My Marilyn

Dearest Marilyn,

May this letter find you in a better place than last we saw each other. I miss you terribly, yet I know it was inevitable that we part. For these past two years, I thought I would be the first to go. I prepared for it. The suddenness of your leaving left me in the deepest despair I have ever felt. Only now, a few weeks since, I have just barely emerged from that black pit of anguish. With this letter I am trying to deal with a future without you, to grasp what it means not to be able to see you, hold you, talk to you, love you.

In my memory now, you are the Wonder Woman I married sixty-two years ago. Perhaps I should have said, Wonder Girl for you were just nineteen and I was eight years older. It was a wonder that we actually connected even though I knew you for your entire life. For most of that time you were just Gilbert’s little sister, always getting in the way of our kid games.

Gilbert…always sharp, the wittiest guy I ever knew. I remember when you and I announced our first pregnancy. He grabbed me by my shirt-front and said, “I thought I told you my sister didn’t do things like that.”

We had three sons and watched each grow into fine men. They are dealing with your leaving, too. They remember you as the strongest woman they had ever known, as I do. Not physical strength. You were just five-feet tall. But your strength of will, your wise commonsense, your determination, your head-on approach to life’s inequities, all helped set an example for all of us.

And you faced many inequities. The first were the miscarriages that limited our young family to those three sons instead of the five kids you wanted. But you managed. The second was your near-death experience giving birth to our youngest, Bill. Again, you persevered and recovered, more determined than ever to be a good mom to all three.

Next, the most devastating inequity…kidney disease that required two years of dialysis. I never heard you whimper even once, facing that disaster as you faced all the minor ones in our life with a strong “this, too, will pass” resolution. And it did. I still remember the day they announced that the kidney transplant was a go. We were in your hospital room and all of us celebrated with a shout. You were down to just over 70 pounds, but you were determined to see it through. Despite a few setbacks, that little kidney added 24 years to our being together.

We were growing old together when you faced more setbacks with the strength you exhibited all your life. A hip replacement, then a fractured femur that required insertion of a metal rod, stress fractures in your lower vertebra that limited your ability to walk, severe urinary tract infections that required hospitalization and nursing home recovery. Still, you managed to be upbeat about it all.

Then, for me, the most devastating news. Alzheimers! Only the onset, they told me. You did not know the full extent of your problem, only that you were experiencing memory loss. I watched you closely for the last two years. I knew you were slowly disappearing before my eyes, the “Wonder Woman” I had known for so long. But you were there with me. And I with you. As it always had been. As it would be for a few more years to come.

But it was not to be. Another urinary tract infection, a bad one. One night in the hospital, and the next day the little kidney that had prolonged your life for so many years stopped functioning, and you left us, forever. But I have all those memories that keep bubbling up at odd times, and they will sustain me. Until we meet again, my Marilyn…

All my love,

Ed