Always

Today is Labor Day in the United States, and I realized that it would be a good day on which to share an aspect of Marianne’s and my relationship. I have always been absorbed in my work. In the late 1960s my work was teaching mathematics at a Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Marianne was good at math. In fact, in the high school in Algonquin, Illinois where she grew up, her classmates gave her the nickname “Maths”! So it was natural for her to major in mathematics. It was at the same college where I was teaching, and so we connected. I tell this story in the chapter, Destiny and Balloons, of the private memoir I wrote about Marianne’s life.

Another part of the story concerns Acadia National Park in Maine. In one of her high school classes there was an assignment to choose a state and write about it. Marianne chose Maine and wrote off for all sorts of information. When I told her about Acadia, which I had visited once many years earlier with my parents, she was eager for us to go there together. We did, and we both loved it and went there on vacation almost every year when we lived in Massachusetts. It was a very special place for us, as described in Acadia Memories.

Marianne loved being on vacation with me. I was more relaxed then, and she felt me. Especially after I started my business she felt me preoccupied so much of the time. She connected with this feeling strongly at Acadia once and wrote:

In the car going south, going south
We had a wonderful time
Trying so hard not to cry
I don’t want fabric, I don’t want clay
Work is his mistress, I can’t compete
I’ll see you at Christmas, my love.

Marianne was seven years younger than me, and I anticipated that I would be the first to die. Reading her note that last day of our Acadia vacation, I felt sad. Then I wrote this poem:

Always

Let the tears come, my love
A tear is a healing thing
I know you will miss me
As I will miss you
And when the great separation comes
I want you to know there is no death of the real me
As there was no birth
I am as I always was
Look for me not in words or activities
Look for me by the seashore and in the forests
Look for me on the mountain top
Look for me in the sunrise and the sunset
And know I am with you always, my love.

Summer 2001