Thirty Years After My Husband’s Death at 49

Dearest Jerry:

No doubt my sweet, bright and kind second husband Dennis, still feels the pain of losing Fran, his first wife, as intensely as I feel your loss – especially on the 30^th anniversary of your death. It was 1 pm on Saturday, January 6, 1990, when the wall phone in our kitchen rang, and as if by reflex, I extinguished the flame beneath the pot boiling the Lean Cuisine lunch I never ate. The night before, your nurses had told me your morphine drip was opened to the max, and that you were not expected to make it through the weekend. I responded by going home to draft your obit. Now it could only be Mass. General calling to say you had succumbed to the cancer that came out of the blue just five and a half months earlier. That moment still feels like it happened yesterday.

So much has happened since that day, including my marriage to Dennis in the year 2000, our daughter Daphne’s marriage to Etan in 2008, the birth of your namesake grandson Jack in 2011 and your granddaughter Lucy in 2014. They now live in the San Francisco Bay area, where Etan works for Apple, the company that made that small desktop computer I insisted you purchase, circa 1988, because you were monopolizing the IBM P.C. Who knew Apple would become the world’s largest technology company?

Your daughter, a graduate of Barnard and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and an alum of Parents Magazine, the Wall Street Journal Interactive, the Orlando Sentinel, CNN, and WebMD, is now a member of the communications team at Stanford Medical School/Medical Center. She enjoys working with really smart people.

Let me bring you up-to-date on Jack, now eight. You always told how much you loved spending summers at an overnight camp in the Berkshires. You would be thrilled to learn that last winter, he announced that he wanted to go to an overnight camp. Daphne and Etan ultimately selected a lovely arts camp in Maine.

A natural born networker like his daddy, Jack got to know everybody at camp within days. The only issue was that shortly before arriving at camp, our grandson became passionate about Major League baseball, ultimately complaining to camp management about the camp not having a baseball diamond. For the summer of 2020, Jack will be going to a boys’ sports camp, also in Maine. I love the fact that this new camp has a beautiful waterfront, just like the camp we sent Daphne.

Jack is an amazingly sweet big brother to his sister Lucy, now five. This morning, Daphne texted me a photo of Jack preparing Lucy for her first ever Mountain View Little League baseball clinic. Not only did he tie her cleats, but he also checked her baseball bag to make sure she had her glove and other essentials. She's looking forward to playing T-ball.

Last week, when he wanted to shoot baskets with his daddy at a neighborhood playground, he took his old Step2 - Shootin' Hoops Junior Basketball Set and loaded it onto a Costco wagon so his sister could have her own practice. He reminded her to wear her sparkly high tops and an extra sweatband he had.

 (You died before digital photography came of age, and well before we had little, portable phones we use to send short, simple messages that get transmitted instantly. Most of our family members own iPhones, the little phones made by Apple, and use them to snap pictures, shoot video, and even have video chats.)

Jack loved the Chanukah gift I gave him this year, and I think you would approve. Instead of giving him a toy, I took him to a Junior Celtics basketball clinic for children. Like his maternal grandmother, our grandson can become obsessed about having the proper gear for whatever activity he’s doing.

When we arrived at the Auerbach Center, Jack was wearing his Philadelphia 76ers jersey, until he realized that wasn’t cool to wear in Boston – regardless of the fact that he had already covered it with the Celtics shirt included with admission. I offered to pull the offending garment over his head before anybody was the wiser, but he told me he had to do this in the bathroom where nobody could see.

I had just as much fun as Jack at the clinic, and was thrilled to see that my friend Gina, knowledgeable about matters athletic, praised his jump shot that I’d managed to capture on video. (Alas, one of the coaches had to tell me, “Mam, please step away from the court.” But then you know how I was about chasing Daphne with my Nikon F-A on camp visiting day.) Oh, how you would love to see my video footage of Jack, all taken on the iPhone I carry in my purse.

Like her mother, Lucy often resists my compulsion to capture photos of her at each and every moment. Happily, another parent snapped a pic of Lucy and me on her first day of kindergarten, a day I felt I couldn’t miss. She makes friends easily, loves school, and was proud to tell me about her first sleepover at the home of one of her girlfriends, over school vacation. Her favorite food is ice cream, and to her it doesn’t matter if it’s Baskin Robbins or some of the upscale, West Coast ice creameries I love, like Salt and Straw or Tin Pot Creamery.

I don’t see Daphne and her family as often as I’d like, but in the past few years we’ve met up for vacations in Maui and Kawaii. For 2020, I have invited them to join me at a resort in Mexico for Jack and Lucy’s winter break. I hope Jack won’t be too disappointed the place I’ve booked has no water slide.

Life never provides unalloyed happiness. I should tell you about the passing of some loved ones over the last few years. Your sister-in-law Kathleen, whose gourmet cooking you touted and I could never match, died suddenly. It was sweet that your brother Donald asked Daphne say a few words at the cemetery. She spoke about Kathleen having her spend a week in her home the week before you died of cancer. Donald died of pancreatic cancer a few months ago, but I had some really warm phone conversations with him beforehand.

Our dear friend Ken, the husband of my closest friend, Evelyn, died last summer after a protracted and horrendously painful bout of neck cancer. I have such nice memories of Ken, the Tufts dental professor, teaching you, the non-handy psychiatrist/psychoanalyst, how to make simple plumbing repairs, and helping us in countless ways when your own cancer diagnosis came without warning.

Before this letter gets too long-winded, I should let you know that Jack asks about you, and one day began to cry because he knows he will never get a chance to meet you. Your sister, among the very best of aunties, distracted him by initiating a discussion about “Jerry’s favorite foods.” 

Dennis and I will soon be celebrating our 20th anniversary. Daphne, Jack, Lucy and Etan have forged beautiful ties with Dennis’ children and grandchildren, all of whom we saw at Thanksgiving.

I have a fantasy of you swathed in your ankle length, black mouton, coat your uncle Freddy the furrier designed for you, at rest at SharonMemorial Park, not too far from Ken's grave. Despite the passage of 30 years, your friends and loved ones continue to love and remember you, even the ones who know you only through photo albums and memorabilia.

Happy New Year, my darling!

Love, xxxxoooo Bonnie