All Together Now

Is “in one’s altogether” a regional expression? Have you heard the term used in conversation? Do you know what it means? I found out the hard way, and I remember the day.

Whenever I tell a story about Kwajalein I feel I need to preface it with “it was an unusual time in our lives, and we were in an unusual place” but that never quite explains it all. Indeed, a time and a place like no other.

One of Tom’s closest friends was Rich, a colleague at Lincoln Lab and maybe a few years older than Tom, but not by much. Rich was married to Joan, and they were lovely people and Tom and Rich loved to talk food and finance on their flights (or boat rides, if the airplane windshield doesn't cooperate) to work, because it was Kwaj and it was unlike anyplace else. In my earliest days, as I met all those new people I would write descriptions in the margins of the phone book (because it was 1998 and I had 2000 names to learn) and the decription next to the Sasielas was “elegant, tall people on the flight from Majuro” because they were objectively very tall; but the first thing you'd notice about them was that they were even kinder than they were tall. I was stressed, Tom and I were probably bickering (we called ourselves The Bickersons for a reason), and these two sets of hands reached down from on high and grabbed our babies and said, Now, breeeeeathe. It might have been five minutes and it could have been five hours, but what I remember is how kind they were to on the last flight of my first trip to Kwajalein with two kids under two, and I immediately loved them both.  The fall after we arrived Rich and Joan’s daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren moved there for work, too, and Amy became and remains one of my dearest friends.

It was a very small community on a very small military base, and we all lived within easy walking distance of each other’s homes, in a very safe environment where we rarely locked our doors. Amy and her family had left for several weeks (most of us came back to Boston at least once a year for work and that’s likely why they were gone) but their kitchen door was open as I knew it would be. Probably their front door was, too, but we were kitchen door friends, and often let ourselves in.

In what will come as surprise to some, I don’t actually make a habit of entering the homes of my friends when they are not there, but I had good reason to do it this time, I’m sure, even if I don’t exactly remember why I did. I probably was dropping off a dish, or maybe I was leaving a meal,  anticipating their return because that last flight, the third of three five hour flights from Boston, was a killer.

So imagine my surprise when I opened the back door to Amy’s house only to be  greeted by Rich, my friend’s father, and my husband’s best friend, cooking bacon at his daughter’s stove and not even wearing an apron! To cook bacon? Who cooks bacon without an apron?

I lifted my jaw up off Amy’s kitchen floor, backed slowly out the door, and in those days before email and cell phones, immediately called Joan, asking for her to apologize to Rich for me because in my … stupor? … I had not done so, and I explained what happened. 

Joan laughed, explaining, “Oh, that’s just Rich cooking in his altogether." Which doesn’t quite mean without and apron. If only it had.

While I have your attention, this is what climate change is doing to the Marshall Islands.

I can see my house from here 

We called the house Four Palms (bonus Geof adds scale)

We never lacked for fresh potassium straight from the backyard

The main route home after work, they called this spot the Callahan Tunnel

Tom was many things ...

... but a procrastinator he was not.

The one thing he put off first for months and then for years was making a will. Oh, we eventually did.   But not because we got married.   Not because we had a baby.   Not because we had a second baby.   We finally got on the “gotta have a will” bandwagon when we were moving to Kwaj.   And when I say “because we were moving to Kwaj” I mean, because our shipment was on the barge, the house was empty and our plane tickets were in our hands.

So I called the lawyer, and got the papers all drawn up, and stored them neatly in our carry-on.   But we still hadn’t actually had them signed.   Yes, I’m embarrassed to admit, we got on a plane, all four of us, intestate, that August in 1998.   If the plane had gone down, the court would have done whatever it is the court does, and taken whatever it takes of our holdings -- this being pre-Kwaj probably a cool three figures.

Fortunately, this was only a shuttle to JFK, where we’d say our goodbye’s to Tom’s clan.  We made it safe and sound.   And continued procrastinating.

So our last day on Long Island we finally got in the car and just drove around until we found a notary sign in a window.  It was an independently-owned copier place, and they were open (but quiet) that Saturday, so we had to wait there until she had her next customers.   We wrangled these two total strangers, Kathryn E. Wansor and Geraldine Scharf, to witness our signatures. (I only mention their names in case they ever Google themselves. What a hoot that would be!)

And there we were, ready to hop on the plane or onto a roller coaster or a Formula One racecar with a clear conscience. Estate stuff: done.

Fast forward to February 2010. Indeed, Tom was not much of a procrastinator, and every other detail of our fiscal life has been tracked and documented and worked out and taken care of. After Tom died, everything was done and fell into place like dominoes. I was the joint owner where I needed to be the joint owner. I was the beneficiary when I needed to be the beneficiary. Proxies, powers-of-attorney – everything was in order. I’ve barely had to sign a piece of paper to straighten out necessary paperwork, and certainly I haven’t had to go into a probate courtroom.   Tom made sure everything was taken care of for me. Because Tom was Tom.

So of course it took me fifteen months to get my new will in order.  There I was this morning in the attorney’s office, and it hit me like a steel-toed-boot in the stomach. I’m signing my Last Will and Testament, and I’m not leaving everything to Tom.

That’s when I remembered the scramble to get that will stuff done in 1998. And that opened a floodgate of memories: the memories that only Tom and I shared. Not the quirky-kid stories, or the you-won’t-believe-what-an-ass-my-spouse-is-so-I-have-to-tell-you-this stories. I mean the nanomemories that it wouldn’t even occur to me to share because, well, they’re private.  And a lot of them are boring as all get out.

But now I’m the only person on the face of the earth that holds those memories, and that made signing my new will this morning just about the saddest moment of my life.