questionable epiphanies

Original date 12 March 2011

Many times in a breathless trance I have read Brian's Certificate of Death issued by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Health and Vital Records.  You would think from my concentrated interest that I might be expecting to learn something new, to be surprised.  Like one digging at a wound to make it bleed, I am drawn to reading the sparse information again and again, to no purpose since I have it memorized:

Cause of Death: testicular cancer

What it doesn't include is the massive inter-cranial hemorrhage which caused a seizure which caused unconsciousness from which he never recovered.

I think I remember having been asked if I wanted Brian's body autopsied.  In whatever haze of confusion I was feeling at the time, quickly I said no.

NO!! No.

I could not bear it....the thought of Brian's body being mutilated.  I know!!  The body is not the man.  Not "Brian."  And yet, where else had "Brian" resided but in that body?

It was a body I knew intimately, and loved.  And so I did not want it mutilated.
Now, I will never know if the "cause" of his death is accurate, or complete.  I will never know with certainty.
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For it's clear--"widow" trumps all other identities, including rational individual.  All that one believes of the "rational," "reasonable," "scientific-minded" life is jettisoned, when one becomes a widow.

My wish was for my husband's body not to be examined, opened and eviscerated  like an animal being gutted.  I think there is something dignified in cremation , or I want to think this.  Of course, I can't bear to think of the circumstances of the cremation.  I was not there.   I was not a witness.
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What a widow says, a widow will often regret.  Yet a widow must speak.  A widow must say something.  As a widow must smile to assure others that she is alright.

In this new phase of my life, such questionable epiphanies come to me frequently:

Widowhood is the punishment for having been a wife.  When you sign on to be a wife, you are signing on to be a widow someday.

My brain is a snarl of such thoughts. A near-broken radio flooded with static.