Back Flash


The nip in the air at the ebb of day swirls memories in me with each subtle rustle of the leaves on the Jacarandas, Sycamores and Moreton Bay Fig trees, which crowd street edgings and peek between buildings on my walk downtown.

Jack is thick in me tonight. I pass innumerable haunts of our time together, coffee shops where we tried to find the perfect muffin for him and scone for me, the building where he used to teach his acting classes, benches for a moment to rest on our wanderings around San Diego.

I’ve strolled this way a few times by myself since he died, and often the light sweetness of those moments spent, add a bounce to my step. But this twilight time has brought on a condensed soup of dark emotions clogging my heart. I gasp for breath, the tears ragged in my throat. And I realize I am experiencing a Back Flash.

I am transported to a moment in my past with Jack, three months before he died. We have just returned from a trip to a wellness clinic in Mexico where we spent 4 days exploring alternative methods to deal with his health challenges. The trip was a strange mix of strict diet, high tech tests and downing supplements and wheat grass, all in a paradise setting overlooking the Pacific ocean with winding walk ways and palm trees swaying.

His anger-crusted fear about being ill had gotten the best of me. I had tried to hum through his need to tongue lash the doctors. Enter the dining room a few minutes later, so as not to hear his on-going complaint with the kitchen staff about how he needed more protein then they were willing to serve. His approach to dealing with things had always been at odds with mine. He had a Bronx brashness and I, timid “good Catholic girl” rigidity. That oppositeness of him was a major attraction for me. I know throughout our relationship, I relied on that
“ New York attitude” in many circumstances where I was too shy of confrontation to be effective. And yet as it seems to be the case for me, sometimes I wanted him to tone it down a bit.

We came home scared about what the doctors said, happy to eat whatever we craved and encapsulated in our separate scenarios of what the future would bring. I pulled in and away. I was polite and helpful on the outside, but inwardly seething with each breath he exhaled. And in that moment of withdrawal, I knew that a day would come when I would regret this decision. I had been through the death of one husband already. I had spent many hours crying with regret about attitudes I had held, posturing I had performed, and victim hood that seemed so important at the time. And yet in that moment with Jack, I just couldn’t offer more. I became mute. Jack and I found our footing again but I held in my heart that I had wasted precious moments.

Here I am walking toward downtown San Diego on a night of such God-touched beauty and I am feeling wrenched. I am living the moment I knew would come back then when I chose to be mute. My Back Flash is complete. My longing for Jack is overwhelming and I can only repeat over and over in a quiet muttering to myself as I walk, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I wasted a second of my limited time with you.”

It is then that I look down a side street to the east and in the dusk gathering sky, see the full moon. She is round and luminance and so low to the ground, as if she is a silver play ball. I stop and say my usual greeting each time I see the moon, “Hello Moon. How are you tonight?”

As if my greeting is part of a child’s playground ball bouncing singsong, I hear her respond to me, “I’m fine, but how are you?”

And this moment, I realize that one reason back then that I became mute was to brace myself for another loss. And this moment, I realize I did the very best I could at the time with who I was then. And in this moment, I know that the bringing up of these memories no matter how painful keep him alive in me and are a way to deal with the out of control aspect of life.

And with my arms wide open as if I’m waiting for the big, full, bouncy ball moon to hop into my grasp, I singsong back, “Sweet Moon, I’m fine too and I am forgiven.”