My third Pushcart nomination! And then

Walter watches the ducks

Walter and Betty collaborate

Walter in winter

Thank you thank you to Dale Wisely, F. John Sharp, Annie Stenzel, Bill McCloud, Steve Klepetar, Ina Roy-Faderman, and F. J. Bergmann for nominating my poem "And then" for the 2023 Pushcart awards. Right Hand Pointing is champion of the small but mighty and I am always honored to appear there. But this is much more. My other two Pushcart nominations I could rationalize away:  it was a new journal; I had done the editor a kindness, blah blah. This one has no such handle. And, really, this is a double endorsement: the same group nominated the poem also for Best of the Net.

And we are on the verge of the five-year anniversary of his death. I am on the verge of the five-year anniversary of his death. I will never be done grieving, just as I will never be done loving him, but I am moving through grief, and continuing to live.

 

Seasons of Love

 

Walter's yahrzeit is coming up. December 16 2021 will be the third anniversary of his death. I remain weirdly disoriented by his not being here. Sometimes I feel as though he had never been here in my life, sometimes I feel that he died last week. Every time I deal with something but remain dissatisfied with the outcome, I feel that he would have handled it better. At the least, he would have been able to reconcile me to the imperfect situation.

The house is still full of stuff from our life together, even though I have divested myself of things that have nothing to do with my life alone. The practice cello, for instance. He hadn't played it in our 35 years together. Neither had his daughters. I offered it to them but they didn't want it, Turns out it was a good cello to begin with, a good tone, but it would need a lot of repair to be in good condition again. The bow was actually worth more than the cello. They're both gone now, as is the old-school metronome I gave him (wooden, spring-driven). I never found it helpful to play or sing with a metronome, and I'm unlikely to start now. It gave him joy to see them all in the house, though, even after he stopped being able to use them.

Walter did a lot of looking, and a lot of seeing. He noticed, he saw, he thought about what he saw, he made connections. I have long thought that curiosity is an under-appreciated trait, and Walter was certainly curious about the world around him, the people around him, the possibilities around him. You can see that, in his seeing, he was experiencing--something.