To My Now-Silent Son of the Sixties

To My Now Silent Son of the Sixties…

I don’t usually think of myself as strong, but after my husband died (and I still can’t believe it’s been over 20 years) I had to be. Nathan wasn’t just my love; his love made me feel special and safe. For a time after he died, there seemed to be no reason to breathe, or do anything. He was gone, and I would never again hear him sing “When I’m Sixty-four.” That was his favorite Beatles song and he sang it to me each year on his birthday.

After a week of staying in bed all day, I knew I had to start getting up each morning, to eat, and to work. I needed to care for my family, and Nathan’s family, and that is what I did, every day, until I felt alive again. I still miss Nathan, and, although I’m not nearly ready to die myself, I have this image of how he will look when it’s my time to cross into Heaven. His thinning auburn hair that the chemo robbed him of will be back, even thicker and longer. He’ll be wearing an old Grateful Dead tee shirt, looking for me and maybe singing “When I’m Sixty-four.” And when I get there, he’ll tell me, as he did so many times in the past, “you’re the only girl I know who’s as pretty as she is smart.”

Nathan died a few weeks before Christmas, all those years ago, so I think about him during the holidays. Here are the words to a poem I wrote for him and had inscribed on his headstone:

To my now-silent son of the sixties

You were somehow too good for this world.

And we loved too much for so few years
You are always in my heart.

I release your troubled spirit

That needed to be free.

May you drum with the rock stars

Father many children

Play chess, ride horses, and fly.

In a peaceful place

Of many friendships

And no partings.

All my love…