It is September 2005. Sometime between that glorious August vacation in Italy, and my 70th birthday celebration the following month, something shifts. Mike, usually Mister Party Organizer, is strangely uninvolved in preparations for my September 13 birthday party—my 70th—leaving the planning of the food, drinks, program and decorations to others.
Dale and Sharon gather pictures and stories. Doug scans the photos, adds music, and puts together a slide show that spans all 70 years of my life. It is funny and poignant, and when finished, Doug tells me, “I now know more about your life than I do my own.” But where is Mike in all of this?
He’s said he’ll take care of the wine for the 40 or so people who will be joining us in the big banquet room at the Newport Beach Dunes Resort. I’ve chosen the venue for its proximity to an area that was a significant part of my growing-up years.
As the party date grows closer, and Mike’s still not done anything about the wine, Sharon offers to purchase it for him. He likes that idea. She knows what wines will work best and where to get good deals. She can buy the wine, and Mike will pay her back. Before the party, Sharon gives Mike the receipts for the wine. He tells her he’ll write a check. He doesn’t. I remind him that he needs to reimburse her. He says he will, but it doesn’t happen. It’s unlike him. Weeks later, after several reminders, I write the check from my own account.
Mike’s contribution to the party program was to sing “If They Asked Me I Could Write a Book,” a song that over the past several years had gained meaning for us. Mike saw the whole book idea as a connection to my late-blooming writing career. The last lines about making two lovers of friends were reflective of our very early history together. Many songs had meaning for us, but this came as close to being “our” song as anything else.
He sang beautifully and with great feeling, holding my gaze with those last lines, “And the simple secret of the plot, is just to tell them that I love you, a lot. Then the world discovers as my book ends, how to make two lovers of friends.” It was sweet and reassuring, but I continued to be puzzled by his relative indifference to details of the whole celebration. With most husbands this might have been business as usual, but it was definitely not business as usual for Mike. Looking back, I think that was when frontotemporal dementia made its first foray into the essence of Mike, starting the long and torturous assault on his capacity to listen, to empathize, to think logically, to participate in meaningful conversation, to love. At the time, though, it simply seemed that his love for me was waning. In those first FTD days there were still times when he was his most loving and connected self. But then, inexplicably, he would become distant and unreachable. After 38 strong years, was our marriage falling apart?
Revisiting that time, I realize that our 2005 financial practices should not only have raised a red flag, but should have moved me to fight long and hard to change our spending habits. We were overusing credit cards—the trip, my birthday bash, dinners out, Mike’s habit of buying a new silk tie to wear to church every Sunday, season tickets for the San Francisco Symphony, which included overnights at our favorite boutique hotels, etc., etc., etc. It worried me that we were not quite coming out even at the end of every month. I’d always had a clearer vision of the big picture of our finances than Mike did, and I knew it was time for significant cutbacks. Cutting back, though, was not in Mike’s nature, and I too easily let things slide.
The Italy trip had been an indulgence. It alone was not responsible for our ultimate financial downfall, but it was the beginning of a pattern. And although I may regret the pattern, I am ever grateful to remember Mike as he was in Italy: funny, witty and kind, sensitive and loving.
In the late ’80s, when Mike was the tenor soloist at a large Episcopal Church in Pasadena, I attended regularly. I respected the church’s social justice work, I loved the music, and I loved the poetry of the readings and prayers. I loved that all hymns and readings had been carefully adapted to contain inclusive language, but that the rhythm of the adaptations remained true. As long as I approached the service on a metaphorical rather than a literal level, it was meaningful to me.
Every Sunday, before communion, the priest announced that, “Wherever you are on your journey of faith, you are welcome at this table. All are welcome at Christ’s table,” and so, although I was not a believer, I regularly participated in the ritual of communion. For me, the process was not a statement of belief but rather recognition that I had a place in an ongoing human community, that we were all, the whole of humankind, in this mess of a world together.
As I held my hands out to receive the wafer, the priest often said, “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven,” but sometimes it was “strength for the journey.” The memories of my time with Mike in Italy became a source of strength for the long, rough journey ahead.