Hell week is here, the first week of July .
A week I used to look forward to with joy, now I face with dread.
I haven’t used a real calendar since John died. No reason to. Nothing worth marking down. No days to anticipate or remember. Those are forever carved into my psyche, my body reminding me despite efforts to forget.
I will turn 62 on July 4. I am a Yankee Doddle Dandy, a real live niece of my Uncle Sam, born on the 4th of July.
I’ve always hated my birthday. Holiday babies resent being lost and overshadowed. Having had my fill of red, white, and blue birthday cakes by the time I reached puberty, I made my husband John promise he would never get me another.
My parents, god bless them, always told me the fireworks and parades were in my honor. I never quite believed it, but the love behind that is duly noted.
My favorite animal is the beaver. Strange, yes, but I am intrigued by their engineering abilities and ability to hold their breath for 15 minutes ! John gifted me every available stuffed beaver to be found on the South Shore of MA before we were married. He even found me little miniature glass and pewter beaver figurines. Very special.
Once married, despite babies and bills and 60 hour work weeks, my John managed to make my birthdays special. He would crawl home , an hour commute with no A/C from long, hot days cutting fish or delivering mail in Boston, arriving home just in time to shower and hit the mall before it closed, searching for the perfect gift and a cake for me.
When the babies were old enough, he would pile them in the car for the trip to Hanover – or the big time, Braintree !!!! Malls for the hunt. What can we get for Mom this year ?
Post marriage, appliance gifts were a no-no, a tough lesson for the guy whose Mom oohed and ahhed over a new coffee maker every Christmas.
Pool floats were always a hit when we had our second hand above ground pool. Blowing them up without a pump was another loving act left to John.
Returning home , the calls of “Shut your eyes” and “Don’t look in the fridge” while the kids ran upstairs to hide the booty are some of my fondest memories.
Those days are gone. Forever.
Our last July 4th weekend went like this:
July 3rd cookout at our daughter Heidi’s house in Bedford, MA. John developed major eye inflammation and looked like he had gone 10 rounds in a boxing ring. Red faced, congested, watering eyes, we thought maybe he was allergic to something in Heidi’s yard ?
But that was only the beginning.
July 4th, my birthday. John wanted to get me a bike so we could start biking together, but the shop was closed. We planned to try out some bikes for size later that week. We went for a hike with Carley in the woods near our house, our son John accompanying us. He would snap the last photo of us out enjoying nature and each other, forever capturing John’s goofiness.
Later we would have a small cookout with John’s famous burgers, but before that he needed an nap and complained of a major headache. “Don’t worry” I replied to our oldest, “He gets them all the time”.
July 5th, our oldest daughter’s boyfriend flies into Logan from Minnesota to meet us for the first time. John works a full, hot day delivering mail, then we all go out for dinner. As we arrive, John stumbles getting out of the car (Just the heat, he claims) and as we wait for a table he says he feels dizzy. I insist he sit. We enjoy an uneventful meal but when we get home, John is exhausted and goes directly to bed.
Fast forward 3 days to the “Day Everything Changed”, July 8, 2015:
Our daughter, her boyfriend, and myself head down to the harbor to pick up some snacks and lunch for a morning at the beach. We run into John delivering his mail, all seems fine as we exchange hellos – but later, he will have no memory of this.
After a nice morning at the beach, Gayle and Joe head off to Boston for Red Sox game and dinner in the North End. Awaiting John’s return from work, I chill on the deck and anticipate a nice quiet evening alone, just the 2 of us.
He rides up the street on his bike after a long, hot day delivering mail. He rolls over the grass and puts the bike in the shed, as usual.
Then the shit hit the fan. Details are in another blog post, but he suffered a grad mal seizure. Suffered another in the ambulance n the way to the hospital, where tests showed a brain tumor which turned out to be Stage 4 Glioblastoma Multiforme.
July will never be the same for me. All the red, white, and blue – all the parades, all the fireworks – all the cake and ice cream – no more happy birthdays. No more I love you’s.
as Van Morrison sang –
“You can take it (all the tea in China)
and put it in a big brown bag for me,
sail it all round the 7 oceans,
throw it into the middle of the deep blue sea.”
The day I was born has morphed into the day I died. Bye, bye, Miss American Pie.
The person I was – Margie Rice Ohrenberger – daughter, sister, wife, mother, friend, human being – has become Margie Rice Ohrenberger: Widow.
A title I hold with mixed pride and extreme sadness. Proud that I survived what I thought would kill me. Sadness that the life I worked so hard to achieve is just a memory.
Ying/Yang – black/white – happy/sad – birth/death – you can’t have one without the other.
Birth/death. The journey continues.
A Widow's Walk 