The Importance of Remembering

Anniversaries are sneaky. They lie low in the bushes of our lives pretending to be asleep or not even there until we walk by, and then they smack us from behind. Sometimes we don't even recognise the smack as coming from where it did until a bit later. I learned a new lesson about the power of emotion over body during the past 10 days.

On June 10, I spent the day pottering around the farm. I noticed the date and thought with a certain amount of pride (watch out for that stuff...always caused the Greeks problems) that this year I was taking it pretty well. June 10 is the anniversary of my husband's death, an occasion that changed my life and my children's lives irrevocably and with the impact of having a building fall on us. So to just be doing some gardening, go out for a ride, things like that on June 10 felt good. Foolishly, I thought to myself that I was really "getting over it".

Losing your partner isn't the sort of thing that you get over. You do get used to it. As a friend of mine told me not long ago, it never hurts less...it only hurts less often. I've gone through the anger, through the expectation of him walking in the door surprised that we weren't expecting him home from a trip unepectedly, through the sadness...well, some of the sadness. Now the loss is more like an old friend.

So how did I get smacked? About the 12th I noticed an itchy eye which on closer examination was a stye, an inflammation on my eyelid. A stye? I haven't had one of those in years. Styes are a sign that your immune system is on the blink and for the life of me I couldn't imagine why. Then all of a sudden I had a sore throat and fuzzy tongue. Thrush? Another immune system warning bell. Neither of these things have been life threatening, just unbelievably irritating, and easily treated. I found myself extremely tired as well, to the point of taking an unplanned 6 hour nap one day.

It was only around dawn today that I suddenly woke up and made the connection. Sure, consciously I'd slid by June 10, but that didn't mean that my unconscious didn't notice. For many years I used to get incredibly cranky and argumentative right after New Year's Day and each year I had to remember consciously that this was the anniversary of my father's death. My mother died slowly and there never really was a particular date associated with her passing, so I never noticed the phenomenon with her death. At any rate, having realised that not taking the time consciously to recognise the day ended up with me paying for a week or so, I've decided to pay more attention to these things from now on. This is probably the reason for many of the ceremonial anniversary observances. It keeps things out of the bushes.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Laying Ghosts

Five years ago, June 9 was a Friday. The school year was just about over, my son was home from his first year of college, and the children were sleeping late in the house in Maadi. Five years ago I decided to slip out of the house early to go take my favourite mare for a ramble in the countryside since the desert was going to be much too hot, so I got up early, stopped by Greco for a latte, and drove out to Morad's place where my horses were stabled then. Some of my neighbours had gone out into the desert (yes, mad dogs and horsemen!), and were meeting for breakfast at Morad's aunt and uncle's house down the road, so I let myself be distracted by good company and laughter over a leisurely breakfast with friends. A country breakfast of fava beans, boiled eggs, salty white cheese, bread and coffee can last for hours and by the time we'd finished the sun was fairly high in the sky. Magdy and Janie had people drop by and the morning moved on into afternoon as we sat in the shade in their garden gossiping, chatting over the news of the day, planning equestrian events, and doing autopsies on events just past.

Around 3 pm I decided that if I was going to ride, I'd better get busy and I walked back to the stables at Morad's to get Dory ready to go. We started out alone and headed north along the canal in the shade of the huge eucalyptus trees that line the road. The dusty road was almost empty at that hour on a Friday. Friday is the main day off work for people in Egypt, and 3 pm is prime siesta time on a Friday afternoon. Dory and I had the world to ourselves. The kingfishers divebombed fish in the canal while the cattle egrets and the white egrets looked up at us on the trail occasionally as they gulped down minnows and frogs from the banks. The crows only grumbled quietly in the tops of the eucalyptus trees. Even the birds were taking time off. Sleepy village dogs couldn't be bothered to jump up from their shady spots to bark at us and just barely lifted their heads to growl.

In the heat I chose a path that kept us in as much shade as possible so we worked our way north along the canal to the asphalt road that goes from Shubramint to the desert dump for Giza. Even on a Friday the enormous trucks were moving in and out of the desert carrying the waste for the city out and bringing sand and gravel for construction in. The intersection (if it can really be called that) of this road and the Mansoureya Road is always crowded with vehicles and workers. Some enterprising individuals have set up tea shops along the road under the trees where drivers can stop for a cup of the black baladi tea and something to eat while they stretch their legs out on the woven mats that mark the area of the "shop". Some horses would find making their way through the trucks and cars intimidating, but Dory doesn't find anything intimidating anymore. She does her own looking at oncoming traffic and responds to the slightest touch from me to adjust her path around these enormous vehicles trailing streams of sand and dust.

Just before we arrived at the intersection, I placed a call to Germany. My husband had flown his Beechcraft C90 there the day before and was planning on returning that evening. I caught him as he was on the tarmac in Augsberg doing a final check on the plane before taking off. We chatted, the usual sorts of things said between people who have been partners for about 25 years, and then I asked when he expected to arrive in Cairo. I was to have the driver go to the airport at about 11 pm unless I got a phone call from Greece where he might stop to refuel if necessary. Yes sir. No problem and have a good flight. Be careful. He'd been working much too hard lately and I was happy to hear that he'd slept late that morning. Dory and I negotiated the traffic as I finished my call to Germany, and we headed on down another shady dirt road on our rather indirect way home.

That was the last time I spoke to the man that I loved more than my own life. The next morning I was a widow facing challenges that I could not even imagine at the time and my children had lost their guide, their protector, their tyrant, their father. The greyness that I remember of the morning of June 10 might not have been there in reality but it was so much there in my being that the shreds of it linger today. Five years ago I had no idea that I would be plunged into financial and corporate chaos so horrific that I wouldn't even have a moment to consider what his loss meant to me as a woman. Five years later the chaos is down to mere confusion at times, I'm out of the corporate quagmire for the most part, and I've had time to consider my loss in the peace of my home in the country. That isn't really such a blessing, I guess.

I woke this morning to the calling of the parrots and the crowing of the rooster who shares the flight cages with his little harem of hens. One of the dogs was barking at someone passing by on his way to the fields and the sparrows were arguing as usual outside my bedroom window. I shoved a dog off my foot and recognised the enormous crater where my heart used to be, and I realised that I have to come to terms with my life alone. I've had to make a trade for the quiet of the country that I love for the excitement of never knowing what fascinating plan that man would come up with next. My life now is much calmer, less stressful, but I miss the electricity, I miss the confusion, I miss the anticipation that was so much a part of it before. I miss waking up next to a large warm body that isn't a Great Dane pup who has sneaked onto the bed at night.

My life goes on. Friends have asked after me and pointed out that I've been alone for five years. Isn't it enough? Have I thought of moving on, of finding a new partner? I've realised over the past few weeks as I've reflected on this anniversary that I haven't been ready for anyone new in my life. I still haven't said good-bye. When I finished my phone call to Germany, I said "I'll see you soon." I think I've been expecting to all this time, but I know now that it isn't going to happen. Yes, I need to finally say good-bye. I need to let it go and perhaps the empty place inside will fill again. But it is so terribly hard to say.