Janice Beetle - Divine Renovations: A Carpenter, His Soul Mate and Their Story of Love and Loss

Off the Common Books, Amherst, MA

Copyright 2013 Janice Beetle

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form, including Internet usage.

Cover design by Lisa Stowe

Edited by Margot Cleary

ISBN: 978-1-4675-6810-4

Family and Relationships. English. 2013. 173 pages.

ISBN: 9781483513409

For Ed

Prologue

W hen people learn that my husband, Ed Godleski, passed away, one of the first questions they ask is how long we were married. When I tell them two years, they say Oh in such a way that I know they think this cant hurt as much as losing the man youve been with your whole adult life. Sometimes Im compelled to add that I was with Ed for eight years, three of which I lived with him. I know it doesnt change what they think, and then I remember that what they think doesnt matter.

What does matter is how much I miss Ed. It matters that it feels like I knew him forever. It feels like in losing him, I lost myself. Perhaps some people calculate grief by multiplying number of years together with love we had. And thats why they dont understand my heartache because while the years we had were few, the love was incalculable.

Ed was my soul mate, my best friend, my lover and the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. He died September 14, 2010, in my arms, in our living room, four months after he was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. His death hit me in a place I cant name, and learning how to cope with my grief has been a surreal journey.

Im an optimistic person, as well as hard-working and loving, but I became a shell of myself after Ed died. For months, I couldnt sleep or eat. I cried every day, sometimes all day, and I wandered around aimlessly, thinking I could find Ed somewhere, if I looked hard enough. I learned what it means to keen. I learned that when you sob, you begin to drool. Losing Ed aged me.

I learned that twilight was the hardest time of day. As the sun began to set, I realized that 24 more hours had passed without a single sighting of Ed. I realized, over and over again, that he was truly gone.

On one particularly bad day, only several weeks after Ed died, my 17-year-old daughter, Molly, was at work, and I was home alone in the early evening. Grief engulfed me. My chest was tight. I was sobbing, and before I knew it, I was in a fetal position on my living room floor, covered with the green down comforter my friend Judy gave to Ed to keep him warm.

I clutched the urn that held Eds ashes, my face pressed against the rough mosaic surface. I carried on, calling his name, bemoaning the unfairness of it all, until I heard the car door slam. Molly was home. I returned the urn to the piano and myself to the couch.

My breakdown changed nothing. Ed did not come home. I did not feel happy. I did not get anything out of my system. But this particular episode changed me in that it gave me an idea. I would write a book.

Grief of all kinds takes us to some awful places. It is profoundly altering, and I want others to know perhaps those just arriving on this loneliest of journeys that they are not the first ones here. They are not alone. And they will find a way, as I did, to fit back into the world.

Chapter One

I ts hard to say when Ed Godleski became my Great Obsession, instead of just the carpenter who came to renovate the kitchen. I was 39 when I met him, the mother of two beautiful daughters, 9 and 13. Id been married for 15 years.

The first time we spoke was Memorial Day in 2002. My family and I were driving home from New Hampshire, where wed spent the weekend at my parents house on Lake Winnisquam.

I was involved in car games with my daughters, singing songs and playing the alphabet game, using billboards and road signs and license plates to find As and Bs and Cs, racing to be the first to get all the way to Z.

Hello? I answered my cell phone, shushing the girls.

Ed introduced himself. Im the carpenter assigned to your renovation job, and I wondered if I might stop by tomorrow so you can sign the contract.

Oh, sure, I said. Im so excited.

Id waited for years to have the money to renovate the kitchen of our home on Beacon Street in Florence, Massachusetts. I knew exactly what I wanted done. We settled on 5 p.m. the next day, and I hung up with not another thought for this Ed person, this carpenter I did not know. I told my husband the carpenters would start soon. Neither one of us knew this moment would mark the beginning of the end of our marriage.

Eds hands were what I noticed the next day when he came to the house, a yellow bungalow with unpainted wooden trim and an expansive front porch. Eds right hand was planted on top of the contract, so it wouldnt move while I was signing, and it was just so large. It suggested strength and skill.

Ed and his partner, Tex, showed up on Wednesday, and I watched as they unloaded tools, surveyed the situation and began stripping off trim boards around the doorway that led to the dining room. I offered them tea, and I let them know they were welcome to use our refrigerator, our water faucet, our bathroom.

People love to see us come, Ed told me, But at the end of a job, they love to see us go even more.

I could imagine that ringing true for me. But I was wrong.

Ed first became a distraction one afternoon about a week after he and Tex arrived. I worked at home, running a writing, editing and graphic design business called Beetle Press, and I was also a stay-at-home mom for the girls. But during this particular moment, they were in school.

I was walking toward the kitchen, lost in thought. Tex was on a ladder in the middle of the kitchen when the basement door opened. The sound caused me to look up, and there was Ed, tall, muscular, a head full of thick gray hair, all of which I had not previously noticed. We locked eyes, and a palpable energy passed between us, like a physical experience of emotional intimacy. It was intense, but it was brief, and afterward, I wanted to shout, Did you feel that? What the hell was it?

We didnt speak, but I knew at that moment that Ed was in my house for some reason other than renovation. It seemed we had a spiritual connection. I believed that God was sending me a message.

I had believed in God and angels and spirits my whole life, but not because I had a religious upbringing. My parents were not churchgoers, yet I was a closeted believer. I didnt know why I believed in a life after death or angels in heaven until my mother told me that she went to the hereafter when she was giving birth to me. She didnt call it the hereafter, though; she called it outer space.

My mother tells it this way: She went into labor with me on the same day that President John F. Kennedy was shot. She was admitted to Needham Hospital, and prepped for labor and delivery. After being anesthetized, she went to outer space, where she watched the lives of everyone shed lost pass by her eyes.

John Beetle, my mother said, speaking of my brother, who died at 10 of leukemia, before I was born. As his name passed by, like it was on a screen, I knew his life was passing by, too.

Then I saw my mothers name. Muriel Jefferson, she said. It all just passed right by me. Once their name had passed over the top of my head, I knew that meant their life was over.

As she told the story, my mother held her hands several feet apart. Thats how big the words were, she said, before they scrolled up and out of sight.

My mother listed the other names shed seen. Her fathers. Her brother Jackies; he also died of leukemia, at 14.

Where did you say you were, Mom? I asked, hearing this story for the first time in my 30s. Something important had occurred to me.