‘If Ever Two Were One, Then Surely We’ : Grief: Seeking peace, finding memories, walking alone.

In the interest of my fading health and for the equanimity of a mind made desolate by the loss of my wife after 65 years, I have become a walker in the streets of the city.

This is a holistic project that has proved its worth in a man’s search for solace, for surcease from sorrow and for serenity.

For nearly two years, I have taken the role of a minor Henry David Thoreau by living alone, in silence, bereft of Erma’s voice, in a house warmed by her laughter and made snug and comfortable by the glow of her presence.

All this, all the elements that made our lives joyous and serene, is no more. Our lives had been illumined by three children who married and expanded our familial boundaries with their children and grandchildren. Thus in the fugitive flight of a handful of years, we became great-grandparents, a fourth-generation family of some 35 members.

The sad and gloomy quiescence that settled suddenly when Erma left us without a word of farewell still shrouds the ambience of what had been our home. With the frailties of a man allowed his way in matters of little import, nothing in the home has been allowed to change. All is still as it was when she last sat at the captain’s chair at the head of the dining table--where her gracious presence and always cheerful mien had added so much to the pleasure of dining.

Because she became the mistress of the pots and pans and the ancillary artifacts that graced the meals that she created so well, I had perforce become a member of the “he can’t even boil water” club.

This gentle and loving woman had influenced my life so well for so many years that I was forced to find a way to accommodate my life to a new mode of existence. I had spent the earlier years of retirement at my desk and typewriter, totting up the essences of 50 years in the news business. I corresponded with colleagues in several cities, clipping local columns for their edification and receiving their selections for reading and comment. I also wrote many reminiscence pieces, verses, travel articles and stories of my newspaper experiences. At the gentle prodding of the children, I wrote an autobiography.

But I had to walk for my health’s sake. In all the years of grammar and high school, I walked both ways, except for the last year of high school. Then I used my bicycle in my job as a copy boy for the Buffalo Morning Express. This meant pedaling downtown to pick up early copy from the reporters on the beats, legal records and death notices, and performing other functions on the newspaper once edited and partly owned by Mark Twain. I also walked many miles as a Postal Telegraph and Western Union messenger.

Walking was resumed when I became a reporter: in pursuit of news sources who wouldn’t pause to talk, of crooks and politicians eager to get their names in or keep them out of the paper. It was thus an easy and comfortable habit to slide into when it became necessary to acquire a calmness of spirit, as well as to obey the dictates of the doctors trying to help me regain a semblance of my former good health, now modified by age.

But the walks I remember best are the evening strolls with Erma, inhaling the keenly fresh air, the thin cool breezes exhilarating us as we held hands and talked, not of familial matters but of ourselves.

So, with Erma at my side, we walked slowly, nodding to neighbors, content to be with each other and hoping that this pleasant day would never end.

There were many such days, happily, but they ended when her life ended.

Today I walk alone, in silence, accompanied only by the beating of a desolate heart.