Jean Lewis, ten years gone

 

February 17, 2023

    If you want to visit Jean these days, find your way to Lafayette CA, then take Taylor Blvd to Grayson, turn west toward the hills, and drive through the arched gates of Oakmont Memorial Park. Continue up the steep hill, then take the first right, going east toward Mt. Diablo. Loop around the Tranquility Mausoleum, then park a few headstone rows up in the shade of the big oak tree. There are five Pico family graves in the two rows on either side of that tree, and you'll find Jean's on the left. February 17, 2023, is her tenth yahrzeit. 

    I always say hello before reaching the oak tree. She never fails to make time for me. Yes, I do realize it's all in my imagination. But when I tell her what's been going on, there's that feeling of release you get when finally talking real. After giving my report — today's was about home improvement projects and relationships – I read her a poem — today's was The Buddha's Last Instruction by Mary Oliver. "Make of yourself a light," Buddha says to the frightened crowd, gathered to hear his final words. Like, be a candle in the wind. One can try.

    There's something lurking behind the report and the poem. Kinda like in that movie The Sixth Sense. A boy named Cole can talk to the dead, which include his grandparents. They tell him that the answer to the question his mom asks when she visits their grave is "every day."  When his mom Lynn finds out about his ability, he tells her what her parents say, and wants to know what that question is. Lynn says she always asks them if they're proud of her.

    To be clear, Jean's approval is only an aspirational goal. My ask from our conversations is usually just her forbearance, not her pride. A couple of years after she passed, she told me what she wanted from me going forward: be gentle, be brave. And hey, guess what, many times I'm neither. But I do acknowledge the needs, and want her to know that.

    I never plead for her blessing, but it does seem as if an angel spread protective wings in my vicinity. My younger son Sam has been clean and sober for over seven years. During that same time, my older son Gabe launched a career; my big sister Gale, who had been isolated by schizophrenia, reconnected with her children; and my grandson Nate, who ignored his middle school teachers, discovered the joys of computer programming after starting high school.

   And my own life could be worse, it could easily be over: covid killed millions of geezers like me. But last semester I resumed my evening BART/bike commute to SFSU. Besides teaching, that means carrying a bike up and down six flights of BART stairs, and riding down and up a long, steep hill in San Francisco. Ok for a 72-year-old? And the department chair hasn't yet called me in for a little chat about retirement.

    There are stories where Jean shines through clearly. Like the time in the summer of 2001 that she accompanied me to a job fair, mostly just to bolster my morale while I scrounged for work. But she also brought some of her tech editor consultant cards to distribute, just in case any side gigs came her way — the woman had a family to support. She tried giving her card to one of the exhibitors, who dismissed her coldly by saying that the company did not use technical editors. Jean took the exhibitor's flyer, and returned it a few minutes later with several typos circled and her business card attached. Whether or not you believe in her presence now, in life she was a supernaturally talented editor.

    And there are others that need more backstory than most readers have patience for. But can't resist. A few weeks after the job fair, we walked along the Alameda beach at sunset, listening to Garrison Keillor do one of his reports from Lake Woebegone. This one was about a married couple's venture into the pig farm business. The twosome slaved and saved, bought a farm, and then an epidemic wiped out the passel. Nothing to do but bury the pigs. After the show ended and it got dark we walked back to our place on Park Avenue. End of story.

    The backstory actually isn't long.

    In April, Jean's embryo implant pregnancy ended with a miscarriage. We had started an escalating series of fertility treatments soon after our wedding in 1998, and this was the last straw. An especially sharp disappointment for Jean, who did not have children of her own, and felt she had wasted her prime childbearing years in a long-term relationship that never made it to the altar.

    Shortly before the miscarriage, I'd been fired from my software developer job. I had taken it the year before, in hopes of doing more coding than was possible at BofA. Working evenings and weekends for free had not been enough to keep management happy. I packed my cubicle into a cardboard box, and Jean picked me up outside the building.

    Unlike Jean I did have children, both then at Berkeley High. I volunteered in the school's computer lab in hopes of getting to see them, but never did. My unemployment payments came to less than my child support, and we lived paycheck-to-paycheck. So instead of having her own child, Jean found herself supporting me, and two children she never saw. Looking back now, she must have had friends telling her "girlfriend, walk away quickly and don't look back!" But she never complained about money. In June I asked the teacher who ran the computer lab about getting tickets to my older son's graduation, and she told me to talk to her friend in the principal's office. Said friend must have been schooled on divorced dad handling, because she glared at me hatefully and snarled "Just pay your child support!"  Should have come back with "I can't, but my wife does." But if my brain worked that fast I wouldn't have been unemployed in the first place.

    There's also a little front story.

    The most important thing about the Lake Woebegone report was the ending 'tude. When the couple buried the pigs, neither blamed the other for the stupid pig farm idea. And "burying the pigs" became our code phrase for acknowledging failure with stoic elan.

    Shortly after our beach walk, my old BofA manager phoned me. "It's the same old shit," she said, "but you can have your old job back if you want it." Definitely. The 9/11 attacks did not prevent me from restarting at BofA in October, and then buying a house replaced conceiving a child as our big project. In April we bought our cozy little Victorian cottage on Wood St, and settled in for the great years of deep marriage.