Last spring, I wanted to show Diane that her rhododendrons had just bloomed in a spectacular pink arc on our front lawn, so I held her box of ashes close to the living room window framing the flowers she’d planted a few years ago.
I am not delusional. I don’t believe that some conscious part of my late wife remains in the cremated ashes and will blossom from the box like her flowers from the ground. I don’t expect to hear her voice say what she might have said in real life: “Bruce, I know you hate doing anything that might get you close to nature or expose you to buzzing bees, but you might want to go outside and water those flowers every once in a while.”
And yet, those are exactly the words I heard in my head.
Diane died from cholangiocarcinoma, a rare cancer of the liver bile ducts, two years ago after we had been married for 42 years. I’ve done what I needed to do to grieve her loss — everything from seeing a therapist to recreating my life as a single person. Nonetheless, Diane still exists in my mind. I talk to her every day, and even though I may be throwing my voice into hers like she was a ventriloquist’s dummy, she talks back. Part of me wants to find someone else to love, but that’s difficult to do given Diane’s appearances.
