On Transitioning

Anyone who has read this blog for the almost-four years of its existence, or who has known me over the past fourteen years, knows how important the relationship with my late husband, JR, was. That marriage (#4 for me, #3 for him) was the marriage we both had been seeking all our lives. When we met, I was 37 and he was 49. When we married, we were 45 and 57. When he died, he had just turned 60 and I had just turned 48. Loving him and caring for him through his battle with prostate cancer was definitional in my life. I have said many times that I feel blessed to have been able to walk with him to his death.

JR was larger than life, filled with joie de vivre, and possessed of no enemies. His love was causal in much of who I am today.

During my four-year relationship that began a year-and-a-half after his death, I did not have mementos of him around our home. I had asked once if I could put one picture up in a bookcase and was denied. So I took a cupboard in the walk-in closet and that became almost a shrine to JR. His framed pictures were there, along with the bottle of champagne the guests signed at our wedding and the thick notebook I kept during his illness. When I became sad, when my fiancé behaved badly toward me, I would go into the closet and open the cupboard and talk to my memories of JR, thanking him yet again for loving me so exquisitely.

In the 6+ years following the dissolution of the four-year engagement, I have had dozens of dates and a handful of relationships that lasted no more than three months. JR's photos in my space were never an issue, as no man ever began making me want to convert my space to our space.

Suddenly, now, like a quiet fog, the Jazzman has moved into my life. I'm having to learn all over again how to live as part of a couple, how to move the facets of my life around to make space for this man whom I enjoy as none since JR's death.

On our third date, the Jazzman and I sat at my dining table with our dinner. He glanced over at the buffet where there was a photo of JR in his tux and enormous smile. He didn't ask who that was. No words were exchanged. But I noticed his noticing, and realized that—if this relationship continued as it had begun—I was going to have to rethink my space.

How much is too much and what spaces should be sacred?

I have since moved the tuxedo photo to a high shelf in my library. But on my dresser is the photo from our Chesapeake Bay sailing trip on our birthday in 1997, one year before his death. (His birthday was June 20th and mine is the 22nd. We always celebrated on the 21st.) I adore that photo. It was one of the last good weekends in his life. A week later the cancer in his bones took away his ability to play golf, which was his religion. His life and his attitude towards life changed drastically with that loss.

In my family room is the third picture, taken at our wedding. It's a candid shot that fully displays the deep affection and mutual respect between us. It's tucked away on a table. I don't look at it often, but when I do, I am filled with joy.

If I'm filled with joy by the new affection and respect in my life, is it proper to put away all the images of that earlier life, to let go, to begin transitioning to the new life? (Is "proper" the wrong term? Is my proper, Southern Belle persona worried about propriety and things that don't need worrying about?)

I guess it's all about comfort. If I want the Jazzman to spend time in my space, if I want my space to become our space, then I need to rearrange the elements of that space to make it most comfortable, most welcoming to him. And I need to do this without denying or eradicating anything that is me, that is who I am.

You see, these are the things you don't think about when you're getting your first divorce at 30 or so. You don't think about how much harder each successive coupling will be. You don't think about how you will become accustomed to a single life, and yet miss a coupled life, and struggle to balance that dichotomy.

So I look around me, examine my life, and slowly, carefully, try to figure out how to transition from me to us.

And I do it with elation.