On My Own

by Diane Rehm

  Shortly after I began my volunteer work at WAMU, Jane declared her goal: to become an Episcopal priest. Not only did she accomplish that after years of intense study at Virginia Theological Seminary, but years later she was consecrated as only the second female bishop of the Episcopal Church. Her inner beauty was palpable, and her loving-kindness and generous heart radiated to all of us who knew and loved her.

  On December 25, 2012, my phone rang at 8:00 a.m. Looking at my caller ID, I assumed it was Jane herself calling to wish me a Merry Christmas, so I answered with a very cheery hello, and was surprised to hear not Jane’s voice but that of her daughter, Mary Dixon Raibman.

  I’ll never forget her words. “Ms. Rehm, I have some very, very sad news. My mommy died in her sleep this morning.” To say I was stunned simply cannot express what I felt when I heard those words. I just could not believe my darling friend was gone. Mary went on to say that they’d had an all-family celebration the night before, and that Jane had gone to bed at 9:30 p.m., saying she felt “very, very tired.”

  And that was it. She never woke up.

  No one will ever be sure what happened to her, whether a blood clot had traveled to her brain or whether her heart just gave out. She was gone.

  I can hardly think of that day without weeping. Jane and I were not just the most intimate of friends; we loved each other as though we were sisters. In fact, we had often said that each of us was the sister the other had never had, the one who was always there for the other. Through hardship and illness and loss we’d stood right there beside each other.

  Her laughter was infectious. We celebrated so many birthdays and holidays together, always bursting into laughter at the slightest reference to a memory we shared. She was a magnificent storyteller, which helped make her sermons so powerful. She loved clothes as much as I do, and we loved cooking together, as we had done for church suppers in the early days of our friendship.

  Her memorial service filled Washington National Cathedral. So many had been touched by her warmth and love! They lined up by the hundreds to honor her and her memory.

  As for me, the loss was devastating. We’d always joked that, when we got older, we’d all live together under one roof, hire people to help us with our daily lives, and sit back and enjoy telling each other stories. And up to a point, that is exactly what happened.

  We ended up living in the same condominium, so that whenever either of us felt the need for a chat, we’d meet in the lobby or sit outside in the beautiful park that is part of our condo grounds. We could enjoy each other’s company, and I could share the concerns that were growing in my mind regarding John’s physical and emotional health.

  To say that I felt bereft when Jane died is an understatement. I felt abandoned—doubly lost, because she’d been such a support when John moved into assisted living. She helped me through the emotional transition by going with me to see him, by offering him Holy Communion, by talking frankly and honestly with us about how our lives were changing.

  In her gentle, pastoral way, she could reach John, who was, after all, her godson. With Jane I could weep openly. She was there to help me shed the shell I had armored myself with, just to keep life on track. The shock of her death, coming as it did on Christmas Day, with no warning, was utterly wrenching. I felt as though my own heart was bleeding.

  It was partly due to these feelings that I began to wonder whether those who lose a loved one suddenly grieve in different ways from those who watch a loved one go gradually. I know from talks with her husband how hard it was for him to lose her as he did. Now Dixie has been forced to rethink his very existence without Jane. He tells me how awful it is to walk into their apartment and not hear her voice calling out to him, instead only silence.

  I, by contrast, had a year and a half to learn to live alone, and during that period I knew I could pick up the phone and speak to John, or leave work and drive over to Brighton Gardens to see him. I had months to observe his decline, to watch his painful efforts to move, to walk, to eat. Occasionally he would agree to be wheeled outdoors to the garden, where we could sit together to listen to the waterfall, to be with Maxie, to remark on the beautiful spring weather. We had time to talk openly and honestly about our marriage, what we’d done right, what we’d done wrong, and how much time we’d wasted being incapable of finding peace with each other. Did that span of time and those precious moments together make John’s death easier on me? Perhaps.

  For Dixie, whose marriage to Jane was very different from John’s and mine, the fact that death came so suddenly, with Jane in apparent good health, and immediately after a wonderful family gathering, was an enormous shock, not just to the heart but to an entire way of life. Who can say that he would have grieved less for her had she suffered a long illness, as John did?

  As we grew older, Jane and I had talked about how our lives might end. She knew that John’s mother had taken her own life, and I said that, should I face an untreatable illness, I would do the same. She expressed doubt that she would have the courage to end her own life. But one thing was certain: she did not want to grow so old that she would have to move into a nursing home and be taken care of. She actually dreaded the idea of growing old.

  John was my partner, my spouse, my beloved husband, with whom I’d gone through many struggles to maintain our marriage. Jane was my dear friend, my sister, on whom I relied for strength and sustenance. John died slowly. Jane’s death was instantaneous. Who can say which death was harder to grapple with? I know only that I’ve lost them both.

  November 23, 2014

  Today is John’s birthday. He would have been eighty-four years old. A former law partner of his, Will Leonard, sent me this e-mail: “I shall always remember the date, because it is the birth date of two of the most remarkable men I have ever known; two of whom I tried, but failed miserably, to emulate. One was my father. The other was your great husband. My best wishes to you on what undoubtedly will be a day of sad, and, hopefully, happy, remembrances.”

  And that is precisely what it was. When I woke this morning, my first thought was, Today is John’s birthday. I wished him a happy birthday, out loud. Maxie, lying on the bed with me, took that as an indication that on this early Sunday morning I was finally ready to get up. He came and kissed me on the cheek, his funny furry face and lovable doggy smell pressing me to rise. Part of me longed to stay put under the covers, shutting out reality and allowing me to go on talking with John. In the days before Parkinson’s, we had many of our sweetest conversations in our bed, early in the morning on weekends, when neither of us had to rush to get up. I was imagining how many questions I would ask now, if he could hear me.

  How are you? Has the journey been what you’d hoped it might be? Is that new world as peaceful and as filled with light as we here on earth want to imagine? Can you “feel”? Are you strong? Does it matter? Can you see me? Can you understand how I have been longing to speak with you? Do you know I keep your pictures on the piano, and speak to you every time I pass them?

  The fact is that most people who’ve lost family members struggle when encountering the first birthday or important holiday after a death. For me, John’s birthday compounds my sadness of the season. My mother died on January 1, 1956, at age forty-nine. My father died eleven months later, at age sixty-two, literally of a broken heart. Now, as I experience my first Thanksgiving after John’s death, I feel as though gravel is churning in the pit of my stomach, preparing to unleash or heave back all the stored memories of holidays, happy and otherwise. How do we deal with the absence of a loved one on a day when that absence is so deeply felt? I remembered each step of the day.

  At 5:00 on Thanksgiving morning, John would arise to take the turkey from the refrigerator, making sure it would be ready when I came to the kitchen to stuff it and get it ready for roasting. We would together have chopped the celery, mushrooms, and onions the day before, and now I would lightly sauté them in butter. I would cook the gizzards for an hour, saving some of the liquid to mo
isten the vegetables and bread crumbs.

  Then came John’s important moment: tasting for seasoning, which consisted of sage, poultry seasoning, salt, and pepper. The dressing had to be slightly oversalted to account for loss of seasoning during the roasting process. The butter melted and the basting began, every half hour. The day before Thanksgiving, I prepared Craig Claiborne’s recipe for cranberry-orange relish, as well as Jane Dixon’s mother-in-law’s baked squash recipe (Jane said it was the only good thing her mother-in-law ever gave her), ready to bake the next day. As the turkey roasted, the apples for pies were peeled, cored, and sliced, a task that John, David, and Jennie all performed, while I made the pastry. Into the smaller oven went the pies, timed so they’d still be warm when we finished our turkey.

  Of course, I’m reaching back in time, reaching back to before John grew weak, when he was still able to lift the twenty-five-pound bird from the oven. In fact, many of my memories of him have begun to shift from after he became ill to before. I want to remember him as he was when he was younger and stronger, not necessarily in his twenties or thirties but in his forties and fifties, before any back problems or operations, before any slowing down or shuffling.

  I want to remember him as he swung a pickax to break up the driveway in front of our house on Worthington Drive. I want to see him as he hauled a wheelbarrow full of tree trimmings at the farm or when he lifted large pieces of rock to repair the stone wall. I want to feel his arms as he carried me up the stairs at our first dwelling in Georgetown. I want to hear again that loud voice that had offended me when we first met.

  But the holidays, beginning in early November, instead bring on such sadness. For years, I would get ill every Christmas. One of our therapists used to say, “The body remembers.” My sadness was always so great around that time of year, as I remembered my mother’s and father’s deaths, that I would find myself plummeting down and further down into dark thoughts, dark feelings, and, eventually, illness. Even after I became aware, through therapy, of this pattern, the illnesses went on occurring.

  I can remember one Christmas Eve when I was so sick I couldn’t join John, David, and Jennie for midnight services. Perhaps those illnesses were the only way I could deal with the unspoken grief I went on feeling, even after all those years—feelings of loss so great that I felt like an orphan, someone with nobody to care for me. And my body would collapse.

  So now I must add another loss, of the one with whom I’ve lived for most of my life. This year I spent Thanksgiving Day with dear friends. When it came time to say grace, our host included the names of those who had died in the past year, including the name of John Rehm. Instantly, I saw John carving the turkey in the kitchen, using his father’s knife, with David watching, learning. Moments like those, happy, anticipatory moments—those are the ones I choose to remember.

  The Christmas Holidays

  Even before the most celebratory holiday of the year arrives, I’m forced to confront our wedding anniversary, December 19, and memories of that frigid day when we were married in 1959. I find myself recalling every detail, not only what each of us wore and the food we ate, but the beauty of the day, so sunny and crisp, the behavior of every guest, the reflections in the mirrors of the elegant dining room where we had our wedding dinner.

  We had vowed not to see or speak with each other that day until the moment of the ceremony, so it was John’s mother who called to ask whether I wanted him to wear his vest with his brand-new suit. Of course, I said, do have him wear his vest. The Reverend Duncan Howlett, who was extremely active in the civil rights movement, married us at All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, in a service attended by some thirty guests. The photographer never showed up, so all our memories of that day remained our own internal real or imagined snapshots and recollections, which we loved to go over in detail each year.

  But of all the events hard to endure in the months following John’s death, nothing could be worse than Christmas. On the day after Thanksgiving, as I worked around the apartment, I turned on the radio and heard my first Christmas carol. I burst into tears. Now it really hits. Hard. Christmas without John. Singing carols together in the kitchen. Hearing the wonderful songs, again and again, never tiring of them. Remembering all the Christmas Eves at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church, with the children at our side.

  Every evening I lie on the floor at the foot of my bed doing exercises to strengthen my back. Tonight I listen to the Brahms Violin Concerto, the very recording (on vinyl) that John gave me the first Christmas of our budding relationship. He’d left Washington to be with his parents in Pennsylvania at his father’s farm. I was alone, and chose to be alone, in the tiny apartment I briefly lived in after my first husband and I had separated.

  On that Christmas Day of 1958, despite invitations from cousins and friends to be with them, I had decided to stay alone, to experience the emptiness around me. I can remember sitting in my living room, listening to this concerto again and again, responding to its extraordinary beauty and complexity. I had never heard it before, but on this day, I felt its depth and its lush intensity reaching into me.

  Now, lying on the floor on this evening in early December 2014, contemplating my first Christmas without John, listening to this gorgeous rendition once again, I hear it with a new sense of loss. Not as a young woman falling in love, but as a woman approaching her eighties, feeling the intensity of grieving for a lover, a husband, a partner. I wish he were here to listen to this music with me, though we wouldn’t utter a word to each other; we would just sit and listen, and then he would remind me—or I him—that this was the first real gift he ever gave to me.

  I hope that someday I can learn to be “in the moment,” as so many have described it, as John could be when he listened to music. I remember the very first concert he invited me to, at the Library of Congress, where I watched him listening so intensely. I sat astounded, just glancing at him, realizing how caught up he was in that music, those sounds, that performance. I’ve rarely had that feeling, but tonight it has come over me, taking me into an almost rapturous state.

  All my friends have been extremely solicitous, repeating to me what I already know and now hear again and again: the first year of holidays, with all the memories of rituals, church services, decorations, and, most especially, music, is very difficult.

  My heart goes back in time to when Jennie was just six years old, when we began creating our own Christmas cards. That was the year she did her very first drawing for us, a wonderfully zany snowman, a reindeer, an extremely contemporary rendition of a pine tree, and a star. The four of us took colored pens and added zest to each of the figures, on all two hundred cards.

  That began a tradition that continues to this day. Jennie’s daughter, Sarah, my thirteen-year-old granddaughter, has created a charming card for 2014, which in some ways reminds me of the very first one. Until I saw it I wasn’t even sure I wanted to send out cards this year. Normally I would write a letter to go along with the card, to bring all our friends up-to-date on what’s happened during the year with the Rehm family. But don’t they already know? Surely most of them do, so why do I have to repeat it all? Why should I repeat it all? People are hearing sad news all through the year, so why add to their sadness just because I’m feeling my own?

  For weeks, the cards and letters remained a question in my mind, though somehow I could hear John prodding me, urging me to go forward, telling me how important the tradition has been, not just to us but to the many people who’ve received these hand-done cards over the years.

  And so, eventually, I did send out the Christmas cards, all 250 of them. Instead of a separate letter, however, I printed a message within the card, saying that John had died and I would continue the tradition he so loved.

  One tradition not in question was baking baklava. This I have done for many years. I do much of the baking alone, taking great pleasure in tasting the walnut-sugar mixture so that it’s exactly the correct sweetness, then rolling the combination
into the phyllo dough.

  John always had the first piece, still warm and dripping with the traditional sugar-lemon syrup poured over it immediately after it came out of the oven. He always gave it a thumbs-up, even though there were a couple of years when I—my own harshest critic—felt it could have been better.

  The one day I do not bake the baklava alone is when David joins me in the kitchen. He has become a superb cook and baker, and we enjoy our afternoon together, each of us baking one pound of the delicious pastry. We managed to do that again this year, but I felt the difference in my heart as we moved through my kitchen.

  Several days before David arrived, I baked the first two of five pounds of baklava, a process that took about five hours in all. After clarifying the salted butter, I made the sugar-lemon syrup and finally ground the walnuts. I mixed the nuts with plenty of sugar, ready for stuffing into sheets of buttered phyllo, three sheets to create each long roll.

  Phyllo is extremely tricky to work with, especially if it’s not at room temperature. Once I pack the long roll with nuts tightly enough for it to remain stable, I cut the roll into diagonal, bite-size pieces. Each pound of phyllo creates sixty to seventy pieces, which I offer as gifts to friends. It’s a long process, but well worth the effort when I see the delight on people’s faces as they take that first bite.

  I listened to Christmas carols the entire time I stood in the kitchen, hoping that somehow I would find my spirits lifted, by both my activities and the music. But I found it hard to get beyond the sadness of the season. I was feeling extremely lethargic about the entire holiday. Almost the only thing I really wanted to do was just to be. I wanted to sit back and allow myself to truly reflect on the loss of John. I think I had managed to keep myself so busy since his death just six months earlier that I had kept much of my grief at bay, and, judging from my conversations with others who’ve lost loved ones, many do exactly as I’ve done. But as I experienced the ten-day holiday break from work, I felt the true impact of life without John.