorkel trip booked in 2 days and I needed contacts to see in a mask... so I call home and have them overnight me another pair of lenses, hoping my eye will be ok enough to snorkel in 2 days.  As we leave the bungalow, people are staring at us... and when we come back from the drug store and I’m wearing an eyepatch, they stare even more.

That night, I get up in the middle of the night to pee... an eyepatch on one eye, no glasses on in a dark unfamiliar room.  I walk into the bathroom... Bam!  Straight into the bathroom door that my new husband has courteously shut after using.  I break my pinkie toe.  As I’m hopping around screaming again hollering that it hurts and why would you do that?...  “I was being a gentleman” he says apologetically as I’m tripping over furniture and making another noisy ruckus that the neighbors around us hear...  he offers to take me to the hospital again.  I cry and tell him no because I’d broken my pinkie toe before and all they did was tape it to the next toe.  “We’ll go to the pharmacy in the morning and get tape.”

In the morning when we are walking to the car, I’m limping with a sling and an eyepatch..  the people next door to us ask me if I’m all right.  I’m crying as I tell them what has happened and how jinxed I am on our honeymoon.  They smile but still look suspiciously at Pascual as they walk away.  This is our third day on Kauai.  We canceled everything we had booked except the helicopter tour and a snorkel trip.  I couldn’t walk on the beach because I couldn’t bend my toe on the sand.  Couldn’t swim for the same reason, along with the shoulder.  Pascual teases I could swim in a circle since it was my left side that was affected, I could use the right arm and leg.  I don’t think it’s very funny.

We rented videos and watched movies in the room for 2 days, sweltering in the heat with no AC because most people are out at the beach during the day when it’s hot, the rooms don’t have AC.  Then he said “To Hell with this... let’s go baby, we can still go shopping.”  I hobbled around with him to every store... a sling, an eyepatch, sock on my hurt toe foot and a flip flop on the other, limping like Quasimodo.  He was carrying my pink purse.  We bought stuff for me to make a scrapbook of the trip.

On the way back he wanted to stop and check out the pool.  We figured out that I could go in the pool if I wrapped my good arm around his neck and shoulders from behind and he just towed me around the pool everywhere. So that’s what we did for most of the days.

I was able to hobble out to the beach for sunsets with tennis shoes on, so we saw sunsets.  We went to a replica Hawaiian village where they filmed the movie Outbreak.  We saw the falls from Fantasy Island and the Fern Grotto... and had lots of beautiful dinners eating fresh Pan Pacific cuisine.

Every night I cried that I was ruining our honeymoon... and he would smile and say... “I know you are sad now baby, but one day we will tell the story of this trip and we will laugh our asses off.”  He was so great about things like that.  He saw the humor in everything... even the shitty stuff.  And he was right.  We did laugh every time we told the story.  It was one of our favorites.  I’m reminded of all of our special moments in what I thought was a crappy trip at the time.  Now I see the gifts.  Lots of time together.  Him taking tender care of me.  Being in our favorite place in the world.  He said to me once with his sweet accent when I was crying... “Hey, we are together.  I love you...  can’t you find it in your heart to smile at your new husband?”  And I did.  He brought out the best in me.  Even when I was at my worst.  He always found a way to make everything special.

Happy 47th anniversary Darling

When I talk about how I will never find another man like Pascual... I really mean it.  He married me four times.  Four ceremonies, four wedding rings, four honeymoons.  He wanted to have a ceremony every month.  That way if we forgot an anniversary we would just pick it up the next one.  Our next was going to be in Vegas in July in an Elvis love chapel by an Elvis impersonator.

If you add all of them up we would have hit 50 anniversaries by the end of this year.  We were looking forward to celebrating 50 anniversaries in Spain for the Christmas holidays.  I don’t know of another man who would want to marry his wife 12 times.  Willingly!  And his idea to begin with.

He was romantic.  He loved to go for moonlight walks on the beach.  He enjoyed watching and photographing sunsets as much as I did.  We loved snorkeling in Hawaii holding hands while we watched the fish and turtles.  He liked picnics on the beach and hikes to waterfalls, constantly on the lookout for wild orchids.  He loved whales and dolphins.  The time we went snorkeling in Maui and ended up in a pod of dolphins, he was like a little kid watching them flip and jump all around us.  

The kids found out we were eloping and asked us not to run away and get married.  They were very insistent that they wanted to be there as a part of the ceremony.  So we planned another wedding at my Mom and Teens house with local family and friends.  Pascual’s best friends Vicente and Laura came from Spain with his cousin Olga and her husband Alberto and his Godmother Maria Jesus and her son Ramon.  It was another day of laughter, dancing and more tears of joy.  My mother performed the ceremony.  My sons walked me down the aisle.  His friends stood up with him as best man and women.  His Godmother was at his side in Spanish marriage tradition.  My girls were a bridesmaid and flower girl.  The day was perfect.  The weather was warm, we drank wine smuggled from Spain in his friends luggage.

We had 2 beach weddings, a vineyard wedding and a wedding in a castle.  This anniversary is from the vineyard wedding at my parents house.  As I look through the photos of the day, I remember how incredibly happy we were.  I chuckle at how little the kids were.   I remember feeling so lucky to marry my soul mate a second time in front of all my friends and family.

We were 40 years old.  We had become a family.  We were a team together to face all the storms in life.  We didn’t know of the things that were coming.  We didn’t know the real estate market would tank and we would lose everything.  We didn’t know that he would spend 7 years trying to get back into the business he left before finding the right job in that industry again.  We didn’t know that we would have to start over financially three times over the next 15 years.  We battled so many obstacles, and survived so many hardships... through it all we never stopped loving each other.  We never gave up on each other or our dreams.  We kept working toward our goals.

I look at the path ahead of me now and I can’t imagine taking it alone.   I look for the light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s dark and endless.  I don’t know how to dream without him.  I’ve become so accustomed to sharing everything with him down to the smallest detail, that I don’t know how to go on without him.  I’m completely lost in the pain.  This has been a sad week with a lot of crying.

I’m trying darling.  Trying to move on.  Trying to forgive you and forgive myself.  I’m trying to hold on to the good memories and let them flood me full of warm feelings.  I’m trying but it’s such an effort to get out of bed and get dressed each day.  Facing a third celebration day without you in three weeks is a lot to take.  You sure picked a crappy time.  I’m trying to be gentle and patient with myself through this process, but all I can feel is the incredible emptiness of your absence.  So again, I celebrate these milestones without you.  The victory hollow.  The taste bitter with the ashes of these dreams we had that are no more.

I love you... I miss you... I want you back my darling

A beautiful quote

Grief never ends . . .

but it changes.  

It’s a passage, 

not a place to stay.  

Grief is not a sign of weakness, 

nor a lack of faith . . .

It is the price of love.

The way he loved me

We met on line one night when I had insomnia.  I will save the whole love story for another post... but for now, suffice it to say that we spent 6 months talking on the phone and emailing each other before we ever met in person.  The first thing I loved about him was his beautiful voice.  So animated.  The tone resonated in my ear.  We spent hours on the phone.  I wore headphones so it was clear in my ear.  A softly accented, soothing voice that made me tingle when I heard it.  He would sing to me sometimes.  He had a beautiful singing voice.  Other times he would speak to me in different languages.  It was kind of like having different lovers.  He was always chuckling and cracking jokes.  My love for him started with his voice.  

He was the Ricky to my Lucy.  More than anything he liked to make me laugh.  I loved how he would revert to Spanish words when he was angry and “Ricky Ricardo out” with his temper tantrum.  One time  in the early day’s when his accent was thicker he got road rage and yelled at the guy in English ”Ju.. ju... hole of the ass!”  Then he started cursing a blue streak just like Ricky used to do to Lucy.  I’m in the passenger seat holding my stomach laughing because it was hilarious.  He looks at me all pissed of and says “When you laugh at me, it loses all its force!”  I just giggled and repeated “hole of the ass”. And we both started cracking up.  It was one of our favorite curse words after that.  

He had no problem being the butt of a joke, but where he really shined was with puns on words.  His friends would tell me he was hilarious in Spanish.  I thought he was funny in English too.  Over time, he tried so hard to make puns on words in English and quite often it did not work.  I started telling him he wasn’t funny in English, but he knew I thought he was, when it was natural.  When he forced it, not so much.  Every once in a while he would come up with a gem that was so funny, people would tell it and retell it over again.  

My favorite was this time he came up to me and all the skin on his face was dry and peeling.  I would usually say, “Honey you need lotion, your face is all peely. “. He would usually say, “No I’m Pascual, my sister is Pili.”  But this time instead, he looked at me really serious and said ”I know...  I have a reptile disfunction.”  Classic Pascual.  

Quite often if we were late to a party people would call and ask us when we were going to arrive.  He would laugh at me and say, “Apparently the party doesn’t start until I get there.”  He loved to make people laugh.  He would have people gathered in a circle and would have the men doubled over and the women crossing their legs laughing so hard they were going to pee themselves.  I liked to stand back a bit during those times and observe.  It made me happy to see him so happy.  

He wanted to be everything to me.  He would pretend he was galloping up to me on a horse like Prince Charming.  Making the horses hoof noises and prancing like he was on a stick pony, and then make the horse whinney noises.   “Hola Princessa, do you come frequently here?” And I would die laughing.  He was trying to say “Do you come here often?” but he got it wrong.  He would say it the wrong way every time just to make me laugh.  

He would dance around in his bikini brief underwear doing a sexy dance for me but he would purposely make it funny.  Everything he did was funny.  

He would grab me in the kitchen and start dancing with me in his version of a very bouncy waltz.  Singing softly in his beautiful voice,  a song to the tune of a song I knew, but whose words he didn’t.  So he’d sing on with completely made up words like raka fraken fraller.   

He would hear a song he liked with a lot of guitar and he would put his arms around me and use me as his air guitar.  I had to ask him to stop sometimes because in his  exuberance he would leave bruises.  

Every time he left for work or left for a trip he would kiss my cheek and tell me goodbye.  I got to the point where I would sleep through it.  On his last day in this world he said quite loudly in my ear, “Goodbye darling... I love you! “. I was surprised he was so loud that it woke me.  I reached up to stroke his cheek and down his arm and told him, “Goodbye darling.  I love you too.  Have a good day.”  

Had I known it would be his last,  I would have gotten up to give him a big hug, felt his arms around me one more time.  But that voice in my ear... It was the first thing I ever knew of him when we met on line so long ago... and the last thing I knew of him before he left this world.  I cling to the memory of it.  I hold the sound of it in my heart.  I listen to the two voicemails I have of him over and over so I can feel that little tingle I always get when I hear his voice in my ear.  

All of these things I took for granted.  I assumed they would always be here.  Now I am left with memories, photos, a few emails and a couple of voicemails.  I wish I had taken more.  I wish I had enjoyed and savored everything more.  It is so difficult now for me to recall these times without crying.  I know the day will come when i will just laugh and remember him fondly with a chuckle and a “Yeah, he was great at that.”  But for now... I remember and cry for the loss of him.  The huge loss of his light in the world, and the incredibly sad and wasteful loss of such a fine human being.  If anyone ever excelled in the art of being human... it was Pascual.