Howard Norman - Next Life Might Be Kinder

AFTER MY WIFE, Elizabeth Church, was murdered by the bellman Alfonse Padgett in the Essex Hotel, she did not leave me. I have always thought a person needs to constantly refine the capacity to suspend disbelief in order to keep emotions organized and not suffer debilitating confusion, and I mean just toward the things of daily life. I suppose this admits to a desperate sort of pragmatism. Still, it works for me. What human heart isnt in extremis? The truth is, I saw Elizabeth last night, August 27, 1973. She was lining up books on the beach behind Philip and Cynthia Slaytons house, just across the road. Ive seen her do the same thing almost every night since I moved, roughly thirteen months ago, from Halifax to this cottage. Im now a resident of Port Medway, Nova Scotia.

At three-thirty A.M., sitting at my kitchen table, as usual I made notes for Dr. Nissensen. I see him at ten A.M. on Tuesdays in Halifax, which is a two-hour drive. I often stay at the Haliburton House Inn on Monday night and then travel back to Port Medway immediately following my session. Dont get me wrong, Dr. Nissensen is helping me a lot. But we have bad moments. After the worst of them I sometimes cant remember where I parked my pickup truck. Then there are the numbing redundancies. Take last Tuesday, when Dr. Nissensen said:

My position remains, you arent actually seeing Elizabeth. She was in fact murdered in the Essex Hotel on March 26 of last year. And she is buried in Hay-on-Wye in Wales. But her death is unacceptable to you, Sam. You want so completely to see her that you hallucinate and she sets those books out on the sand. Its your minds way of trying to postpone the deeper suffering of having lost her. One thing books suggest is, youre supposed to read into the situation. To read into things. Naturally, its more complicated than just that. It can be many things at once. My opinion has not changed since the first time you told me about talking with Elizabeth on the beachhe paged back through his notebookon September 4, 1972, your first mention of this. My position remains that, as impressively creative as your denial is, and to whatever extent it sustains you, its still denial.

My God, I said. A life without denial. How could a person survive?

Nissensen smiled and sighed deeply: Here we go again. Whats on the piece of paper youre holding? Youve been holding it in clear view since you arrived.

I had copied out from a dictionary the definition of Bardo. Let me read this to you: Bardo a Tibetan concept meaning intermediate state. Its when a persons existing between death and whatevers next. And during this state, certain of the usual restraints might not be at work, in some cases for a long, long time.

And you feel this is what youre experiencing with Elizabeth?

Yes. Which I hope lasts until I die.

So, youve recently found this word in a dictionary and now youre embracing it, Dr. Nissensen said. Okay, lets go with this a moment. What do you think it means that certain what was it? usual restraints might not be at work?

Well, to start with, obviously a person whos died is usually restrained to being invisible, right? They usually dont show up on a beach and hold conversations.

Yes, Ive got quite a notebook filled with your and Elizabeths conversations.

That makes two of us, then.

Ive been curious, Sam. Do you jot these down as they occur? Like a stenographer?

Like a stenographer, yes, sometimes. But sometimes I just listen closely and write things down the minute I get back to the cottage.

Week after week, you attempt to convince me youre actually having real conversations, rather than, for instance, composing them. At your writing desk. The way you might when writing a novel, say.

Do you consider me a stupid man? I asked.

Of course not.

A liar?

Of course not.

No matter whether or not its called Bardo, the words not that important. The thing is, I talk with Elizabeth almost every night. And talking with Elizabeth is a reprieve from suffering. After all this time, you still dont get it.

No, no, Nissensen said, I get it.

Yet you insist on calling whats happening to me an what was it?

An advent of mourning.

Advent of mourning. But I despise the word mourning.

And why is that, Sam?

Because it implies a certain fixed duration, a measurable time frame, and it also relates to my most hated word: closure. If you love someone and they suddenly disappear say they die there is no closure. Its like, its like what? its like a Bach cello composition playing in your head that doesnt let up. You cant predict for how long. What if its for the rest of your life? You dont just get closure. You dont just come to terms and then move on. And not even a lobotomy could change my mind about this. And Ive read C. S. Lewis, that book of hisA Grief Observed. Ive read some theology and philosophy, advice-to-the-bereaved stuff, and I dont give a goddamn who says what or how dramatic or limited or self-destructive I sound. Closure is cowardice. When you lose someone you love, the memory of them maintains a tenacious adhesiveness to the heart I quote Chekhov there. See, if you dont feel very articulate, its useful to find people like Chekhov to help you out.

I dont think being inarticulate is your

Look, if I ever said Oh, Ive found closure with Elizabeth, please push me in front of a taxi on Water Street Id be dead to feeling anyway. You have my permission ahead of time. Shoot me in the head.

Im your therapist. Youd have to ask someone else.

Silence a moment, then he said, Dead to feeling. So the pain keeps you alive to feeling.

There was silence for maybe three or four minutes. This seldom bothers me. I just study the room. It is a basement refurbished as an office. Against three walls are shelves of books. Also, there are books crowded and piled haphazardly on tables. Mostly books on psychology, but Ive noticed a few novels, too. Dostoyevsky. Thomas Mann. Virginia Woolf. Conrad. Charlotte Bront. Little thats contemporary. There is a small Van Gogh drawing of a village; Ive wanted to ask if its an original. Ive wanted to ask if it was inherited. There are five framed charcoal drawings of various women, not nudes. I know that his wife, Theresa, drew them because there are two others in the exact same style in the waiting room, each bearing her signature. Theres his overstuffed chair he sits on, and a sofa his clients sit on. On the table between the chair and the sofa, a box of tissues, a glass, and a pitcher of water. There are five ground-level windows, allowing for plenty of light, but also three floor lamps and one table lamp. The house is in a neighborhood of some of the oldest buildings in Halifax. Dr. Nissensens is a late-nineteenth-century townhouse. Winter mornings I occasionally hear the clanking echoes of the radiators. A car horn. On rare occasions a voice from the street.

Last week you mentioned that lately Elizabeth has told you things shedhe flipped back through his notebookkept secret, but not on purpose.

Yes, its been great.

Im curious, Dr. Nissensen said. Is there any particular thing youd most like Elizabeth to tell you?

If its a secret, how would I even know to ask about it?

I was thinking of the phrase a painful secret.

There is one thing. Its something lately I sense she wants to tell me.

And now you in fact want to hear it?

Im sort of afraid to hear it, actually.

He closed his notebook and stared at the cover, then looked up at me.

Is that one thing how she was murdered, Sam? What really happened. Not in the courtroom, what the bellman Alfonse Padgett described as having occurred, but the incident from Elizabeths point of view. Her own account of it. Which would naturally be the truth to you and should be. Are you afraid, as you say, because you might then experience what she felt at that moment? And yet you want to feel everything she felt. Because you loved her so deeply.