Goodbye
How does one get over the loss of his best friend, wife, and soul mate? I’m not sure I will ever totally be over Claudia. She was a special woman with so many wonderful qualities that it would be impossible to list them all.
The memorial service was held at a beautiful place called Descanso Gardens. Claudia never made it there, but I often walked its many pathways taking pictures of roses and flowers and plants so she could enjoy them as well. I think, through me, she loved the gardens as much as I did.
Eighty people filled that room. Coworkers from Trader Joe’s came. Jim Frankel, our minister and one of my best friends, delivered the sermon. He and his wife Jeannie had supported me throughout the ordeal of her illness. The sermon made me cry, as it summed up perfectly our beliefs about where Claudia was now. She had moved on to another life.
My sister and her husband flew down from out of state. They held me. They cried with me. They stayed close the whole afternoon, making sure I had someone nearby when the waves of grief hit. That’s what family is supposed to do.
My parents drove down from Lake Arrowhead.
We had been estranged for almost a decade. I don’t know what made them come. Obligation, maybe. The sense that this was something you show up for regardless of history. We spoke briefly. A quick hug, that kind of thing. There was no warmth. No “I’m sorry.” No “We should have been there for you.” Just the mechanical gestures of people who used to be family. The wall that had stood between us for years didn’t come down just because my wife had died.
It was the last time I ever saw them.
Then it was my turn to speak. I agonized over what to wear, but finally decided Claudia would like to see me as she always saw me.
I stood up and said:
Thank you all for coming.
Claudia was my friend. She was my wife, she was my soul mate, and she was my best friend. And I’ve been blessed more than most people, because I actually found my friend, my best friend, and my soul mate in the same person.
I met Claudia in 1993. She was my spiritual counselor, the first one in my religion. The first day I saw her I didn’t like her, simply because she had an accent and I didn’t understand her. Within five minutes, I was in love with her. Totally head over heels.
That was the kind of woman she was.
She counseled me, and a couple of months later we met again when we went on a date to the beach. Then we went on a date a few days later to Wendy’s. Beautiful Wendy’s. A very romantic place.
I decided she was going to be mine. “Claudia dear,” I said, “how would you like to get married?” She said, “Sure, when?”
Now, me being either very smart or very stupid, said, “How about now?” What I didn’t know is we were in a room full of ministers. She turned around and said “Earl.” So I was stuck. I was on the hook, I couldn’t back out.
As fate turns out, that’s the day we consider our wedding day. But I made the mistake of calling my best friend, who stood up and said, “I have an objection to this wedding. They don’t even know each other.”
So I spent the next few days calming down my best friend. Then we had our wedding. Then we found out we needed a marriage license. Then we had a wedding again. Then the minister lost the marriage license and we had another one. After the fourth wedding, Claudia turned to me and said, “I’m not marrying you again. This is it.”
So that’s how we met and that’s how we got married.
The years went by. Claudia continued her spiritual counseling. She went there at eight in the morning and left late at night, and she helped a lot of people. She helped people in their depths and she helped raise them up. That was her job.
Then she got sick. Asthma. She got sicker and sicker.
Claudia and I had a relationship where we joked a lot. One of the things we joked about was other women. She told me, “I don’t care who you fool around with, as long as it’s not a blonde.”
Of course I had no interest in that at all, but she said whoever it is, it’s fine, as long as she’s not a blonde.
Nine years ago she went into a coma and went into the hospital. She was on the machines. I was there and the machine started to flatline. I said, okay, what do I do?
“Dear, if you die I am marrying a blonde.”
That machine went wild. True story. She heard me. She came back. That’s the kind of relationship we had. She recovered from that and we moved on.
I’ll always remember the sparkle in her eyes and the helping she did with people. Even when she was too sick to leave the apartment because the asthma made it impossible to get down the stairs, she got on the internet and started her own women’s group called Women With A Unique Soul. She helped 200 women with their problems and their issues. That’s the kind of woman she was.
Two weeks before she died, Claudia started to get sick again. I thought it was the usual thing. She had asthma and she took her drugs and had the usual reaction. Then she asked me something I didn’t think much about at the time.
“If I die, will you marry somebody else?”
I said no.
“Well, it’s okay with me. I want you to be happy, so please marry a blonde.”
I didn’t think about it. Two weeks later she was gone. That’s the kind of woman she was. She wished all of us to be happy and all of us to be well. Wherever she is now, I’m sure she picked up doing the same thing, because that’s what she is. A helping being.
I wish her peace.
On Sunday, February 20th, 2005, my stepson, a friend, and I traveled to Catalina Island to scatter Claudia’s ashes in the ocean. I chose Catalina because Claudia loved the ocean and the beach, and because that’s the same place we scattered her mother’s ashes in 2000.
I rented a boat and a man to drive it. We drove to the port of Long Beach, a heavy marble urn in hand containing her ashes. The weight of it surprised me every time I picked it up. This was Claudia now. This cold stone container holding powder and fragments. Twelve and a half years of marriage, reduced to something I could carry in my arms.
The weather was terrible, with rain and storms forecast for days. It turned out to be one of the worst storms in recent memory, but I had already paid for the boat. No refunds. So I was going to do it. Besides, I wanted the finality. I needed this to be over. I needed to let her go.
We took the hydrofoil to Catalina Island and went over to the boat. It was pouring rain with lots of wind. We were in a boat smaller than the USS Minnow, getting tossed all over the place. Waves slammed against the hull. Spray soaked us through our jackets. My stomach churned. My stepson looked green. The man driving the boat looked like he was questioning his life choices.
I held the urn tight against my chest, terrified I would drop it, terrified the sea would take her before I was ready to let go.
Then suddenly the skies cleared.
Just like that. One moment we were in the middle of a nightmare, rain lashing sideways, the boat pitching and rolling. The next moment the clouds broke apart and sunlight poured through. The water calmed. The wind dropped to nothing.
I opened the urn.
I tried to say something. I don’t remember what. The words wouldn’t come. Twelve and a half years. Eight of them watching her fight for every breath. The blonde jokes. The four weddings. The way she laughed. The way she helped everyone who crossed her path. All of it was in my throat, choking me.
I poured the ashes into the water.
They spread across the surface in a gray cloud, then slowly began to sink. I was crying so hard I could barely see. This was it. This was goodbye. This was the moment when she stopped being my wife and became a memory.
We drove away. I couldn’t stop looking back.
And then I saw them. Hundreds of birds lifting off the water in a spiral that rose up into the sky. They circled and climbed, higher and higher, until they disappeared into the light.
My stepson put his hand on my shoulder. “Look, Dad. They’re taking her to heaven.”
I couldn’t speak. I just watched until there was nothing left to see.
That year had the biggest and best wildflower bloom in the desert in recorded history. Flowers were everywhere. I drove through Joshua Tree and there were flowers on the right and left, the landscape thick with color. Purple lupines, orange poppies, yellow desert marigolds. The desert was carpeted with them from the Colorado River to the sea.
Something pulled me toward that landscape. The same desert where my father used to take me camping as a boy, the only place I ever saw him as a truly good person. Now my father was a stranger who had shown up at my wife’s memorial and offered a hug with no warmth. And Claudia was ashes scattered in the Pacific, carried to heaven by birds.
I packed my camera, filled my canteens, and started hiking.