Today, March 9, is seven months since Bill died and last week on Casey Key in Florida I fulfilled a promise that we made to each other.  Since getting sober and finding recovery in    1992 we were invited to visit my mother, Betty and her husband, Fred, at their beautiful house on Casey Key.  At first it was with them being there but after accepting that we were really sober and responsible they allowed us to use their home during the summer when they weren’t there to supervise.   We visited Casey Key nearly every summer during the month of August for two week idylls in the sun.  We loved the hot summer on the beach and Bill got to indulge his passion of collecting ancient sharks teeth and other fossils strewn across  the beach.  Over the years we collected at least ten thousand that we kept in a fish bowl to run our hands through and remember the beach and all its treasures.  We often discussed what should be done with the collection after we had passed (we thought then that we would go together, of course)  and the idea came to us that we should have someone take the collection back to Casey Key  to scatter them back on the beach we both loved so much.   So it has come to pass that Bill left this earth before me and I knew from the start of this new adventure that this was what I had to do.   I was bound to reseed the beach of Casey Key with sharks teeth  for future beachcombers.

When an opportunity came to visit the beautiful house on Casey Key with family members to ready it for sale in late February, I definitely knew what I had to do.   I brought with me two thirds of the shark’s teeth we had collected (I kept one third to scatter when I am gone) and a portion of his ashes to return to the beach he loved so much.   It all weighed ten pounds.   On Tuesday, March 4, I walked north on Casey Key road to the beach lined with old concrete pilings from a long forgotten pier. I had to walk on the road because the beach has changed and it is no longer possible walk the whole way on the sand as it was in the past.

As I started to cast the teeth into the surf, I remembered the photo I had with me of him

Bill-Beach-2013

walking on the beach in 2007 so I placed it up against a rock in the sand and took this photo.   I picked up the picture and continued my walk down the beach tossing handfuls of teeth mixed with ashes.  I felt that he was there with me.  When I finished my walk I was again at the beach that was the starting place for all our beach adventures, I divided the rest between my sister Carla, my brother-in-law, Kurt, and my brother, Bruce.    We each said a prayer of our own choosing as we cast the remaining teeth and ashes into the Gulf surf.   So ended our informal tribute and goodbye to Bill, beachcomber extraordinaire–a promise fulfilled.

This the second to last of the blogs I wrote about our trip to Abadiania.

I sit in my room transcribing my first journal notes to the computer and waiting for Bill to finish his second twenty-four hour resting period at 3:00 pm.  We will then walk over to the Casa get a coconut drink and watch the sunset before dinner with Kelsie.

Fresh Coconuts

I say that these are free days because these are non-Casa days.  We will use them for more rest and meditation. After all, that’s what we are here for.  It is a very strange spa sort of experience.  Bill says that it seems that there is nothing going on but there is never a dull moment and I find that to be true, I have not been bored for an instant, but it certainly isn’t a recreational frenzy we are participating in here; it’s healing and renewal.

During the afternoon I am drawn to the sounds demanding my attention outside of my room on the front side of the pousada and across the empty field.   There are many loud sounds that come from the brickyard over there; a large machine, squeaking and growling is working very hard.  I wonder if they have ever heard of grease and a little mechanical work on it might subdue the hesitancy of engine; it sounds as if it might stall at any instant. There are also very large trucks transporting materials in and brick out along a very bumpy dirt road just beyond the trees.  The smell of the machines waft to me across the field along with smoke from various fires both pleasant and unpleasant that seem to come and go all the time.   Somehow I think I expected something a little more romantic.

 There is a sound like a racetrack coming from a little further away.  Over and over vehicles (motorcycles???)  start up as if in a race and continue on as if on a track.  The only problem is that it happens over and over at all times of the day and evening every day.   I can make no sense of it until I talk to a couple of Englishmen who live over that way and they tell me it’s not a race track, it’s the highway from Brasilia which passes fairly close and the sound is from drivers having to come to an almost complete stop after one of those massive speed bumps and accelerating with enthusiasm after negotiating it.  Especially on the weekends young men, well probably all men, indulge in this pastime as they ride their motorbikes and cycles as if in a race.    We call the highway sounds at home—The Great Race—and here is a wonderful example of it; it must happen all over the world.

After dinner it’s off to bed again, tonight we stay in the same room and it’s wonderful to have my friend there with me again.   We have our Saturday night treat of potato chips and ginger ale, a traditional Saturday night at home.

As I look back over what I have written I notice that I have avoided mentioning how emotional I have been feeling.  There is no doubt about it—I want a miracle, a big one.   I find myself crying whenever I am alone and / or  quiet—in the crystal beds, in the Currant room, going through the line to see the Entity, during the surgery/intervention, at the waterfall, and in the middle of the night.  I’m not sure exactly why this is happening.  Of course I’m scared, I want my desires fulfilled, I don’t want to be left alone in this world—this was not in my plan for growing old.   So there I’ve said it. It’s all pretty selfish; I’m mainly worried about me.  We were aware when we made this trip to Brazil that not everyone is healed exactly as they want, so it’s still a matter of taking this whole thing a day a time.   I’ve noticed that that’s the way life is whether I like it or not. Read More

Dear Reader:   This blog is way too long and contains material that I have written about before. This seems to be a timeline I feel compelled to write and share;   it is a very personal account of  the month before Bill’s death.

There is no way I could shorten it, so please be forewarned before you even start to read.      Something happens when I put pencil to paper that cannot be addressed in any other way.   I beg your forgiveness for repetition.

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I just got back yesterday, September 9, from Jackson Hole, Wyoming where I attended the Western Design Conference.  My friend, April and I brought up the Red Twig Desk as Bill and I had been planning all year.  Bill even made a twig chair before we left for Brazil to complete the desk set.   We went into the woods across the field and gathered enough standing dead aspen twigs and sticks to make two chairs.   The chairs are truly a testament of his skill as a chair builder.

WESTERN DESIGN CONFERENCE-2013-RED TWIG DESK

They made a very nice memorial to him at the Conference both in the Sourcebook and at the Awards ceremony.  After all he was well known for his positive attitude of encouragement and praise for everyone exhibiting at the Conference during our ten years of attending this annual event.    I was approached several times with the idea of setting up a memorial award in his name for future Conferences.   My immediate thought was: Well they never gave us an award, why should I bother.  But the next thought was: Bill would have said, “Give what you want to receive because it makes no difference what they do.”  So I will work on this project for next year especially since I will be able to specify the criteria for receiving the award and I will enter the competition again with a glass sculpture with a wrought iron stand.  My job this year was to continue his tradition of handing out spiritual cards to my fellow exhibitors and bringing enthusiasm, encouragement, and praise to everyone I could at the Conference.

Ok, so it’s been thirty-one days since Bill died, August 9^th at 11:40 am.  Today is a crying day.  I went to the Social Security Administration to apply for final benefits. Ms. Brown helped me and we cried together, we are members of a sisterhood that we did not want to be a member of; she tells me that her husband passed nine years ago and the anniversary was just a few days ago.  I gave her a spiritual principles card; at first she put it aside saying that those things are good but they don’t and can’t work all the time.   We proceeded through the Social Security process.  At the end I told her the story of the card; how Bill used to say that if he did those things today, he probably wouldn’t end up in jail.  You know it worked! He hadn’t been in jail for years and years. Ms. Brown laughed and agreed to place the card on her computer and to make an effort to practice at least one a day.  I asked,”Ms. Brown, do you accept hugs?”  We had become friends in our sorrow. Read More

I cried last night all the way home from a dinner party.  The Celebration of Bill’s Life was just last Friday and the weekend has been filled with family dinners and visiting.  By Sunday I was exhausted but there was one more dinner to attend.

This morning I awake crying, sobbing,  wailing, whimpering.   My heart is breaking; I miss him so.  Everything around me reminds me of him. “Mother Mary comes to me, Whispers words of wisdom;      Let it be, let it be, let it be.”  But it’s not really Mother Mary; it is Paul McCartney giving me this truth.

My grief seems to have intensified.  Now he really is gone–gone where?  Gone physically from my sight only.  He is here in every piece of furniture I use every day.  He is here in the art and drawings; he is here in the way our house looks and feels. He built me my own trestle table in 1980; all I had to do was sand it.   I sleep in the bed he designed and built, sit on the couches he created in the basement so long ago on Bayaud Street.  We could not get them up the stairs, so the stairs had to go.

My mind tells me I should have appreciated him more, done more, been more.  It’s a trick; the liar is here again, making every effort to entice me into his embrace again.  The truth is he loved me with all his being and I loved him more than life itself.  I appreciated him more than I remember, I did all I possibly could have, I was there—I loved him and he knew it. He was my friend, lover and husband.

Friends will become more and more uncomfortable when I cry.  They will not know how to handle this profound grief.  They will ask how are you and can I do anything for you?  They will ask sweetly because that’s what we do.  I must understand that they’re grieving as well.  I must remember that they loved him too.  There really are no words but we say them anyway.

The very day we came home from Brazil we discovered that the rim lock on our front door no longer latched.  Bill spent the next four hours fixing it in spite of his extreme fatigue from the nearly  twenty-four  hours of travel and the cancer.  No matter what I said, nothing would divert him from this task.  When he finally got the lock exchanged with a similar lock from the back door he discovered that it would no longer lock.  He fussed and fussed over it until he decided that he could add a slide bolt to the door and that would take care of the problem.  We found a large six inch slide bolt in the Studio, I said that’s too big but he said it was perfect.  He pulled up a stool to the door and concentrated with all his might to install it.  Finally he stepped away to admire his work and saw that it was definitely not level.  His disappointment in himself was intense but it works and it remains that way today.   I will leave it as it is because that is where his spirit gets in and out of this house where everything else is so perfectly crafted by him, strong and straight.  I will let it be.

I am reminded of some of the other things he desired during his last month of life.  He insisted that we buy two cords of firewood which is now stored in the Studio and all ready for winter.  He wanted to have the driveway fixed so that it would drain properly around the house. To do this we had a load of road base divided between the house and the beginning of our road to smooth it out  and half near the house which would then be spread out to enable the drainage.   I am grateful today that these things are done but at the time I could have cared less.  All I knew was that I was losing him, I was not thinking of practical matters at all.

Then we had to do major surgery on one of the eagles after it nosedived onto the floor.   Truly it was my entire fault; I had removed the ladder that was stabilizing its precarious balance when I was looking for a box on an upper shelf; then I was just too tired and lazy to put it back.  I have to admit that it did cross my mind that it might fall but I did not do anything about it.  Both of its wings were cracked and broken, the right one by its “shoulder” and the left one at the “elbow”.  After the guys lifted it up to lie on its back on a board between two ladders, we commenced to cut away the wax, chicken wire and foam to expose the wood supports inside.   All day we created splints made of iron which we bolted on either side of the wood.   The wings were now actually stronger than the original.   He was exhausted but hopeful that we were now regaining ground that had been lost.   It took me two weeks to replace and re-sculpt  the feathers on the wings where they had been removed, lost or broken.

As I watched him struggle to finish the projects he had started and even look forward to future projects, my heart knew that he would not live much longer but I participated in the fiction that he was healing, not wanting to lose hope.   I kept thinking that the oncologist had said six months to live.  It turned out that he lived just three months to the day after the terminal diagnosis.     I was angry but then how do or can they know exactly.  I wanted it to be a guarantee; a promise that he had three more months at least to live.

The Universe had other ideas.

From our book, “Dig Deep in One Place, a Couple’s Journey to a Spiritual Life”

 September 1965

 I was starting school again at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. My mother had finally gone, and I walked across the campus. There he was—a god walking toward me, tall and handsome, wearing little Abner boots (World War One hobnail boots). It electrified me. How was I ever going to meet this guy?

 No problem, there he was at the freshman mixer! Wow, he was going to school here also. I was in heaven. He saw me across the room, came over to me, and commanded, “Choose me!” And I did! It was even better that he said he was an artist and wanted to draw me nude. I said, “Okay,” and off we went to his motel. So much for good intentions, of finally making something of myself. I was off again. I was in love!

 There were many facets to Bill; he was so passionately relentless about whatever did.  He loved sex, drugs and rock n roll and all that entails. He was the hippie, an artist, my lover, my husband, my best friend, the hedonist, the drunk, the barbarian and  the recovered man, the Delegate, my teacher, a mentor, the sponsor, a member of the fellowship of recovery and a humble man who made every effort he could to be helpful to others even as the pain took him over.

 He told me many times—“Don’t put me on a pedestal; it is impossible to get down from one without showing everyone the holes in your pantyhose.”

 He was meticulous in how he kept his tools and clothes.  He had eight pair of new white sox he was saving for the right occasion, three pairs of new yoga pants, new jeans with the perfect crease, and he ironed all his own shirts.  He always put his tools in their proper places when he finished a task whether it was in the studio or in the kitchen.  He was the kid who still had Easter candy in July to taunt his big brother, Bob.

 Bill loved his friends passionately and he learned to love everyone else by making every effort to find the good in every person.

 I know that Bill loved me, no exceptions, through thick and thin, through good times and bad, and through ecstasy and despair.  We fought and fussed over our collaborations in art but somehow we always returned to compromise and produce an incredible work of art.  He jokingly complained that if he wanted to turn right; I would invariably want to turn left.  We had our ups and downs, short separations and differences of opinion but we agreed on the big and little stuff at a soul level.  He would remind me when in the midst of an argument that a relationship ain’t meant to make us happy; it’s meant show us who we really are, so negotiate, negotiate, negotiate.

 Bill knew I loved him more than life itself ;  I just plain liked the man.

 Bill said to me many times—“I don’t worry about you, I sometimes feel concern for your well-being and hope for the best possible outcome, but worry, no, worry is the second most useless thing you can do with your mind—hate is the first most useless thing.

 Twenty-one years ago Bill entered into recovery and true to form he enthusiastically and relentlessly pursued sobriety.   I remember that while he was in treatment for alcoholism at Harmony House in Estes Park; he told me that “I’m going to do this, damn it!”, in his first call to me.  He was thrilled to have a solution for the fear and addiction that had invaded his life.  I had remarked several times in our relationship that he always “made” me do all the things I really wanted to do and recovery was no exception.  His recovery has been a shining beacon of who and what I could actually become if I made every effort to pay attention to my thoughts and actions.   That’s all a spiritual life is, after all.

 Sometimes his heart would break at the thought of someone who either could not or would not break free of the chains of resentment and fear to face themselves and become who they could be.

 He was supremely, absolutely confident in his artistic skills and he taught that to others.  He encouraged spiritual and artistic growth in me and everyone he knew regardless of what they thought their talents were.  A favorite gentle admonition of his was—“If you want to draw a straight line, use a ruler” In other words he was saying if you are interested, learn the techniques and procedures and if you are still interested, the inspiration will come.  He showed all of us how to stand at the portals of creation and receive.

 And yes, he was the guy with terminal cancer seeking a cure.  He wanted to live.  He believed that he had been healed—I believe he was healed on a deep spiritual level on our trip to Brazil.  We realized before we went on the journey to see John of God that you just can’t order up the miracle you want like a hamburger at a fast food joint but that didn’t mean that we didn’t desire a complete healing. Of course we wanted that miracle, but at the end he was ready, he was at peace.

 Lung cancer is mean, sneaky, insidious and relentless.  He thought he had escaped the consequences of the years of heavy smoking by quitting eighteen years ago but the cancer was working away in him ravaging his beautiful, strong body for years before it showed itself in the form of a tumor in his brain that had metastasized from the lung cancer.   Cancer doesn’t hurt much until the end, but then it hurts with a vengeance as it kills its host.  He tried to hide the pain from me; he had things he wanted to finish—a set of chairs, frames for spiritual principle mirrors, the giant eagles, but the cancer had other plans.

 Bill believed that joy encompasses everything; not just the sweet and pretty life experiences and I told him: “You don’t understand, I don’t like gifts wrapped in barbed wire; I only like gifts wrapped in pink ribbon.   That means I don’t like this gift.” He replied: “I know, I know, we weren’t asked if we approve of the gift.”

 Today I am receiving the gift I did not want and yet must receive in order to fulfill my spiritual destiny.  Acceptance means to joyfully and willingly receive that which is presented and I will make every effort to do so.

 Many of you have asked me what you can do for me.   I can and will tell you since we no longer have him physically here with us.   Be the Gift—Bless everyone; no exceptions—Practice the spiritual principles with courage, enthusiasm and passion—There is nothing wrong—If you choose wrong, choose again, and again, and again if necessary—Pass these truths on to anyone who wishes and is willing to be free of the spiritual disease of fear—Become a freedom fighter for love, light and joy.

 His voice will forever be in my head and my heart reminding me of these truths about myself and you.

 I have made a commitment to myself and to his legacy to carry this positive message; I hope you will join me.

 I love you, Bill, I have loved you, I will always love you.  One day we will meet again on our “Rainbow Bridge” to continue this Great Adventure into eternity.

 So I say to you, as he ended virtually every phone call—SEE WHAT YOU CAN BRING!

And HAVE FUN! 

 God bless you all!

I love you,

Sandy