celebration

The Celebration of Life for Laura was beautiful.  Here is what I said:

Thank you for being here. I will talk about my strong smart wife. I really met Laura through mutual friends Lars and Arria. While Lars was fishing, Arria invited Laura and I to a Sweet Honey in the Rock Concert in Bellingham Washington. I drove up to Lummi Island from Astoria and Laura drove up from Seattle. The concert was fun but what I remember was the sleeping situation. Laura got the pull out couch and I got the floor with a visiting pug. I tried to talk my way up onto the couch bed repeatedly, and Laura kept saying stay on the floor with the snoring pug!

That weekend I asked Arria if Laura was single and she laughed. Ya, Laura is single and NOT your type. I still managed to get Laura’s address and spent the next two or three months writing letters. Somehow, through my dyslexic handwriting and spelling, I started to win her over. I had a training in Olympia and Laura agreed to have me come to her little home in Seattle for the weekend after the training. It was a fun weekend doing Seattle tourist stuff. We bought golden trout at Pikes Place Market and I showed her how to lift one fillet off the bones and then pull the head and backbones out of the lower fillet. In retrospect, that was the first time I prepared her seafood. Our only prenuptial was that whenever we eat seafood, I shell, crack, debone it on my plate and give her food that is fork ready on her plate.

On Sunday morning of that first weekend when Laura was puttering in the kitchen or showering, I was in her bedroom going through things. I am not proud, just curious. I found a box of old single earrings in one drawer and was shocked to see a silver and abalone earing that I recognized. I brought it out to Laura and she said what were you doing to find that? I just looked cute and said lets talk about that in a minute, when and where did you get this earing? She said she got it at the end of high school but I don’t wear it anymore since I lost the other one where I was at Bowdoin. I smiled and said that I was cleaning up after a Thursday Night Party at Bowdoin and found that earing 9 years ago and if you come down to Astoria next weekend, you can have your earring back.  I totally got a free pass on rifling through her stuff with that bit of coincidence and magic. I have the earrings here if you want to see them.

We spent 6-8 months having a city house and country house till she moved to Astoria in March of 1993. It was quite a culture shock for Laura. During that time, I got my first raise and bought a hot tub. It was in that hot tub that Laura said I want a baby. I told her that I always envisioned myself as a father and wanted a baby too. She said great. Lets start this baby making business but I said we can’t. She just looked at me and said I think we can, Jon. We can’t have children until we are married I replied. Again, she said she begged to differ and it was very possible to have a kid without being married. That started a long discussion on the patriarchal oppression of marriage and how she thinks its an out dated tradition and on and on.

Then when it was clear to Laura that I was not convinced that we could indeed have a baby without being married she said, lets look at this in a different way. I want a baby and more specifically your baby. You want to have a baby with me right? I said yes. OK, said Laura we are now engaged and lets get Married as soon as possible so I can have a baby.  The next day, my mom express mailed the engagement ring she had from my father. And we were married on a beach in Maine on September 17, 1994.

We are the epitome of opposites attract. Laura is brilliant, sarcastic, introspective, and an introvert - I am not. This dichotomy always kept us on our toes. After Tim was born, I started working half time so we could share the child raising. I worked Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Laura went to Lucy’s Books Thursday Friday and Saturday with a family day on Sundays. Somehow, the kids survived the wildly different yet loving approach to child rearing. She sang songs to the kids every night as they were going to bed. On the nights she was out, I got in trouble with Ani for changing the words of the songs to fit my mood.

Laura battled cancer for seven long years. She rarely complained. As her dementia ate away at her brain all her sarcasm melted away and from May on she was so stinking sweet- not that she wasn’t sweet before, but it was more of a biting sweetness. Next Tuesday is our 25^th wedding anniversary. It is really something for Laura to have been married to me for that long. I am a handful and she tried her hardest to keep me in line. I guess that now falls on Ani, Tim and the posse of girlfrineds…  Good luck.

The day before she died was the last time she was fully conscious and could both talk and understand what we were saying.  It was 530 in the morning. I asked if she was warm enough, Laura said yes; I asked are you in pain, Laura said I don’t know; I said, its ok to let go and slip onto the next adventure and Laura said I can’t; I said I love you and she turned her head and looked at me with far away eyes and said I know. That’s the last actual words I heard her say.

Laura will always be with all of us. This yawning hole of grief will pass in time as it does and Laura will still be within each of us.

Thank you.