By Mary Cristy

A View from the Hills

It’s deadline time again, time to put words on paper and I’m thinking of you, my husband, and how we used to discuss possible subjects, when I wasn’t sure of my choice.

Shall I play Devil’s advocate and write something thought-provoking for readers who, very likely, are better educated, more widely traveled, conversant in more languages, and livelier, wittier, and more creative than I?

Or: shall I play the clown, with frustrating, but funny stories of how I cut my finger wrestling a loaf of delicious rye, enclosed in a crust as impregnable as the package that imprisoned my new manual can opener and dared me to discover a single crease, or crevice where I might begin to wrest it free and use it to open a can of smoked oysters for my late-night snack?

Since you went away I eat odd things at odd times of the day or night Free to come and go I have no set routine, no compelling reasons to do this or that. and create my own agenda as the spirit moves me. No need to file a “flight plan” as I take off , be it for dinner on a picnic bench in the park, or a solitary mid-week train ride just for a change of scenery.

.When you were here we would have gone together, hand-in-hand, quiet, and content to be so. Or, you might have suggested alternatives; a night of music, or

Scrabble, at which you were sure I cheated, a walk around town with a stop at Baskin- Robbins where we bought different flavored cones, and swapped, for a taste of each.

Shall I write about the garden which has suffered without you, where today, for the first time since you’ve gone I felt a stirring of life, lightness of heart, and a thrust of joy as I fed poor hungry plants and remembered your words, “I’ll always be with you”.

How strange and terrifying life can be when one becomes a widow! With what dark overtones the word reverberates, like rumbling thunder that rolls across the sky and predicts lightning flashes, and the deluge still to come..

I think of young Jackie Kennedy’s words to Lyndon Johnson with whom she corresponded and to whom she confided after her husband’s death “My life is over.”

She went on to a new life, another marriage, and a career as a New York editor. In the secret places of her heart did she continue to feel hollow, and harbor the ache that comes with “remembrance of things past?”

I know there are others out there like Jackie, women impelled to stay cheerful, to turn a happy face to the world because the world needs laughter now, as much as it did when when our country was at war on two fronts and we watched calamity and courage march side-by-side toward a hope for that better tomorrow.

So, today I want to connect with their sorrow, acknowledge their inner struggles, and share my own. For, as war- wounded men are “a band of brothers” we are a band of sisters bound, in a truly singular way, by an abiding grief that stings, sometimes, even as we thank our God who blessed us with a bountiful gift of love. A love that warms us through and dries our tears, a love beyond time, and place.

And, having spoken of this, we may now embrace the silence, a silence of feeling, knowing, and healing.. A silence in which we cherish memories, beneath a sky that glows as brightly as our love, then, now, and always, a silence in which we may plan ways to be joyful. useful, and mindful of the needs of others.

Mary Cristy is a longtime contributor to the Town Crier. Her column runs the first week of every month.