Our 35th Anniversary

I planned to report back in September on my wedding anniversary celebration, but traveling upset my precarious equilibrium for a few months.  I am finding more focus lately, so before the holiday season throws me off again, here is a brief recap of what went down.

Since Ken and I typically traveled to mark milestone anniversaries, I wanted to be away this year too, and a week of vacation with our adult children in our favorite family place - Mount Desert Island (MDI), Maine - seemed like an obvious choice.  This would be my eighth trip here, although the first time without Ken.  Our anniversary was a Sunday and since I was booking a rental house too late in the year to be choosy, I had to settle for the prior (Saturday to Saturday) week.  But I figured I would stay for an extra two nights at a hotel and have a fancy dinner out by myself that night.  Honestly, I’m not sure why I act on these ideas.

The week looks soggy according to the forecast and Monday, I notice that in addition to the wet weather pattern, a hurricane is on its way.  Our outdoor wedding and reception was washed out by the remnants of Hurricane Gilbert in 1988.  A week shy of 35 years later, Hurricane Lee is headed across the Atlantic, coursing due north in a strangely linear direction, with MDI its apparent destination.  Hurricanes always seem to track in a graceful clockwise arc, but this one apparently has me in its sights.  Perhaps it will turn, so I push thoughts of Lee away and try to stay in the moment.      

After Labor Day, the tourist demographic is pretty homogeneous:  save for a few young adults and multigenerational families, it is mostly older couples, probably between 55 and 75, the empty nesters, the retired.  It hurts to look at them in their matching raincoats, it is hard to answer their friendly greetings as we pass on the trail.  I am jealous of these couples and their sweet little camper vans that pepper every parking lot, these people who are living the life Ken and I were working toward.  Still, I am fortunate to be here in this beautiful place with my chicks, so I make an effort to focus on what I have instead of what I don’t.  The kids and I hike and share meals and strive to enjoy the time we have together as we struggle with the changed dynamic of our fatherless family.   

Almost every prior visit, we would drive up Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park for sunrise.  It’s an awe-inspiring if tiring way to start the day, and Ken loved to go for blueberry pancakes afterward.  But one trip when the kids were teenagers, getting everyone out the door before sunrise seemed unnecessarily stressful so we opted for sunset instead.  Equally beautiful and much less of a production, sunset on Cadillac was one thing I wanted to do this trip.  My daughter scored us a timed entry reservation for Thursday, on what appeared to be the only night of the week that wouldn’t be cloudy.  We wander the summit and then settle onto the rock ledge at the western overlook, listening to the wind and the animated chatter of the other groups sitting around us.  The sky is a mural of blues and whites and grays, with radiant puffy clouds layered in front of faraway wispy ones, everything tinged with the afterglow of the faded golden hour.  As the sun dips lower, the ambient voices fade as more eyes are turned toward the horizon, although there are two women who continue to jabber, indifferent to the holiness of it all.  The sun sinks and becomes distorted as it falls below the horizon and with only seconds left before it disappears completely the image of Ken taking his last breaths flashes in my memory.  Was it the feeling of being in this sacred space with our children that brings this to mind?  Could this be the first sunset I’ve watched since he died? Whatever the impetus, I am suddenly back there in that moment and either the women stop talking or I can no longer hear them and then the sun is gone, and so is Ken.  And I am crying and the kids are crying and we are hugging and the other people are making their way back to their cars since the show is over and the few who didn’t rush away, what were they thinking?  Could they see our loss in the growing darkness?  Maybe sunrise and pancakes would’ve been a better idea.

It has become apparent that Lee is determined to visit New England, so that night I encourage everyone to leave a day early to avoid travel complications and they agree this is wise.  But now instead of two days alone in this place, I have three.  Unfortunately for the rest of the family, the weather Friday is spectacular, and I do some solo hiking, hoping to be tired enough at the end of the day to have a decent sleep in the big empty house.  Lee arrives overnight so I do not.  Between checking out of the rental house and checking in at the hotel, I have a few hours of homelessness Saturday.  Normally it would be no problem to stay occupied on MDI, but things are different during a hurricane.  I soon realize that even driving around the island during a nasty storm is a foolhardy pursuit.

I see enough flooding and blown down trees to head for the hotel, where my early check in isn’t possible due to a power outage.  But I am welcomed to take shelter, so I curl into a couch in the lounge next to a gas fireplace, and strain to read my book in the dim daylight.  Everyone else here but me has a companion or co-worker to share the misery, and it strikes me how much more awful everything seems in my isolation: my wet clothes, my growling stomach, the uneasy uncertainty of what happens next.  As the hours pass and the likelihood of power restoration fades, the front desk clerk offers to transfer everyone to another hotel for the night.  I gratefully move, even though it means going back out in the storm for a short while.  This place is close to the water so the wailing of the wind keeps my blood pressure elevated through the evening, and maintenance needs to bring extra towels to sop up the rain leaking through the air conditioning unit.  But there is electricity and a hot meal, and before I know it the storm is gone and the sun is up and it is our anniversary.  I am out the door early to spend the day exploring and finally settle in back at the original hotel, where I have dinner reservations that evening.  Suffice to say the solitary meal becomes even more difficult when the hostess seats a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary right next to me, although by the end of the evening, the three of us have shared some laughs and tears.    

Ken has been everywhere and nowhere all week long.  As I sit at a table set for one, as I raise my glass without another to clink, as I climb into a bed one side of which will remain undisturbed, he is more absent than present.  But when I look toward the water’s edge, he must be just beyond my sight, casting a fishing line.  As I smell the balsam fir, I remember him behind me on the trail.  Whether I stand in the woods or by the ocean, I almost hear his voice over the sound of the breeze or the breaking waves.  His absence is impossible to ignore but so is his presence.    

I didn’t need a hurricane to remind me of our wedding day, or to make this lonely anniversary weekend any harder.  But the day was going to be difficult, whether it was sunny or rainy, whether I celebrated it or hid from it.  Since I’ve been spending so much time struggling to navigate the unfamiliar, following traditions can help make the new world seem a bit more familiar, even if the observances are permanently altered without Ken.  Maybe solo trips to Maine will be my new tradition, or maybe this was just a one-off.  The routines we shared evolved over time, and I don’t need to rush this one.  Either way, I know it felt more right than wrong to celebrate the day, and that seems like enough right now.