A month after retiring, my wife Virginia broke her back in a fall. Thereafter she was forced to spend a good deal of every day reclining on sofas or on beach chairs in the Rockaways. She required medical marijuana to get to sleep and two seats next to me on a plane so she could rest her head on my lap. She still managed to read five or six novels a week, pay the bills, monitor our investments, schedule the handymen/gardener/sprinkler/furnace /boiler guys (to them I’m “Mr. Waters”), prepare the shopping lists, and plan vacations, dinners out, and social events. She also stayed active on the board of our neighborhood association and made all the arrangements for a huge Halloween parade every year. Me, I did all the physical stuff for her. She called me “Sherpa Joe.”

I always thought I would die first. Husbands usually do. But pancreatic cancer had other plans. After a month-long blur of ambulances, ERs, and morphine pumps, Virginia Waters died in late Winter.

As the vigils, wakes and memorial services faded away, I quickly discovered watching Jeopardy alone is no fun at all and that entertaining guests is a lot of work. Parties or family events no longer end by comparing notes on the way home. Reading the Sunday papers with no one across from me commenting on theater news is dreary, and crossword puzzles take much longer. When it rains, I miss Virginia walking all over the house, holding her iPhone, singing along to  Streisand, defiantly announcing: “Noone’s gonna rain on my daily steps.”

The last time I lived alone, I was a federal parole officer in my mid-30s, full of vim-and-vigor living in a Park Slope brownstone apartment. Now I’m an aging retired guy in a big old empty nest in Flatbush, with a ghost in every room. Friends say, “May her memory be a blessing,” but I wonder when those memories will no longer make me long for her presence.

And now I respond emotionally to more songs than I ever imagined possible. Don McLean’s “Empty Chairs” is particularly devastating: “Morning comes and morning goes with no regret / Evening brings the memories I can’t forget / Empty rooms that echo as I climb the stairs / And empty clothes that drape and fall on empty chairs.”

I find myself still talking to her during the day as I do all the chores, remembering how I used to announce minor tasks I completed, like doing the laundry, as if it were somehow heroic. And Virginia would humor my need to be patted on the back by dramatically sighing, “My hero.” And whenever I fixed one of our ailing jalopies (we never bought a new car) she would sigh with relief, smile broadly, and announce, “You done good, hubbie.” Recently bragging about such an exploit to a friend, I felt disappointed in the ho-hum reaction. For an instant I almost thought I heard Virginia whispering gently, “My hero.”

…One night, I went downstairs to turn off my computer which was blaring the white noise I sometimes play to drown out distractions while I write. Virginia came in carrying a small folder and a pen, her lawyerly implements, ever busy, doing things to keep the house beautiful or to help me, our son James, our niece Beth, her friends, or the neighborhood. I rose to greet her. Then I suddenly remembered she had cancer. I said I was so happy that at least we would have some time remaining to be together. I hugged her and asked how she was feeling. She didn’t answer. I told her James, Beth and I loved her very much. She said nothing. And as I held her, I wondered how we would possibly survive without her. I woke up crying but I was grateful for the dream. In the help I can provide others, that’s how I think Virginia’s spirit will live within me. I don’t know how well I can do it without being able to brag to her about it, but as I climb the stairs at night after some minor accomplishment, maybe I’ll just have to imagine some invisible hug awaits me.     

Back Story:

Just as an aside, Don McLean said Van Gogh’s paintings of empty chairs inspired his song. And Lori Lieberman was inspired to write Killing Me Softly With His Song after watching McLean perform it in 1971. And Killing Me Softly became a big hit for Roberta Flack in 1973 and was the centerpiece of the best scene in About A Boy, a wonderful film we always watched in the week before Christmas.