At a motorcycle race in 1967
On a September afternoon in 1966, when I was a 21 year old student at Cornell, I met an older man—he was 25—in a motorcycle shop in Ithaca. His muscular body arched over the skeleton of an upside-down motorbike and grease smeared his Levi coveralls and hands. Vic was a graduate student in astrophysics, but my lust had already landed hard on the motorcycle racer in him.
One winter’s night, we sat in his tiny apartment in downtown Ithaca listening to Buffy St. Marie and drinking cheap red wine. He read me this poem.
Because hate is legislated…written into
The primer and the testament
Shot into our blood and brain like vaccine or vitamins
Because our day is of time, of hours—and the clock hand turns,
Closes the circle upon us: and black timeless night
Sucks us in like quicksand, receives us totally—
Without a raincheck or a parachute, a key to heaven or the last long look
I need love more than ever now…I need your love,
I need love more than hope or money, wisdom or a drink
Because slow negative death withers the world—and only yes
Can turn the tide
Because love has your face and body…and your hands are tender
And your mouth is sweet—and God has made no other eyes like yours.
~ Walter Benton, This Is My Beloved
My motorcycle lover
Two years later, we read this poem at our wedding, taking turns reading the stanzas and weeping. Twenty-five people huddled around us in a friend’s living room where we’d retreated from cold rain and fog. The energy intensified until one woman fainted.
Many years later, we had survived disappointments and learned the art of compromise. Our passion, tempered by age and cancer, still survived in a gaze or caress. On our 39th anniversary—we thought it would be our last—we read our marriage poem, alternating stanzas, weeping. We each chose a second poem for that day. He read his surprise, and I read mine. We’d chosen the same poem.
…When men and women come together,
How much they have to abandon! Wrens
Make their nests of fancy threads
And string ends, animals
Abandon all their money each year.
What is it that men and women leave?
Harder than wren’s doing, they have
To abandon their longing for the perfect.
The inner nest not made by instinct
Will never be quite round
And each has to enter the nest
Made by the other imperfect bird.
~ Robert Bly, “Listening to the Koln Concert”
On our 40th anniversary, just days before his death, he withered in a hospital bed in Strong Hospital in Rochester. I turned off my cell phone, closed the door to the hallway, and sat by his side. He had no voice, so I read our poems to him. First Benton, then Bly. I put my arms around him and we wept over our coming separation, but we had weathered a life together and emerged with our passion and idealism intact.
“I don’t know what will happen to me,” Vic whispered, “but I know I love you.”
***
What poems create a container for your love? I hope you enjoy reading some of my other blogs about marriage and loss, such as Continuing Bonds, Speeding to Strong Cancer Center, or Creating a Grief Ritual.
The poems that speak most to my own loss aren’t contained in words but cycles of the moon, the sun and stars. Sharing these exquisite words of poetry to convey, not just contain, your expression of love and compassion is a gift to me as a reader and widow. Thanks. You continue to inspire and blaze a path for others who walk a similar trail along grief.
Thank you, Jill, for so much. I love imagining your poems of “cycles of the moon, the sun and stars.”
So beautiful, Elaine! Vic comes alive for me in these reflections and I’m very grateful. xoxo Liz.
Liz, you and Vic would have loved and enjoyed each other, so it’s an honor to introduce you in this way.
Oh sure now.you.just.made me cry on my am bus.commute..love gita
Gita, what an honor that you are reading my post on your ride. You’ve spent a lot of time on that commuter bus this week. I’m grateful it’s available and eagerly await hearing what happens today.
Crying too. Wow.
Glad to have touched your heart, Christi.
This is so moving to me, and affirming of the role of poetry in helping us express the ineffable, hold the uncontainable. Years ago, I was in a Ribert Bosnak workshop with the two of you, and was touched and impressed by you both. Sending my appreciation…
Thank you, Amy. Will you come dream with us again sometime. I still dream about Vic after 4 1/2 years. My positive animus…
(I meant “Robert” of course.)
Elaine, I cried as I read this, reliving your joy and pain as well as my own.
Thank you.
Thank you, Lynne, for reading and letting me know this touched your joy and loss. Love is so much more complicated than I thought when I was 21 and first met Vic.
Elaine, I so love how the erotic and the spiritual are expressed in your posting. It’s such a powerful combination – different frequencies of the same vibration.
Thanks for that observation, Pat. You show me what you’re getting from my words–and that makes me a better writer. Yes, eroticism and spirituality were strong in this relationship. What a gift!
Here’s one, dear Elaine, evoked by this post and an Image of dear Vic . . . hope you enjoy.
I follow him around the room.
He’s hunched a little forward,
As if carrying some precious item
In his chest.
Humor in the way his head wags a little,
A rumble of respect, somewhere
In the low portion of my spine.
He’s pointing at a bald man, shining face;
Behind glasses the eyes question
An answer, and nothing at all.
‘Take note of this one, my friend.’
‘My friend’ has so much warmth in it
That some shining rises in my chest.
And fills my face.
‘He’s connected to the lineage
Of Suffering and its Dissolution and Return.’ I can only smile.
What is it that sparks such things?
The Friend is there.
How do we tell when it is real?
The Friend lets you know.
When will I see The Friend again?
When you are seeing.
Beautiful and deeply moving, Fred. Thank you for this gift. Look forward to seeing you soon and asking questions about the images. That’s me. Always questions.
Since I became a student of the subject of grief and loss, sometimes I get odd reactions from friends/family when I talk about the books I read. I am so taken with poignant expression; I’m in awe when people share such personal experiences ~ like you have done ~ so authentically. Here’s just one example: “It is ironic how grief has a way of thrusting you into the present. Grief would take me deeply inward across boundaries I had never gone in myself, places I feared most. The biggest initial hurdle, I came to understand, is Surrender. I did not understand it at first, but surrender would be my access to healing – surrender to the permanent unchangeable fact of my loss; surrender to the end of our sweet life. Surrender to what IS, not to what was or might have been. Surrender was both a process and a path. My choice was only to take it, or resist.” That’s from Kristine Carlson’s book ~ Heartbroken Open.
Thanks for sharing your written expression of love and loss ~ Bookends of a Marriage. It was so lovely.
Lynne, thank you for your encouragement and for the quote from Kristine Carlson’s book. I agree that surrender to grief is the only way through loss–and that through acceptance, we grievers (everyone at one time or another) can experience a heart-opening initiation into deeper layers of self and new paths in life. I lead a Hospice bereavement group for women who lost partners or spouses called “Standing in Our New Lives.” These women agree that it’s necessary to accept, let in the painful reality of what is, and build anew from there. And I haven’t heard one woman say that she would give up the love she still experiences to save herself from heartbreak.
Thank you for inviting me to your blog. I always knew how much you loved each other. And I know
what happened to you will happen to all of us who
love deeply and yet you, and I and all who experience this kind of commitment would never exchange it for anything else, despite the inevitable
suffering.
You are so right, Julianna. Wouldn’t exchange it for anything. And of course it wasn’t all love and sunshine, but also arguments (mostly fair) and irritation and compromise. But when Vic got sick, all the other stuff dropped away and love is what remained. I miss him, but also see that new and surprising parts of me develop now that I’m on my own. I honor your good, long marriage, too.
Oh, Elaine. You’ve left me in a puddle of tears ~ again. Poignant and beautiful. Thank you . . .
Thank you, Marty. I am deeply honored by your tears and your words.
You render me speechless, as per usual. I think i live YOUR emotional world more directly than my own. The feedback (above) is also intensely moving. Your words go straight to the heart. Forever grateful for your generosity of spirit: for sharing your experience so openly and honestly. So much love from so many comin’ your way.
Patti, I hope/imagine my stories (or the poems) touch the heart feelings that have been in you all along. Grief hurts and it takes time. In posts like this, I don’t include the rough spots in our relationship like disappointment, hurt feelings, or irritation. We had a lifetime of honest communication (even when it hurt) and then those last two years when we knew our time together was short. Mortality clarified what mattered–most of the time. When we argued during those last years, which we did, we soon stood back a little and laughed at ourselves. Thanks for sending your love, and I send deep appreciation and love back to you.
These words never lose their power, Elaine. What a rare and passionate, poetic love you shared with Vic. And are still sharing.
I thought of many friends in the past weeks who are widows at my age and who will never celebrate 50 years together as Stuart and I just did. I hope my joy does not bring them additional pain. All our joys at this stage of life are made poignant by impermanence and our keen awareness of it.
Your two special poems and those photos, so close to the image of Vic you first saw in the shop, complete a circle, an imperfect nest, Bly would say. We readers know that whether our time together is 39 years or 50 or 70, we are mortal and will have to part.
Because our day is of time, of hours—and the clock hand turns,
Closes the circle upon us: and black timeless night
Sucks us in like quicksand, receives us totally—
Without a raincheck or a parachute, a key to heaven or the last long look
I love your love and that you and Stuart have been together 50 years. While we’re at it, I love seeing you with grandkids, even though I don’t have any. I’m so fortunate to have had 42 years with Vic. There’s also good fortune (even if I would have skipped this part if possible) in being on my own and seeing who I am now. Your joy does not bring me pain, Shirley, although sometimes as I walk in town and see a couple in their 70s holding hands and obviously in love, my heart yearns a little–and I’m also glad for them. (The lyrics and melody to “Hello Young Lovers Wherever You Are” float through my head.) Yes, impermanence becomes impossible to ignore.
Within weeks after we met, Vic introduced me to the first poem written by Walter Benton, a WW II soldier. His relationship with the woman he adored didn’t last, so there’s deep sorrow and loss as the book unfolds as a journal of poems. It still sits on my poetry shelf. Because of all those things you quoted, “I need your love more than ever now….” Although I miss Vic’s body and eyes, our daily conversations both deep and silly, I still have his love.
This love you shared with Vic, with us, it hurts and is such a gift. Thank you.
Yes! Maybe because my dad was sick throughout my childhood until he died when I was 14 and because I loved him so much, I felt the gift despite the grief even then. No one helped me grieve that loss in 1959, but now I’ve learned I can hold both sides and both sides are always there. Thank you, Ira.