Openheartedness

When I was doing the final review of this website, I realized that this entire website overhaul had become an open love letter to Michael. I thought what better day to go live than Valentine's Day?

If I were to sum up the essence of Michael in one word, it would be an easy choice - openhearted.

That word can mean so many things: kindness, a willingness to love and be loved. An ability to experience joy and awe. Resilience.

Approaching life, work, relationships, and adversity with an open heart - that was Michael. Openheartedness did not mean that he was perpetually happy. He expressed lots of anger and frustration during our 32 years together. He allowed himself to really feel an emotion and express it, then allowed it to pass, and returned to to a place of optimism and savoring life.

After experiencing some serious medical crises, he had to undergo dialysis. One late afternoon in early spring, I went to pick him up. I was a few minutes early. So I took a walk on the trail beside the clinic. The trailside was exploding with the first wildflowers of spring. All of them were purple, Michael's favorite color.

When he emerged from the clinic, I told him about it and how it was every shade of purple you could imagine. When I asked, "Do you want to go on a purple walk with me?" his face lit up.

During the last few months of his life, he wanted to get me gifts. But our financial constraints did not allow for dining out, flowers, and chocolates. So Michael put his creativity to work. He went online and searched for love poems. When I came home from work, he would recite for me a poem that he had memorized.

This blog is intended to be an expression of openheartedness - a quality I had been losing before I met Michael. When we creatives do our best work, there is some quality of openheartedness in the process.

In 2018 (after writing two novels, many freelance business pieces, and a few dozen newspaper articles), I had been going through a period of writer's block. By mid-March, I had pushed my way through that block. I was writing again. Descriptions, scenes, ideas, and character bits flowed from my pen. Words tumbled out of me so fast that my hand flew across notebook pages, chasing after them. This prompted me to imagine a new story, potentially a new novel. After a long creative drought, this was exhilarating.

Within a few days, Michael and I found ourselves in the emergency room. A doctor's voice said, "It looks like cancer." Words fell away. My sense of wonder and the desire to explore new story ideas vanished. The word, cancer, came down like a meat cleaver, striking my notebook page. There was my life of writing and creating before that word was spoken. And then there was life after that word was spoken.

As a writer, I entered a long, profound silence. This blog is part of my attempt as a writer to emerge from that silence.