Your birthday comes again, as it always does. I have no words. Life moves on and has taken me with it, even if I didn't want to go. But there are days I cannot move past without remembering you. October 21, your birthday, is one. This November when your anniversary comes it will be six years and that is another. At any rate, you should know, wherever you are now, that no matter what you told me before you left, I just can't do it. You are my forever love. And I simply cannot move past that. I love you the most. Now and forever. Totally.
Eddie's Bench
I sat on Eddie’s bench yesterday afternoon. He was there. And it could not have been more perfect.
Shortly after Eddie died, an opportunity came to participate in the creation and building of the Hospice
facility of the greater Raleigh area. Amazingly, this geographical region did not have its own free-
standing Hospice facility. When Eddie became a Hospice patient, since the pain issues associated
with his terminal stage four melanoma could not be successfully managed at home, he needed to be in a setting where professional medical personnel could administer the medication and the means to ease his pain. Without an in-patient Hospice facility, that meant a hospital. A completely appropriate place for getting well and living through life-saving methods and measures, a hospital is not meant to be a place for living out the end of a life in final comfort, dignity and peace. So, I made a financial pledge to Hospice of Wake County to help them build their house, and in return, they would give me a bench outside in a garden area near a water feature, with a small plaque designating it as a gift in memory of my beloved.
I stepped out of work into a beautiful afternoon, not too humid or hot, sunny and with a slight breeze,
and since I had nothing better to do, I decided to see if I could find . . . Eddie’s bench. I had been
thinking of doing it for a while, driving over to see if it was actually there, and if so, to sit upon it
and think of him. It seemed like as good a time as any.
The new Hospice House building is huge and built, roughly, in the shape of a spread-apart U. It is set
in the midst of a large piece of land; probably at one time it was part of the pasture that surrounds it still, so by its very setting, it is tranquil and bucolic, filled with the serenity of nature, ideal for finding peace. One wing houses all the administration offices, the other houses the actual in-patient suites. They are connected by outside covered breezeways and anchored in the center of the U with a small spiritual sanctuary, or chapel. The driveway out front is a circular one and has off to one side a garden area with a fountain in its center space. Since I had requested that Eddie’s bench be near the water, this is where I expected to find it.
There must have been ten or more benches placed upon the stone pathways ringing that fountain, but
not one of them was marked with Eddie’s name. I paused, disappointed, but then I remembered from
the website architectural drawings I had scrutinized, there were to be at least two water features. His
bench must be at the other one.
Question was, just where was that? I walked past the small sanctuary going toward the left, my steps
would take me behind the administration wing, where the stone pathway led to other benches placed
in pristinely manicured settings….but none of these were Eddie’s either. I wondered for a moment if
perhaps he had been omitted, maybe forgotten, but I pushed that thought away, for there was yet
another side to investigate behind the length of building that housed the individual apartments for
the residents. I walked around the end of the red-bricked building to behold an intimate courtyard,
small and sheltered from the late afternoon sun by the shadow cast over it by the building. It was
cozy, protected and private. Central to this garden area was a half-moon shaped concrete pool
from which sprang three gentle geysers of water plumes, their heights constantly fluctuating,
the droplets falling back into the pool only to be resurrected and live again, accompanied by that
comfortingly hissing sound of water rushing. Two curve-backed, carved ash benches were
placed on the other side of this pool, flanking the private patio doors of the apartments where
people would be living their last days, where families would be gathering to give their last
expressions of love to one another. I paused before the first bench. It was not Eddie’s.
I knew before I got close enough to read the small gray plastic sign on the back of the second
bench that it was his. It was the very last bench I found. And it was the very best. I bent
forward to run my fingers gently over the sparkling white script of the words…words that I
had written for him……
In loving memory of Eddie
Given by his wife
For every life that passes . . . something beautiful remains.
Only a few words could be allowed in such a small space, so they had to be exact and without
embellishment, something so hard for me to accomplish! I can be so wordy! But, there they were,
exactly as I had written, what I had finally chosen to say to the world as his perfect legacy. I had
read the inscriptions on all the other benches, and perhaps that was why I found his at the very last,
so that I could. And these words, I thought, were by far the most meaningful, the most beautiful,
the ones that conveyed so succinctly the essence of the man they were chosen to honor.
I sat down.
Before me was the half-moon pool, rimmed in river rocks, so like the rock wall and the hearth he had
built in the cabin where we lived, of which he was so proud. The sound of the water rushing skyward
in a trinity of plumes was reminiscent of the sound of the beach, and if I closed my eyes I could
pretend that was where I was . . . where we were . . . sitting on our front deck . . . where we had a
bench . . . Eddie’s bench . . . from where he would watch the boats come and go up the canal that
was right in front of our house. He would sit there for hours. Sometimes people would come by
and talk to him, sometimes he would sit quietly, reverently, and gaze in contentment at the water
in front and to the left (the Intracoastal waterway). I thought of him as I looked beyond the spewing
fountain now to the emerald lawn, so green and lush, and just beyond that, in all their blooming
perfection, a long hedge of deep pink roses finished off the scene.
Roses.
I had no idea they would be there, but I should not have been surprised. I had asked about the
landscaping that might be placed around Eddie’s bench when I pledged the money, but no one
was sure what would be there. So, I had asked if perhaps I could plant a few rose bushes around
his bench and I was told I could.
I smiled.
Roses had become Eddie’s sign to me. Shortly after he died, two months in fact, I had a vision of
him, a re-playing of an event that truly happened, and in my mind’s eye that day I saw him coming
in the back door of the cabin, with a bouquet of roses in his hands for me. The actual day that the
scene took place was a Valentine’s Day a few years before he had been diagnosed and he had
brought me roses. They meant a lot to me on the day he actually gave them to me. What I would
never have suspected is how much they would come to mean when he brought them to me again
after he died. For that day and almost every day since -- yes, until this very one -- Eddie has
brought me roses, one way or another . . . in a picture, in an email, on a woman’s skirt, on a
billboard at an airport, a bouquet sent by a friend to me on a special occasion, on a card. And
now I had only to sit upon his bench and see them, yet again.
Eddie’s bench was perfect.
Someone . . . got it so right . . . for as I sat there, I could so remember all of my wonderful life with
him, how much we had, how much we loved.
I didn’t want to leave. I felt so at home there.
At last, I ran my fingers over the words one final time, stood up, and told him goodbye.
I walked around the side of the building to the parking lot. Odd, as I walked toward my car, I noticed
there were a couple of Corvettes parked nearby. They had not been there when I arrived for surely I
would have noticed. I had the thought that they probably belonged to doctors attending to the
Patients in the Hospice house. I almost dismissed them as coincidence.
But, wait. There were more than a couple here….three….four….I kept counting….bright red ones,
yellow ones, a black one. In all, I counted eight Corvettes in that parking lot. Oh my God! I was
really laughing hard as I pointed my car out of the drive. Eddie’s presence could not have been
clearer, it was almost as if he was putting an exclamation point on the afternoon for me!
Corvettes. He loved them so, loved the one we had, that still sat in my garage. That car was his
pride and joy and forever I will remember the smile it gave him when he drove it.
I didn’t need to see him in a vision to know he was smiling now…smiling at me for thinking of him,
maybe even sitting on his bench nestled among the roses by the water fountain near a parking lot
full of Corvettes!
It won’t be hard to come back, again and again, to this place which already holds so much meaning
for me. I look forward eagerly to the next visit.
And I know I won’t be there alone.
