Just five more days and it will be the eleventh anniversary of Dieter’s death. I tend to have more and more thoughts about our life together in the days leading up to his death. It is sometimes hard for me to remember (viscerally) how those years felt. I do remember feeling pretty happy most of the time, but what I am forgetting is what it is like to live with a husband, a person who is inextricably tied to you. How your day had a lot to do with sharing it with someone else. Leonard Cohen called that special bond between a man and woman, the “content.” Each of the two, working together…each with their own special offering, different than the other. I understood what he was saying, feeling that is what Dieter and I managed to achieve. So different, but filling in the spaces where the other was less formed. Being alone for 11 years has, and in particular over the past five years, become days that I have spent on my own, or certainly think about from a position of being alone. I have gotten used to doing things my own way, in my own time, but I can’t say that I am happier because I can. I would like to tell Dieter about all the things that happened after he died. Eleven years is a long time to have lived longer than he ever had a chance to, but there are often times, when I can’t help feeling he got out of it while the getting was good.
