Monthly Archives: September 2025

Missing Parts

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I broke down and went looking for stuff on the internet. Almost everything out there is aimed at women – widows as opposed to widowers. I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense given that women tend to live longer. Usually. Except when they don’t.

People keep asking how I am. How the hell do you answer that? I’ve taken to saying “I’m still here…”

One of the things that I’ve struggled to put into words about this massive loss is a lack of intimacy. Not just sex stuff. While that is ‘intimate’ that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about all the little things of a shared life. Tiny moments from every day. Shared life experience that’s not there with anyone else. Even when Beck was sick and couldn’t do much she was here. I could sit and smile and hold her hand while we talked about dumb shit we used to do. She knew every part of me and I knew every part of her. We spent more than 30 years having dinners, going to the gas station, having fancy nights out or throwing parties (then clinging to each other at the end). That is gone now and it hurts – more than I ever understood what hurting could mean. I’m a fucking wreck just typing this. I haven’t cried in decades until this summer. Now I can’t stop. Everyone tells me that’s expected but that answer doesn’t help. I don’t have my person – the one who was always there for stuff like this.

I asked at one point, “Who will I travel with now?” and friends pointed to my daughter. I know I am biased, but I’m going to say it anyway – my daughter is a delight. I love her like mad and going places with her is great. While being great is true, it’s not the same as being able to take a romantic vacation to a mountainside in Tennessee. It’s not the same as waking up with somebody in a beach hotel and wandering down to a brunch with crepes and mimosas because you’re going to stay in and just be with each other all day. This is all of the intimate crushed up into a condensed time frame. Going out someplace new and creating new memories.

As my wife continued with her health struggles over the years the adventures changed in tone and type. They were less active and more thoughtful. Things we didn’t do for various reasons, but we were still out there. It was us against the world, wherever in the world we were. She struggled, but we were together. Toward the end Beck’s conversations tended to be less conversational, and she became all but a shut in. Her ability to walk deteriorated under mysterious circumstances and she spent a lot of time in her chair in the living room. She was still here.

I would take any day of that for any price right now. I am missing part of me and I don’t know how to fix it. Like any wound, I suspect it will heal over time. I’m just not sure how long that will be. Eventually I hope to post more regularly here – but I don’t have any spirit to get there right now. We’ll see.

Powerful

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I have told a number of people over time that I am a true child of media. The MTV generation for sure. I have this weird collection of film clips and quotes stuck in my head that pop up all the time in reference to other things.

An example is from Conan The Barbarian, the 1982 film with Arnold and James Earl Jones. The ‘riddle of steel’ scene always stuck with me. “What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?” They call it the power of flesh, but it is about the people and how they’re connected.

Rebecca, in her life, wielded great power. She wasn’t interested in being some kind of cult leader, she just knew that people needed to be together. She connected with people, sometimes even when they didn’t particularly feel like they wanted it. Sometimes when they didn’t feel they deserved it. She was direct and clear about who she was, and brought that to her relationships as well. People were drawn to her.

On the day of Rebecca’s celebration of rememberance a stranger to all of us walked in. He introduced himself and gave me a card with a letter inside. I was stunned. Here was a man who had been walking past the funeral home and saw the announcement of the celebration by chance. As it turned out, he did know Rebecca. 36 years ago Rebecca saw somebody who needed a friend and extended her power. She reached out to a ‘loner’ and made such an impression that decades later she was important to him.

I’m sharing the (slightly redacted) letter here because I think it’s important to speak to the power of connecting with people. Rebecca was special in that way, and we need her kind of power more than ever now. Reach out to people. Connect. Show your love. Take those chances. It might matter more than you will ever know.