Why I Can't Stop Thinking About The Song "If Ever I Would Leave You."

My husband died suddenly on 9 February 2009.  He wasn't sick.  We'd had a lovely day together.  We kissed and he put his arm around me.  I put my head in its usual place, his shoulder.  We always went to sleep that way.  We woke up each morning in various positions but to go to sleep, we were always in an embrace.  He was the type who fell asleep almost instantly every night.  I tend towards insomnia.  Abruptly his breathing changed and i flipped on the light.  911. EMT's.  Hospital.  Then the somber faces and nurses on either side in case I collapsed.

I'm having a hard time with grief.  I don't like it at all.  It hurts.  It's lonely.  I feel so lost without him.  I know how to be alone.  I tend to be a loner anyway.  But I had found him and he'd found me.  We were so very content to be loners together.  Now I'm struggling, not to fill time, but to find the pieces of my broken heart.  I've heard that I'm supposed to "redefine" myself as "a new person who is independent and single and fierce."  I was already defined. Not by him but by who I was already.  He just added to me and we complimented each other.  If what I'm supposed to take from death is to remake myself into a new person, I want him back.  I am independent.  And while I am alone now I am definitely not single.  I am not fierce.  I'm lonely for him.  I miss him.

I attened my widow's group last ngiht.  There were nine of us present.  Of the nine, my grief was the freshest by at least ten months but it was by no means the rawest.  There were two women there who were greatly affected by my tears.  My intense grief drew out of them that, though each had been widows for over two years, they were not really doing any better than they had been during the first six months.  All three of us found that we filled the silence of our homes with music.  Which leads me to this song that came to me and I paid the 99 cents to download it to my computer.

"If Ever I Would Leave You" from the film Camelot.  I've always liked that film and the songs but now, that particular song has me frozen where I am, gripped by each word.  It's a beautiful song that Lancelot sings to Guenevere.  As Franco Nero, or Robert Goulet, whichever is your preference, lists the seasons in song I remember the seasons individually as I saw them with my husband.

"If ever I would leave you
It wouldn't be in summer.
Seeing you in summer I never would go.
Your hair streaked with sun-light,
Your lips red as flame,
Your face with a lustre
that puts gold to shame!"

My husband and I were always outside walking the rocks, the beaches, combing for treaaures that the ocean had tossed up.  His hair had gotten more white and it glinted in the sun.  His lips were hidden by his beard that I loved so I can't say they were "red as flame" but his skin would brown so dark.  He was fearless cimbing over the rocks and his smile was that of a man remembering the freedoms of a boy with the kind of forever in front of him that only summer can hint at.  He was so joyful in summer.  His aches and pains abated with the warmth.  I can close my eyes and see his smile and hear his laugh.  I would not want to miss a single summer day, or night, with him.

"But if I'd ever leave you,
It couldn't be in autumn.
How I'd leave in autumn I never will know.
I've seen how you sparkle
When fall nips the air.
I know you in autumn
And I must be there."

Autumn in New England.  It can take your breath away at times.  It can be spiritual when you're out walking the paths through forests of such color that you feel a reverence for the Supreme Being (or botony if that's you inclination) that created it.  He'd be in his jacket and his legs would eat up the ground to get to that spot he'd found the other day and I just had to see.  He would be excited with that bite in the air and the promise of much colder air.  Did we dare walk deeper in?  Further out?  Farther away from home?  Yes, we always did because he was an adventurer at heart and I was his loving companion.  Autumn would be another horrible time to be apart form him.  The leaves would fall and he wouldn't be there to laugh at me when I kicked them up in the air or dragged my feet through them.

"And could I leave you
running merrily through the snow?
Or on a wintry evening
when you catch the fire's glow?"

Winter.  The falling snow or the threat, or the aftermath.  We braved all the storms for pictures.  We'd be two people out there but with only one set of footprints in the snow.  He'd break trail.  I'd follow taking pictures.  Such patience for me.  Such care for me.  Was I getting cold?  Were my gloves wet?  How were my feet?  Wasn't I glad he'd made me put on that extra sweater?  At night the house would fill with stew simmering on the wood stove.  We'd turn out the lights after supper and open the curtains.  Sometimes there would be this mysterious glow to the snowfall.  A few times we'd see green lightning in the clouds, as if dragons were fighting up in the storm.  Winter would never be a time I would leave him.

"If ever I would leave you,
How could it be in spring-time?
Knowing how in spring I'm bewitched by you so?
Oh, no! not in spring-time!
Summer, winter or fall!
No, never could I leave you at all!"

Sping in New England was magical.  Snow in patches on the ground yet green bursting forth.   And if that random snow squall filled the air with furious flakes, we'd hurry outside to revel in the incongruity of it all.  Winter was over and we could go outside and stay longer and longer, and then it was summer again.  Spring was mother's day and Easter and the begining of life anew.  No, I would not want to be without him in Spring.

But I am.  He died in Winter and now it's Spring.   I'll have Memorial Day alone to think of him and his service to his country.  All his stories of the Marine Corps will play in my head and I'll have to bear that weight.  Then Summer and the Fourth of July, and then August and his birthday and our anniversary.  How do I get through it?  As best I can doing what I want, or NOT doing what I DON'T want to do.  And then Autumn and Halloween.  My pirate won't put on his costume for the chidlren who come to our door.  I'll have to carve the pumpkins and roast the seeds.  Too much salt?  He's not here to slap at his hands as he shakes on too much.

"How can I leave you at all?"  It was you who had to go.