It's hard to remember my first year after Al died. I lived so much of it by rote. As Emily Dickinson put it, "The feet, mechanical, go round--/Of Ground, or Air, or Ought--/A wooden way/Regardless grown,/A Quartz contentment, like a stone--."
I didn't recognize the shock that enveloped me, but nearly four years since his death I see that it kept me upright and steady, like braces for a falling body. It kept me busy too. I went to work every day and taught my four writing and literature courses. I went out with friends every weekend, obeying the small voice inside that warned against isolation. I signed up for a three-month meal delivery service in an effort to fill in part of the nurturing that Al had offered whole-heartedly as the head cook and take-out planner.
I enlarged my favorite photographs of Al to display in my office, city apartment, and the rooms of my house. Thinking back, I suppose I overdid it, displaying pictures everywhere, but it's just one of the ways that being married to Al changed me. When we first met, I was struck by all of the pictures of family members and friends that he had on his apartment walls. I had been raised to be private, and I took those values to the extreme. Here was a man who went to the other extreme. When I first saw all of his pictures of far-off relatives and friends, both present and past, I was reminded of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Rich Boy" about an unfullfilled man who substitutes photographs for relationships.
I remember doubting whether the guy I was just beginning to know had any more potential than the character in the story. Despite my literary allusions I must admit I carried a sort of Good Housekeeping checklist for potential mates in my head that left no room for my instincts or Al's originality. But I saw things in Al that convinced me to ignore the deeply-ingrained, simplistic warning signs of an unpromising match and kept me moving forward together with him. In fact, if it wasn't too much of an oversimplification, I'd say that over the years he showed me how to let go, and I showed him how to hold on. In his honor I will not attempt to edit that dangling preposition.
And it was in his honor too, that I chose to exhibit photographs of him, of him and me, of him and various nieces and nephews, and of him and Star all over the place. He had put an enlarged photo of the two of us out in the dining room after he had gotten sick, and I remember demuring at the time, but not much. After he died, I nailed it to the wall. It's still there.
One of the photos I enlarged for display was taken on our honeymoon in Hawaii in 1993. It's a close-up of Al that I shot. He took a good picture. He is sitting cross-legged on a hillside. His runner's legs and muscular arms are tanned and shapely. He isn't smiling and he's starting pointedly at the camera. He is wearing a hot pink baseball cap that he never would have chosen for himself. He wore it for me because I loved how it set off his hazel eyes.
Al was 55 when we married, and it was his first marriage. It was my second at 44. I had been decidedly single since I was 29. Even though we had been together for the five previous years, we were both wary at the beginning of our honeymoon and still guarding our illusions of independence. Tying the knot had pushed us into high alert for a few tense days until I realized what was happening and clued him in during a calm moment. We both pretty much settled down after that and enjoyed ourselves. But I loved that picture because it showed him in all of his masculine glory just as he was deciding to compromise his ideals of masculine colors--mostly blues and grays, definitely not hot pink.
I had taken the second picture too, on the deck of the house that we bought in 1998. Al is kneeling on one knee with one arm around Star, our standard, and the other holding a rifle that he used for target practice. I admit that I was as attracted to his marksmanship as I was repelled by the gun. Despite the weapon he gripped with his dominant left hand, his expression had gentled in the five years since we had married. I don't think I've often seen emotion portrayed quite so potently in a photograph, except for some stills taken of actors playing their film roles. I once heard the actor Giancarlo Giannini say after a viewing of Seven Beauties that a good actor knows how to punch out the camera lens, and that statement aptly describes Al's energy, but he wasn't acting. The authenticity of Al's emotions come through in the picture just as it did in his life. People knew if they wanted to hear a blunt and intelligent perception of truth, they could come to Al. And those who didn't want to hear it stayed away, because he didn't hold back.
Al was one of those rare people who had the ability to lend the camera a piece of his spirit. Even today as I write while looking at this photo, his powerful essence comes back to me and quickens my heartbeat. Back in 1998 when I got back the developed shot, I was struck by how much his compelling gaze sent a lifeline beyond the frame and lovingly made me a part of the picture.
In 2007 after he died, I reached for those pictures for the same reasons I ordered a meal delivery service. I needed to keep up the illusion that he was still physically present and seeing to our material needs. Even now, although I'm conscious of the impression all of our pictures must make on guests to my home (I know what I'd think if I visited someone's house and saw what amounts to a shrine in the public rooms), I haven't changed any of them yet. I like keeping the tension going between his extroversion and my private ways. The tension keeps him alive to me as much as the pictures themselves do. It reminds me of how, over our years together, we had surrendered our individual ways for something far more wonderful, even as I begin to wean myself from him.
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