Throw Out All the Rules

 

In Willcox, Arizona, 2021

Since my last post, life has brought more very difficult change, and it is with unspeakable sorrow that I write today to tell you that the Artist, David Paul Grath, the love of my life, died on Wednesday morning, March 2, just before 4 a.m. "Unspeakable" because unbelievable -- and yet I can't stop speaking of him and writing about him. You have read for years of our adventures together, and you have seen examples of his beautiful art. Here is the story of his last days. Some of you have already seen it on Facebook or received news from me in e-mail, but the Artist has been such an important presence on Books in Northport that it seems only fitting to post here, as well.

Following surgery in January at St. Joseph Hospital (Barrow Institute) in Phoenix, which followed a mild stroke and a COVID diagnosis earlier in the month, David had a second surgery at Chandler Regional Medical Center two weeks ago, on Wednesday, February 16. We expected, as did doctors, a fairly straightforward hiatal hernia repair, but the full story turned out to be much more complicated, surgery much more extensive. On Saturday night he became confused and finally unresponsive and was put on a ventilator and moved back to ICU, where I stayed with him all night Sunday-Monday, holding his hand. His daughter Maiya flew in late Monday.

The following Friday evening David woke from his coma, opened his eyes, nodded and wiggled his toes on command. I was so happy! Saturday and Sunday he was awake, aware, very responsive, and completely present. He was allowed only one visitor at a time, only two per day, so Maiya and I took turns. He loved holding hands with both of us, and every time he would squeeze my hand, I would tell him, “Thank you, sweetheart!” and he would nod. It looked as if things were going in a positive direction.

Monday was arduous, however, and that night he had a serious setback. The next morning he made it plain to me and to Maiya that he wanted the ordeal to be over. Since he had had conversations with his doctors before surgery, they understood clearly what he considered a bottom-line acceptable life, so while the ICU doctor had hoped to get him back to that level, he agreed after Monday night’s setback, given David’s clear communications to me and to Maiya and to nurses, that David could be taken off the ventilator and everything except pain meds stopped. Maiya and I never left his side, from 2 p.m. until 3:56 a.m., when he drew his last breath.

I deeply, truly feel that David woke from that coma for me and not for himself — and that he stayed as long as he did for Maiya and me. So many gifts! He had encouraged me, before his surgery, to get the puppy I’d found online, and to get her he had me take cash he’d set aside for an Italian motorcycle that had been tempting him for weeks! (“I don’t intend to ride it; I just want to have it,” he said, but finally he changed his mind and voted for the puppy instead.) The day following his surgery, when I took him a book of poems and another wrapped book for his birthday (which, as it turned out, he never opened, since he was in a coma by the time his birthday rolled around), he had me bring him his duffel bag so he could find a book he had been reading and inscribe it to me. The inscription is practically illegible, but he told me what it said. "Love returns always." I now think that love never leaves....

Best gift of all, though, were those squeezes of my hand, from Friday evening through Tuesday morning. So many times he would squeeze my hand and my eyes would fill with tears, and I would say, “Yes, yes, thank you, sweetheart!” and he would nod. Once I told him how sorry I was that he had had to suffer through so much that neither he nor I would ever have chosen, had we been able to foresee consequences of the surgery, and I asked, “Are you mad at me?” And he shook his head no and patted my hand in a comforting way. There was nothing but love between us. The greatest gift —

My heart is broken, but I have been blessed to have my life with David, so while I can’t stop crying and don’t know how I will go on without him, at the same time I know that I have been -- and in many ways continue to be -- a very lucky woman. Besides having the joy of each other for so long, David and I have also been blessed with famiy and friends, too, all along, and it means the world to me, especially now. So many of you have loved him, I know, and join me in both sorrow and in gratitude. It is unbelievable, all of it.

An outpouring of love and sympathy and support, the sharing of beautiful memories, meaningful conversations, and laughter has been filling my Facebook page. Since early this morning I have been sending messages and reading messages with tears streaming down my face, not knowing how I'll go on without the love of my life and at the same time -- it feels so strange! -- awash in gratitude for all the blessings he brought into my life, blessings that continue now, along with our love. I had not anticipated that I would feel gratitude in a time of such sorrow and grief. It is yet another gift from my beloved David, who has given me so much.

One Leelanau County friend, Mari Lee Raphael, shared a poem with me that I want to share here with all of you. 

Walking in Beauty Navajo Blessing way prayer In beauty I walk With beauty before me I walk With beauty behind me I walk With beauty above me I walk With beauty around me I walk It has become beauty again Hózhóogo naasháa doo. Shitsijí’ hózhóogo naasháa doo. Shikéédéé hózhóogo naasháa doo. Shideigi hózhóogo naasháa doo. T’áá altso shinaagóó hózhóogo naasháa doo. Hózhó náhásdlíí’. Hózhó náhásdlíí’. Hózhó náhásdlíí’. Hózhó náhásdlíí’ Today I will walk out, today everything negative will leave me I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body. I will have a light body, I will be happy forever, nothing will hinder me. I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me. I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me. I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful. In beauty all day long may I walk. Through the returning seasons, may I walk. On the trail marked with pollen may I walk. With dew about my feet, may I walk. With beauty before me may I walk. With beauty behind me may I walk. With beauty below me may I walk. With beauty above me may I walk. With beauty all around me may I walk. In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk. In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.

My words will be beautiful…

Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, 2017

As David and I liked to say of others who had gone before us, he himself "paid his rent in the universe" and "got his work done." The paintings will live on, as will the memories and the love.

When Does Summer End?

The official first day of autumn this year is September 22, making the 21^st the last official day of summer, but for many families of schoolchildren and for those whose traditional minds can’t help seeing Memorial Day and Labor Day as summer’s bookends, the season ended last weekend For some others (I heard them muttering!) the end came earlier, with a couple of summer vacationers in late August shivering in their jackets and sweatshirts, feeling that fall had arrived in northern Michigan before they got here. Isn’t that always the way, though? Beginnings and endings of seasons are not like doors opening and closing all at once. Any two adjacent seasons interpenetrate and play tug-o’-war for a while before settling down to the new one.

For many years, David and I used to take off for the U.P. the Tuesday after Labor Day. (Once we fled north on Labor Day itself but only had to learn that lesson once, sitting for hours in a long line of unmoving traffic during the annual Mackinac Bridge walk.) Northport, however, is livelier these days than it was a dozen years ago: no one is rolling up the sidewalks yet, a week into September, though there are more strolling older couples now than young families in town. Two years ago we didn’t make our getaway until October, and it was short then. So yes, there have been changes over the years, some more gradual than others.

But this year has been entirely different in one very important way, and that has been David’s one-man exhibition at the Dennos Museum Center in Traverse City. A career milestone for him, it has been the focus of the season for both of us, and that’s why my bookstore, open on Labor Day itself until 3:30, was closed the Wednesday following Labor Day when old friends from Kalamazoo came up to see the show.

Since David and I were at the museum before our friends, I took the opportunity to photograph the artist with several of his paintings (below), photographing individual paintings, also, and several more inclusive groupings (above). 

When they arrived, of course my camera and I were eager to capture David and our friends surrounded by his work.

I guess it rained a bit while we were in the museum. I didn’t notice. We toured the sculpture of Sally Rogers and the Inuit gallery, as well as David’s painting exhibit, explained the new additions underway, and our friends were quite impressed by the museum in general.

Tearing ourselves away at last, we adjourned to downtown and, creatures of habit, suggested to our friends Cafe Amical, an iconic Traverse City restaurant for (I’m going to say) 23 years. Our table was back by the fireplace, and so, again, I didn’t notice any rain until we left the restaurant to stroll up and down a couple blocks of Front Street and saw that the pavement was gleaming wet. Anyway, the rain had let up, and we had dry walking, and coming back east on the other side of the street, we stopped in at the old U&I (an even older landmark than Amical) for one last round of drinks and then strolled together to the big new parking structure down by the Park Place.

(It occurs to me that I’ll probably be saying “the new parking structure” as long as I live, just as the Civic Center, or whatever it’s called, will always be, to me, “the old fairgrounds.”)

Old friends! Time together! David’s beautiful show! One more Kalamazoo friend comes up on Friday, and then Saturday will be the last day of the exhibit, and we will go in Sunday to pack up the paintings, and that will be the close of summer for us. But oh, what a summer it has been! One for the memory book!