I've been faking it

My first multi-week separation from Vaiva was in 1991, the first year of the A.P.P.L.E. summer courses. It was really difficult for me. Vaiva softened the impact on household management by arranging for her niece Vilija to visit from Lithuania while she was gone. (Vilija is two years older than Vaiva, born the same year as me, a wonderful mother substitute.) Vilija even attended Camp Neringa with the children that year, for the week of family camp.

So it's not that I had to be a single parent with small children that made it hard, it was just the separation from Vaiva. I still remember driving to Newark Airport to pick her up on her return, thinking the whole time about whether I should just get a nearby hotel room for the afternoon.

I did not know then that absences would become annual events, eventually to become much longer when Vaiva began working for the Ministry of Education, and later for President Adamkus.

Over the years I developed an alternative emotional state of being, the "Vaiva is absent" state. I would change little household things, especially in the kitchen, to match my idiosyncrasies instead of hers. The daily routine was different. This emotional state was filled with zen-like patience and waiting, but not loneliness.

I realized last week that I had retreated into that emotional state, as a protective shell, in order to function at all after Vaiva's death. I mentioned it to Sirvydas. Rationally, I'm glad that Vaiva has been released from the pain and suffering of her last illness. Emotionally, I'm still in denial, I cannot bring myself to believe that she is really gone.

Arriving in Vilnius yesterday brought this into sharper focus. I've never been here without her. I never imagined that there could be a reason to be here without her. Our bedroom in Riese was as she left it, expecting to return to it once she was well enough to travel.

This is so terribly sad.