Tag Archives: Contact

Irrational Me

The script for the play Jake’s Women came in the mail today.  I sat down and read the whole 99 pages.  Is this obsession?  Maybe some other version of pathology?  I don’t know.  But I want to be Jake.  It’s the story of a writer and the six women in his life – his dead wife Julie, his daughter Molly, his present wife Maggie, his sister Karen, his potential girlfriend Sheila and his therapist Edith.  Jake is loving, tortured and unstable.  I can do this.

The play will run in St. Thomas in February, 2016.  Auditions will probably be in December.  So why is my tongue hanging out now?  Unknown.  After I finished my read this afternoon, Jody said, “It’s you, Bruce.  Go for it.”

Julie died years ago in a car accident.  Molly was eleven at the time.  Julie’s spirit visits Jake and wants to come again on her birthday – October 12 – to get to know Molly as a young adult.  October 12 is Jody’s birthday.  I just stared at page 47 when the date was revealed.  Oh my.  What’s at work here?

At the end of Act 1, Maggie is walking out on Jake, wanting a six-month separation.  Two Mollies (ages 12 and 21) appear to Jake and sit next to him on the couch.  He holds their hands as the three of them sit together in silence.  I cried.  Jody and I decided not to have kids, and in the many years since I’ve often wished I had a daughter.  So will I have one, for the two months of rehearsals and performances?

My brain is skewed.  It must be, for I’ve decided to start memorizing Jake’s lines in the play.  There are lots of them.  Who’s to say I’ll even get the part?  And you know, it doesn’t matter.  There’s something magical about the possibility that I’ll have learned every word dear Jake says and never perform it onstage.  I would be fine with that … really.

So I begin with the first paragraph, smiling and shaking my head.  What kind of human being have I become?  Time will tell.

Lap Dance

Jody and I went to hear Bryan Adams at London’s Budweiser Gardens last night.  My dear wife was deep within my heart as I walked in and sat down.

Jody loved, and loves, Bryan.  As “Heaven” rolled over us, I realized that my darling girl was sitting on my lap.  I reached around and held her thighs, just above the knee.  My wife and me.

And love is all that I need
And I found it there in your heart
It isn’t too hard to see
We’re in heaven

Then we were rocking to one of our favourites – “Summer of ’69”.  Jody’s hands were way up high, punching the air.  Oh, that smile!  And how we loved to dance.

Standin’ on your mama’s porch
You told me that it’d last forever
Oh, and when you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never

But Jody was just warming up.  Bryan found a lady in the audience who was willing to dance in the spotlight to “If Ya Wanna Be Bad, Ya Gotta Be Good”.  And my wife was just as nasty as she turned to me, snarling and pointing to my chest.  Oh my.

I’ll give you what you want, boy, but let’s make it understood
If ya wanna be bad, ya gotta be good

And more of the same with “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You”. Go, Jodiette!

The only thing I want
The only I need
The only thing I choose
The only thing that looks good on me … is you!

For many years, Jody caressed me with a Bryan Adams song.  The title says it all – “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)”.  And she did.  Jody loved me so much.  Bryan started.  I held my hands over my heart and cried.

Look into your heart, you will find
There’s nothin’ there to hide
Take me as I am, take my life
I would give it all, I would sacrifice

Near the end of the concert, as the anthem “Straight From The Heart” began, Jody’s hands were flying, palms forward.  I placed my hands over hers, and our arms swayed to the music.  Just the two of us.

Give it to me straight from the heart
Tell me we can make another start
You know I’ll never go
As long as I know
It’s comin’ straight from the heart

May there be another start for us, Jodiette, just beyond the horizon.  I love you.

King Kong

It’s always been one of my favourite movies (the version with Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow) and I watched it again last night.  I knew why.

It wasn’t because of the rip-roaring adventure, nor the special effects.  It’s because of the love between Ann and Kong.  Pure and simple.  First she’s terrified, of course, and he’s playing the he man.  But little by little, the look in her eyes and his softens, the gazes linger, and it matters not that one is a human and the other is a giant ape.

When Kong extends his open hand to her, and she climbs aboard, I melted.  When he’s leaping from rock to rock, and holding her so gently, I smiled.  When he slips off the top of the Empire State Building, I cried.

It doesn’t matter who or what the love is between.  Time stops.  Hearts open.  Hands hold.  What more could there be in life?

I Dream of You

I woke up this morning with the most vivid dream in my mind.  You were in my mind, my dear Jodiette.

I seemed to be at a world’s fair, lots of pavilions and shops scattered over rounded green hills.  Exquisite.  But I had lost my shoes.  I searched through lots of them at store entrances … but nothing.  I was sad.  Strangely uprooted.

But there was a beautiful girl with me.  (I do believe that her name was Jody!)  She smiled at me so warmly.  Our eyes met for so long.  She didn’t care that I was shoeless.  It didn’t diminish me at all in her eyes.  I was Bruce, and that was just fine.  We held hands in the shops and we meandered from display to display.  Sometimes, in a big store, Jody went one way and I went another.  Just as in “real” life, I was happy, knowing that Jody was somewhere in here and sooner or later I would round a corner and there would smile my beloved.

As we roamed the aisles of one shop together, I reached over to examine some article.  I turned to Jody … and she was gone.  I searched the whole place.  Still gone.  And the neighbouring shops.  Still gone.  Such horrible sadness to lose my beloved.

Still wandering, I came upon a tight space.  It was a dead end, surrounded by rough wooden walls.  And then I was face to face with a bearded gatekeeper.  He was a gruff guy who started lecturing me about the need to invigorate.  Huh?  And then he let me pass.

***

Awakened.  Unexpectedly happy.  After all, I had just lost my wife in L.L. Bean or some such place.  I lay there in bed, knowing that I had only lost the physical form of my dear girl.  The gatekeeper had let me pass through … to where?  Some realm, I know, where Jody and I are together – right now and always.  A realm where I don’t even need any shoes.  For I’m walking on air.

Goodnight, Jodiette.

I Welcome You Everywhere

Dear WordPress readers,

I’m sending this post both to you and to the many folks that I’ve e-mailed for a long time about Jody.

***

Dear ones,

Yesterday I had a bunch of errands to run – meet with the funeral director, get Jody’s rings cleaned, arrange for a plaked 24×36 version of the beautiful obituary photo, and go to the restaurant to discuss menu and room arrangements.  It seems that I needed a little spurt of busyness.

I started driving towards London and began crying.  I’m doing that a lot when I’m alone.  Somewhere on the highway, Jody talked to me, words that were astonishing:

It’s not just the big beautiful tree on Bostwick
I am all trees, Bruce
I welcome you everywhere

And I cried some more.  Trees passed me on the left and on the right.  Big ones.  Small ones.  A few with leaves, others with needles, and many with bare branches.  My darling wife was there with me all the way, everywhere I turned.

Words now fail me.  It is Jody … bowing to me, kissing me, clapping for me, and smiling.  I am so blessed.  I love you, my dear.  And as our nephew Jagger would say, “until the end of space”.

Last night, when I went to bed, I continued a tradition that is many years old:

Goodnight, Jodiette
Sweet dreams
I love you

And quietly I knew that these words would flow from me to Jody, in the dark of evening, for the rest of my life.  Just so.

I hope that you will allow me to express love for my dearest for a little while yet.  Gosh, this is two days in a row.  And I’ve let that be okay.  I’ll write some more after Jody’s funeral, and then after her Celebration of Life in January.  I’ll know when it’s time to bring our e-mail saga to a close.  I just checked back.  My first e-mail to you was on November 23, 2013.  A year of love.  And actually, infinitely more than that.

Since Sunday, you’ve written about 275 e-mails to Jody and me.  Thank you.  I would like to answer them all.  It would be good for me, and I hope good for you.  It may take me awhile, though!

I’m going to turn all of my messages into a book.  It will be called Jodiette: My Lovely Wife.  I’ll get going on it in February, I expect, working with the self-publishing aids available through the Blurb website.  I don’t want to sell this book.  My inner something-or-other tells me that’s not right.  I’ll be giving it away to anyone who’d like a copy.  May the experiences that Jody and I have shared be a gift to many folks out there in the universe.

Thank you for listening

Coming, Joining, Going

In July, 2013, I spent a week at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, on a silent retreat.  Every afternoon, we had  a long enough break for me to walk a three-mile loop road from the centre.

Early in the week, I found myself really attracted to a woman named Karen. She and I were in the same small group interviews with each of the teachers. The way those interviews were set up, you only talked to the teacher.  So I hadn’t said a word to Karen.

One day, as I was setting out on my walk from the front door of the centre, doing my usual right-to-left loop route, I noticed Karen starting to walk down the circular driveway, heading to the left.  I wondered if she was going to do the loop.  If so, we’d meet about halfway.

I wasn’t very mindful as I passed fields and woodlots, unless you’d include being mindful of Karen’s (!) possible approach.  During the middle of the walk, there’s a long straight stretch. As I curved left to start that section, I looked way ahead.  A tiny figure was on the road, hundreds of yards away. And then a little less tiny.  And then someone definitely wearing a wide-brimmed hat, like I had seen on Karen’s head at the beginning.

Closer still .. and that was Karen.  One hundred yards.  Finally, as we approached each other, I brought my palms together in front of my chest, smiled, made eye contact, and bowed.  She smiled back and bowed to me. And then … poof!  We were gone our separate ways.

At the end of the retreat, we spoke for a few minutes.  Neither of us mentioned our moment of contact.  She told me about the summer program at the Omega Institute in New York State and said that, who knows, we might see each other there someday.  I agreed.

And that was it.  No last names.  No e-mail addresses.  Probably no ever again.  But we touched each other’s lives.  That I know.  The bow was enough.