Essay

NOTES FROM AFAR June 2005

Steve Heimbuch died in March.

He was my ex-husband and the father of John Heimbuch, my only child.

His death was a surprise, in that death always catches us off guard, and not a surprise, in that Steve had been trying to manage diabetes for some time without health insurance. Heart attack, the medical examiner finally decided. Seems right.

Steve, when I first met him, was the tall, dark and handsome type. He was also the strong, silent type. Almost the only strong, silent type in a ski club full of non-stop talkers. It was charmingly appealing. He had a great smile and told funny jokes.

His death challenged me, first of all, with feelings of death being too close personally. Although I liked to play child-bride, we really were almost the same age, and certainly of the same generation. Steve's death brought back for me all the feelings I had when my younger brother Janny died in 1983. These are members of MY generation meeting death. Too close for comfort, this fear.

Deeper than fear was reliving the sadness I felt when we ended our marriage. Prior to our separation, I had spent a year trying to hate him enough to leave, but I could not. I could not scream, "I hate you, get out!" I wanted to, but it was not true. I thought hate would make divorce easier for my Catholic self - and my Catholic parents - to accept.

In the end, I said to him, with deep sadness, "I love you, but I don't want to live like this."

When I left our marriage, I felt I failed him. On some level I still do. Perhaps my idealism about marriage is too codependent, too profoundly ingrained and too unrealistic. However much I sometimes think I have outgrown my Catholic roots, Catholic guilt and Catholic shame, they still sneak in - informing my attitudes, and often my decisions.

Steve's funeral was held during the Christian Holy Week, an apt time for a funeral if ever there was one. The altar at St. Andrew's Lutheran in Eden Prairie was properly adorned with mournful purple and tall barren trees in pots, representing Lent and winter about to spring into Easter and a new cycle of birth and growth.

It didn't bother me at all that Pastor Rod, a very married man, somewhat made it sound as if Steve's happiest days were when he was married to me. Perhaps they were. Studies say men are happier married than they are single. Who am I to say?

Back in Los Angeles afterwards, on Holy Saturday in the Christian calendar, I drove up Pacific Coast Highway to Paradise Cove Beach Restaurant. I ordered the full-cholesterol breakfast Steve and I enjoyed on so many cowboy road trips to South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, and our ski trips to Lutsen, Spirit Mountain and Indianhead. Sausage, eggs, hashbrowns, toast with real butter and coffee with cream.

Overlooking the wide Pacific beach with its enduring surf, and wide flat-line horizon, I wondered about my life with Steve, my life after Steve and the bonds that form when two people create and share a child.

Rest in Peace, Steve. The best gift anyone ever gave me is the child I received from you. May we meet again under sunny blue skies.

[Copyright ©2005 Reprinted with permission of Minnesota Mensagenda]