Life, the universe, and everything plus a rainbow equals . . .

forty-two plus one? What about a double rainbow? Now I'm getting weird.

How many double rainbows do you get in your life? How many did we see together, during the forty-three years of our marriage? “A sign,” I repeat, unnerved.

It’s an early evening in mid-October. I’ve just finished half of a frozen pizza and my third glass of cheap red wine. I turn off the evening news, exhausted by the old war and the new war that already seems old. The good news, domestically, is the held breath: no mass shootings today. I push myself up from the sofa.

The phone pings. It’s my daughter.

Go see the rainbow today!💕

What rainbow?

Texting while running while drunk while pursuing a rainbow adds up to I don’t know how many levels of aggravated stupidity. When my foot catches the bottom step of the staircase as I rush to the front door, I skid, then slip, then find myself on the floor.

My Apple Watch vibrates, with its limited menu: A) SOS. If I don't reply within 90 seconds, I have to confess my idiocy to the dispatcher, or paramedics will break down my door; B) I fell; C) I did not fall, and D) I fell but I’m okay. There’s no way to report that E) I caught myself almost in time, or F) I made that elbow-to-floor move with unintended force. I go with C: I did not fall.

My daughter calls. She has a preternatural gift for catching me in a lie. This time, as soon as she determines that I’m conscious and only slightly out of breath, she lets it pass.

“Did you see it?”

I stare at the image, stunned. “I do now.”

Six months.

A sign. Today is October 19th. He died on April 19th, of lung cancer, alone in his hospice room. The days since then have fallen into two categories: those I get things done, and those I fail to get things done.

How many double rainbows do you get in your life? How many did we see together, during the forty-three years of our marriage? “A sign,” I repeat, unnerved.

“Love you, Mom,” she replies. Seconds later, she texts me a heart emoji. I text her a hug. It is how we sign off now; we no longer hang up. Is there a word or a phrase for what we do now, with our iPhones?

My elbow throbs. Bruises will appear tomorrow and take longer to fade than they used to. It’s a good thing we’re at that autumnal moment known as sweater weather. As humiliating as it is to report to the iPolice, my daughter’s methods leave me quaking.

I get an ice pack from the fridge. I bandage it to my elbow with a dishtowel and stare out the front window. The sky darkens; the streetlights come on.

We told our kids that when the streetlights came on it was bedtime. They didn’t buy it.

Two hours later I look again at our texts, parsing it for gnomic instructions from the Beyond. The wine bottle’s empty.

1. Outside. Get out, he’s telling me. Jeez, woman, go somewhere.

2. East. What’s in the east? Parks, bike paths, New York City. Rainbows. The dawn.

3. A good sign, six months today. Six months? Today? Why had that milestone not waved its hand in my face? I see my path forward as a Game of Grief, akin to The Game of Life, with its spinner and tiny plastic convertibles you move around the board. In The Game of Grief, the cars have a different function. Instead of adding pink and blue pegs — Dad, Mom, Junior, and Sis — you remove them: to college, jobs, new families, assisted living. The blue peg in the driver’s seat is gone. I, pink peg, Widow, have moved over one space.

I go upstairs, brush my teeth, and put on one of the nightgowns he gave me. The pearl-gray silk glides against my skin. I wore it once. It felt too sexy for me then, embarrassingly so. Now I think about how pleased he would have been if I hadn't pushed it to the back of my underwear drawer.

My husband died on April 19, 2023. Exactly six months later, like a package delayed in the mail, I get a rainbow. What’s left of the Lutheran in me asks What Does This Mean?

I spend many days sitting alone at my kitchen table, frozen in body and soul, the pain impossible to describe. Grief, I suppose, is one word for that feeling. It goes away, circles back, returns silently. It ambushes me.

Not for the first time, I wish for a death doula. I’ve heard they exist. I picture someone like my grandmother, with a hug as wide as her doorway. Someone whose assortment of teas fills three shelves, who serves me thin Swedish gingersnaps on a pretty blue plate with a paper doily. We could have decided everything in a single afternoon. His body had gone from hospice to crematorium within hours. The funeral window has passed. What is a Celebration of Life? How many copies of his death certificate will I need? Obituaries cost how much? I suppose it’s what happens when people don’t subscribe to the local print newspaper. It has to keep the lights on somehow.

How am I going to keep my lights on?

It’s a serious question.

I look through what some people call a “portfolio.” I call it “bank accounts, his retirement income, my sad pittance, and Social Security.” Turns out that I can keep recycling those Viking Cruises mailers. But I’ll be able to afford the OXO burr grinder recommended by Wirecutter and drink decent French press coffee in the morning instead of sludge.

It is enough.

---

On October 15th, we hold a Celebration of Life. He was a librarian; it’s the obvious thing to do. My daughter and son built a Little Free Library, one of those small glass-fronted cabinets seated on posts in front yards. Take a book. Leave a book.

Nearly a hundred people show up. I’m overwhelmed. I take two Ativan and go into default mode: we’ll run out of food! We don’t. People arrive with armloads of books. After they leave, I fill the Little Free Library, placing my own offering front and center. It’s his copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Within its pages you will find the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. But you probably already know that it’s 42. If you don’t know why it’s 42, read the book. You’ll have to find your own copy. His is gone.

My brother got there almost before my son did. Whew!

We haven’t scattered ashes, planted a tree, or purchased a memorial bench. I was stunned to find out how much a modest public park bench costs. Even for a used, refurbished one, the municipal coffers demand thousands up front, along with an annual stewardship fee. You are tasked with wiping off bird poop and erasing graffiti.

Etsy, Pinterest, and Amazon offer endless ways to turn your loved one’s cremains into everything from the generic (mantelpiece urns) to the creepy (vials of ashes to wear around one’s neck) to the creepier (ash-ink tattoos, teddy bears stuffed with bits of your beloved) to the suspect and costly (cut and polished “diamonds.”)

I go with the free option: No thanks.

My husband died on April 19, 2023. Exactly six months later, like a package delayed in the mail, I get a rainbow. What’s left of the Lutheran in me asks What Does This Mean?

I think about that MFA that I worked so hard for, so long ago, as if towards a degree in theology. I believe my husband’s deepest disappointment was that, having the gift and the responsibility of writing, I did not share it with the world. Whatever it was he felt, it could not have come close to my own shame and self-loathing; the conviction that I’d broken my life beyond repair.

I used to have a fragment of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke on my computer desktop. It’s from “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” a meditation on the life force within each one of us, and how we are tasked with keeping it glowing and alive.

You must change your life, Rilke says, quietly. Then, in case you weren't paying attention, YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

“All right,” I tell the streetlights, which never burn out.

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I’m offering free subscriptions to all readers at this time. I’ll be writing at least twice a week. I’m finding my way after 43 years of a loving marriage. During that time I struggled to call myself a writer. I wish I could tell you why. We all have our reasons for feeling that we have been called away from doing the things we were always meant to do. I hope you will join me on this journey. Believe it: we are all the sharpest pencils in the box. Whatever it was that interrupted us, we can find our way home.