Sorrow

I don't like sorrow.

Sure, I know we must all have sorrow, that so many things in our lives are met with sorrow, that, on some level, sorrow serves a purpose.

Well I just don't see it.

If we sorrow for having lost a contest or competition the emotion might impel an individual to do better the next time.

It's a stretch.

I have been dealing with a deep and profound sorrow for the past two weeks and I hate it.

By me, such sorrow serves no purpose.

Consider that if we are scared this emotion would have us consider a flight or fight response, survival if you will.

If we are angry this emotion might impel us to a protective posture, an acknowledgement of danger in the surround as our body reacts to anger by putting up its defensive dukes.

Sorrow? It's painful, viscerally as well as emotionally. The best we could hope to come from sorrow is, oddly, less of it over the course of time.

I lost my husband on 4/9/2013. I loved him dearly. We were married for almost 25 years.

Below is the eulogy I said at his funeral.

He will always be in my heart.
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I called him Billy.

He was born William Gerald Fish Jr. After his father's passing Billy insisted he was no longer a "junior", a social factoid of which I knew not and with surprise that Billy even minded any kind of social mindset at all.

For if ever an individual was as far removed from societal edicts than William Gerald Fish, as he was last known, it would have to be Billy..

At first it was cute. It got kinda quirky. With more passage of time yes, there were times when I ran screaming, literally or virtually, into the fog.

He loved wrestling. For over 15 years of his life he dyed his hair platinum in the manner of his favorite, Ric Flair.

He was a fairly good singer, and an amazing keyboardist; he once belonged to what he called a garage band, and once they even played a gig and got paid for it.

Billy was a devout trivialist and won many trivia contests. In fact, it's how we met. We both played on a little computer network known as Qlink, a sort of pre-cursor to America Online. We met in the "trivia room" and developed a fond online relationship over a span of five years.

This sort of thing is commonplace nowadays but we were pioneers, me and Billy, and we made it work for almost 25 years.

Billy was also a devout Christian. He would join me at times in my Catholic church for mass and I had hopes of converting him. He believed in our Lord Jesus Christ our Savior and was more devoted to the ten commandments than most.

He worked for Sears for 30 years, he did. His job was taken over by a subcontractor and we both left Maryland and struck out for Delaware.

We'd been living on a gorgeous spit of land fronting a small cove off of the Chesapeake Bay. Those were glorious years as Billy and I fed birds and ducks and had many cats and several dogs and watched the kingfishers dive from our boat pavilion as the great blue heron stalked the cove for minnows.

It was a house from hell so while the world around us was gorgeous, we lived in a huge Adams Family house that as we aged grew impossible.

I had strict requirements for our new home. I'd decided we should move to the eastern shore but Billy wanted out of Maryland. One day he showed me an advertisement for a house.

It was a modest affair in Delaware, still near the coast as I wanted, but not in Maryland.

Billy got a job at Penco, you folks from Delaware might know this company from the cube trucks riding local roads, the company name in red letters on a white background.

For ten years we have lived in the most perfect house for us and you get to appreciate this sort of thing having lived in the original Disney Haunted Mansion.

If any fact, anecdote or statistic revealed more about Billy as regards his work ethic and dependability, it was the fact that for the entire time he worked at Sears-30 years- he did not miss a single day of work. That's right, he never took a sick day for 30 years. For the five years he worked at Penco, he only missed a few days for a nasty flu.

Still and so, if I had to provide one personality characteristic that best described Billy, it would be his unending love for animals.

He and I shared this love and we always had a house full of pets, cats and dogs and once, an unfortunate hamster. As he described it, "they are like my children". He carefully took every insect he captured or mouse he took half-alive from a cat's mouth and took them outside as these critters were people too.

We also watched the birds and Billy did so love to hear my stories about what the birds were doing, listen to their songs,…. the woodpecker does look and sound like the cartoon don't he?

While Billy loved all animals, it was the felines of the world he so adored. Indeed, if ever a human being could be depicted as a human cat, it would Billy. And don't go thinking that this statement would insult Billy.

Like the feline he so adored, Billy believed that emotion is best expressed as a gentle purr heard only by a few in the surround. Anger is best expressed as a quick hiss and a walk away. Quiet is a virtue, loud noises are bad, any changes in the living surround are to be met with suspicion and caution.

He was a wonderful husband and as corny as it sounds, despite the fact that I am the exact opposite of a cat, he was my soul mate.

I love you Billy, I will always love you, meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me.