Sunday morning

It is too early in the morning to consider this the day yet, no light peeps pasts the shades, but the relentless clock is companion and nudge. And today, Sunday is the day of David's memorial and this is what I will say during the service:

I’ve been looking at this blank page for two day trying to impress upon it something that would tell you of my David. Something very special, something secret, something so apparent that some of you would yawn.

I started with Dayeinu which is a Hebrew word that means "enough." At Passover seders we sing about each successive step of God's provision for the Israelites and we sing a chorus of Dayeinu -- that would have been enough. I could do that chant but in the end I could not/ cannot feel Dayeinu. It was not enough. David and I wanted more. And I am having trouble with Dayeinu.

Just before David and I married, we were reading a lot of Rainer Marie Rilke. We were caught up in his book Love and other difficulties. In particular, this piece:

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude . . . . A merging of two people is an impossibility. . . But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them.

In our vows, we promised to guard each other’s solitude and to witness transformation, reconfiguration, melting into nothing, and springing to life from the phoenix fire. I had the front row seat to stories, refinished windows, hagadas, a pond, acceptances and rejections, plays, plumbing, novels, putenesca sauce, songs, tears, speeches, silence, articles, and the silliest man I have ever met.

In the expanse between us, we made our life and that was not always easy. We were both passionate, both sure we were right, neither one willing to give in for the sake of peace. Well, maybe David was sometimes. David gave me the first unconditional love that I ever knew. Our love honed the pointy ego places that could have kept us apart. His soft voice quieted my shrill; his silences encouraged my talking; his perseverance inspired every uphill battle that I fight. And there was a moment, more than 35 years ago, when my eyes met his, over the hood of a beat up Dodge Dark, that was magic. And slipping my hand into his made everything in my world alright. The love, the devotion, the complete attention of one person is so much more than enough. So much more than I had any right to expect. Dayeinu.