Eric C. Bow

I read a passage from Pat’s dairies and found that Pat’s unhappiness and deep depression started a few month’s after I quit my very well paying Ontario civil service job, in 1991. While I was still working and after my mom’s death Pat was relatively happy and content. She even expressed a liking for 214 McCaul and living in the neighbourhood. She was happy because she had, while I was at work and James was at school, time alone to write. That was all she ever wanted – to have plenty of time to write and maybe get published in English. My being home all day and my wanting company on shopping trips and while watching TV robbed her of that time alone to write. Here is one of many entries in her dairy where she complains of not having enough time alone. Sunday September 8, 1991: “I resent Eric wanting me to spend my “spare” time with him, instead of writing. And then I feel churlish and guilty. He really doesn’t have any one thing he’d like to devote himself to. He likes to potter about (but not to cut the lawn, which needs it), go out on little shopping trips (on which he always wants company), watch TV, read the paper and take naps. And he likes me to be near him as much as possible. I have the feeling that this is a problem many wives have when their husbands retire: only I have it fifteen years early.”
This also answers why she stopped writing poetry. Both her desire to write and her Romance Writer Agent were pushing her to write romance novels which publishers kept returning for rewrites. Pat just didn’t have the time to write poetry – a very real loss. But it also cost her happiness and the constant returns cost her self confidence. As I pointed out in “Quiet Love” she should have given up the romance genre sooner and gone back to writing what she loved to read – “stories of adventure, mystery, suspense, and fantasy. Stories about ordinary people who get mixed up in extraordinary trouble. Stories, magical and haunting and sometimes bizarre, stories that creep into your imagination and your dreams — like mail delivered by the Goblin Postman.” Then maybe the poems would have continued to come. She didn’t because my quitting and our selling of 214 McCaul meant we needed a source of income and I was not able to find a library job. Pat really believed her romance novels would be that source. Pat was successful in retraining – getting a journalism certificate and a job in the Publications unit of the University of Waterloo. But this did not result in her getting more time to write what she loved to read. She was writing but now it was articles on U of W. departments, professors and research. She was very good at it but no happier.
So, you see I was at least partly responsible for her depression and unhappiness – didn’t deserve more love poems. This makes me cry out loud and feel very bad. Pat I’m so sorry. I wish for more of the lovely love poems. Pat, you must have been so disappointed in me. Your dreams not mine should have been my priority. Please forgive me. I’m so sorry. Though written in 1972, the poem below kind of summarizes our situation from 1991 to her retirement in 2011 when her and my pensions made it possible for her to live her dream for only five short years.
In Prison with you
by Patricia A. Bow Oct 1972

I tried to pick
the lock with my pen
but the pen
broke in my hand
and all its
blue blood dripped out.
So I used my head
instead
and hypnotized
the guards.
I am still here
but now I can
get out
any time I like.
What stops me is
the fact
that you won’t come.
And I know
you would be lonely.

I take great comfort that Pat’s happiness returned for those last 5 years and neither of us was lonely or a prisoner any more. She was right though about me being lonely without her and never getting over the shock of that diagnosis on the 48th anniversary of our first date! Pat. I love you forever. Lord may Pat evermore dwell in me and I in her. Amen.

Two years after his wife’s death, Vanauken writes: “…I found that my tears were dried. The grief had passed…. There was no sense of Davy’s being there with me, nor any sense that she was in the wind…. There were no more dreams…. This – the disappearance of the sense of the beloved’s presence and, therefore, the end of tears – this is the Second Death.” This “Second Death” is the point of the title of his book, “A Severe Mercy; a story of faith, tragedy, and triumph.”
I fear this severe mercy above all else. C. S. Lewis, after his experience of Joy’s presence, wrote in “A Grief observed”, “It was quite incredibly unemotional. Just the impression of her mind momentarily facing my own…. Yet, there was an extreme and cheerful intimacy. An intimacy that had not passed though the senses or emotions at all…. The intimacy was complete – sharply bracing and restorative too – without it.” His wife, Joy, died less than a year before he wrote this and he had bone cancer himself. He asked his wife on her death bed “If you can – if it is allowed – come to me when I too am on my death bed.” She had promised and I believe the presence he felt was the beginning of her keeping her promise. I think Lewis also did not want “severe mercy.” Unlike Vanauken he needed Joy’s presence and the promise that she would be there holding his hand at the end. He continues “There is also, whatever it means, the resurrection of the body. We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand least.” I probably have longer than Lewis had when he accepted Joy’s presence but not the nearly 40 years from Vanauken’s time of his severe mercy, the second death, to his death. Never-the-less, please God no “Severe Mercy” for me. I need and want Pat’s presence dwelling in me forever as well as the promise of her being with me holding my hand when my time comes.
As I wrote in “Quiet Love …. Eyes to see and words to tell the truths that are most true,” “Patricia and I were lucky enough to discover that quiet, intense love that is basic to life itself; it is seldom found in real life. We had the eyes to see and the words to tell the truths that are most real to each other.” It is the kind of love Cynthia Bourgeault, in her “Love is stronger than Death; the mystical union of two souls,” was describing when she wrote: “In certain, perhaps rare, love relationships, instead of the normal imperative for letting go and getting on with life, there are subtle but clear signs that the journey with one’s beloved continues beyond the grave. Rather than ending, the walk together is only just getting under way….it also happens to real people. I know this because I am one of them.” Well I think Pat and I are also one of them. Right from the beginning we found God in our lives – He answered a prayer of mine when Pat became the first girl to come to Church with me. We made our marriage vows to God and to each other. We vowed to forgive one another, to bear one another’s burdens, to be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ, and to love one another with supernatural, tender, and fruitful love.
In the first few weeks after Pat’s death I stumbled about in the numbness of grief. I felt empty. As Pat wrote in her dairy, “There was a kind of confusion about death itself – it’s impossible to understand of course. Like a rabbit in a magicians’ trick. Where did it go? The body remains, but the real woman has vanished!… I don’t believe that the live soul simply stops existing. It did exist; therefore, it still exists. Where? I suppose one must think in terms of heaven since one must visualize something…. Perhaps it is enough simply to believe the spirit does not die.” We both had read Tom Harpur’s “There is Life after Death” and we are also sure that there is life after death. Harpur wrote “…But I assure you that I am convinced of this as I am of anything in this world: a day is coming when all separations will be over. We will one day be reunited (in the words of the old hymn) with “whom we have loved long since and lost a while.” We will return to the source of our being, not as rivers return to the ocean and are swallowed by it, but as recognizable individuals.”
I am also convinced of the truth of Bourgeault’s experiences described in her book and think Pat and I are on a similar journey to our reunion in the arms of Christ. Bourgeault wrote: “I see the body of hope as a living, palpable, and conscious energy that holds the visible and invisible worlds together. It is the sap, metaphorically speaking, through which flows the higher communion – the sharing of personal love and the building up and unfolding of the wonders between two people. It is what makes possible the communion of substances between two beloved and the continuing growth of their one abler soul even when separated by death. It is the “holy element,” as Boehme would call it, that straddles heaven and earth and makes possible the most intimate connection between these two planes.”
I believe that my three experiences of communicating with Pat in the week after she died were the beginning of an experience similar to Bourgeault’s. It is not something that will end like Vanauken’s experiences. The fact that I have had other such experiences of Pat’s presence, communications, dreams, is evidence that our love is growing and we will reunite in one soul in Heaven. No Severe Mercy is needed or wanted, thank you very much.

In thinking back to how Pat and I spent our life together, I realized just how little we talked. Talk was mostly about day to day things like: what do you want for breakfast; what did you and James talk about at lunch, is this a laundry day, what do we need in groceries, where do you want to celebrate this anniversary, etc. There was a lot of touching, working side by side on our computers, (Pat wrote that she felt closest to me when we were both working on our computers side by side; I think that is why she now often communicates with me in the haze of waking from sleep on a big white computer screen.) reading side by side, side by side at Tai Chi, and watching TV. But very little talking about the deep issues of life. At Church, we enjoyed the service together often touching hands and meditated together during communion. Yes, we communicated but it was somehow beyond words. Pat said it best: “For you and I are so entwined / that we can read each other’s mind / at times, a simple exercize. / Then comes the stumble of surprise / when, reaching out in haste, I find / the stranger self behind your eyes.” Our love grew ever stronger as did our faith even without the constant chatter some couples constantly insist on. We were happy in our quiet love and in just having each other near. We were most together in our thoughts and minds. Pat wrote a lot of her deepest thoughts down in her dairies and journals. That is how I discovered in researching for “Quiet Love” that she was further alone than I in understanding our love, marriage and faith. Also, being a poet and novelist she was more open to both nature and God. I must think deeply about things, brood over them, meditate on them and wait for my subconscious to come up with the things Pat just seemed to know. Our union into one entity in marriage caused both of us to grow in love and faith. We are still growing. As friends and family saw we were a very together couple. We were in marriage already one entity or at least there was a third entity always present in us together – the one created by the sacrament of marriage. It was and is as if our minds were working out the answers together. Thoughts like these are much more than words, they are feelings, our very soul and LOVE. As a friend recently commented “Love for one’s spouse is the same as love for God.” We absorbed each others’ truths directly, we had in Pat’s words, “eyes to see and words to tell the truths that are most true.” To friends, family, and others, we were probably “cute” (look at those old folks holding hands) and boring. What we have is Quiet Love that is eternal. Again, from that friend, we “live with the memories and the hopes and dreams we create together and hope to share in our eternal life in Christ.” I shall love Pat forever.

In Quiet Love, I wrote the following: “I have lost the ability to enjoy all the things we enjoyed together; the ability to enjoy every day’s most common loves by sun or candle light. Now I listen to a piece of music we once enjoyed together and it sounds hollow. I look at a painting we loved together and it just doesn’t move me in the same way it once did. A bright sunny day is not appreciated the same. The atmosphere and food in one of our favourite restaurants just is not as good anymore. A TV show we both looked forward to now brings tears to my eyes. The pleasure of cooking a great meal for supper is gone; it is just food now. I feel like I have lost half of myself….”

In the four months since Pat’s death, I still feel much the same but maybe a bit less intensely. I am melancholy and don’t feel any purpose to doing any of the needed daily chores. Oh, I do them because Pat would have wanted me to but there is no urgency in me.  However, there have been gains – discovering how intensely and deeply we love each other, and that Love continues to grow and deepen after death. The biggest surprise was discovering how deeply religious she was and is – she wanted to be alone on her walks to meditate and pray. This has strengthened my own faith as has finding her homemade prayer/promise bracelet next to her laptop. I now wear it daily. Daily prayer: “Lord let Pat forever more dwell in me and I in her through Christ our Lord. Amen.”  The Eternal promise: Pat, I love you forever!  I am surer than ever that there is life after death and that our marriage is about our becoming a renewed united entity united by LOVE in the arms of Christ.

I still really want to join Pat in Heaven and still occasionally pray, “Oh God let my release be soon! Amen.” But I realize that it is not going to be soon.  Pat predicted in 2010 that neither of us would make it to 2020. Well she was right about herself, just hope she was right about me also.  Like Pat I’ve had serious health problems in the last decade – seven ulcers two bleeding ones that put me in the hospital, high blood pressure for decades but under control, and a heart attack in 2015 that resulted in quintuple bypass open heart surgery.  That is why I thought I would be first to die. Pat died just after her 70^th birthday – the Biblical 3 score and 10. I wonder if my surviving these serious health problems means I am strong and will make it to the Biblical 4 score – I much prefer Pat’s prediction obviously. The time of my death is not my choice but Gods.  Wish I was a poet like Pat; melancholy and love result in great poems.

Why do I feel so lonely? I desperately yearn for Pat’s physical company. Oh, I feel her Real presence and I am in communion with her; the result of me dwelling in her and she dwelling in me. There are pictures of her in every room and I walk around talking to her. Why isn’t this enough?
We are born into a physical world and are dependant on our senses to relate to that world. We are bombarded by sight, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting. We can’t cope without at least some of these stimulations from the physical world. They drown out the spiritual; that is why we have so much trouble meditating and communing with God. I am physically alone (except for the friendly new tabby replacing Pooka) but still hear the traffic which draws me out of my meditations. What I miss is the physical her – the her I became dependant on in 48 years of marriage. I am sure Pat understood this when she wished to live the life of a hermit with me beside her. I’m scared to admit it but, she probably would be happier in my present situation than I am: it is very much like the hermit life with the silent, physically unseen and unheard presence of my spouse within me.
Loneliness is being alone when you desire otherwise. I desperately want Patricia – her words, her touch, her kisses, her physical being – back. So, I am lonely. That is the very definition of being lonely. It is a desolate feeling of being left behind, and being all alone forever. There is a Pat sized hole in my heart, which I cannot live with or without. It is all my memories of Patricia which I never want to lose. Those memories are happy memories though I cry.
In our marriage, there was a deep inner sense of a quiet deep love at its centre. It continues as the uninterrupted center of both of us. Our love continues to grow stronger. To the doubter, NO I don’t need to get over my grief and pass on: Pat and I love each other forever, ours is an eternal marriage. Love is stronger than death. Not everything ends in death. Our marriage is Pat and I and US. Marriage is created in the image of God. In heaven, Pat and I will be truly like the triune God – a trinity. Christ’s resurrection did not end his love for the Father, it strengthens the Holy Ghost or so I believe.
Pat’s 12th Anniversary Poem says it all:
I know the scent and shape of you:
I know you all, yet not at all.
I linger with a connoisseur’s delight
over a contour of bone, a texture of skin,
gloating over treasures of silk and ivory
that are mine alone,
and yet no-one’s but yours.

For you and I are so entwined
that we can read each other’s mind
at times, a simple exercize.
Then comes the stumble of surprise
when, reaching out in haste, I find
the stranger self behind your eyes.

Far apart upon the lawn,
two tall trees confront each other
never to touch, ever alone:
yet beneath the grass and stone
intertwined their roots have grown,
so intimately webbed together,
neither one can tell his own.

So with us: which flatly proves
futility of arguments
On which is which, and whose is whose.

We are the one eternal united entity we vowed to become in our marriage vows. Pat and I love each other forever. No I won’t be lonely forever. That will disappear when we are united in Heaven.