Wendy Dolber

Connections

I drove a Lexus.

He drove a Nissan.

I owned my own home in an upscale New Jersey community.

He never paid more than $800/month for rent in his upstate New York digs.

He always knew which supermarkets had the best deals.

I never knew what anything cost.

He booked vacations with Cheap Caribbean.

I booked with Viking Cruises.

He loved an all-you-can-eat restaurant.

I looked for Michelin stars.

He often said: It cost a fortune (about a $40 item).

I often responded: You think like a poor person.

We were mad about each other.

You could say he was frugal, but he had everything he wanted, and he took care of everything he had.

He made his living as a musician all his life, with various side hustles to fill the income gap, always leaving plenty of time for fishing, biking, hiking, photography, woodworking, traveling,

and me.

He created a life he loved, and he lived it well.

We had dated in our twenties and parted ways after a year. Thirty years later I received an email – “I don’t know if you remember me….” Of course, I remembered the sexy guy with the saxophone who hardly ever spoke. When we got together, I discovered he had found his voice, and we talked until two o’clock in the morning. When he embraced me in the driveway, I knew my life was about to change. We were together fifteen years. We never thought about marriage until after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Our decision to wed was an investment in our future.

The night he died, sitting stunned in my chair at home, I received a call from an eye bank. They told me he was an organ donor, and they needed access to his body immediately. I was taken aback. My husband and I had never discussed this. Was it really okay to give permission? My sister, who had come to be with me, checked his license and there it was – Organ Donor.

He knew when to let things go. And although he was gone, he was still making connections. (Two women received the gift of sight because of his donation). Knowing this helped me get over the dread of going through his possessions:

Dozens of musical instruments (including six keyboards), rivers of musician’s paraphernalia (what even is that thing?), speakers, amps, microphones, every laptop he ever owned, photographic equipment worthy of a professional, tools, photographs, movies, music, boats, fishing gear, sooooo many tee-shirts, scraps of cloth that would make a quilter jealous, all lovingly tended.  These things reflected the layers of a man who immersed himself in the creative side of life. And who apparently never threw anything away.

I knew that he stayed connected with friends, as far back as kindergarten, through college, from his early years in the Woodstock music scene. I had not understood the strength of those connections until they showed up, calling and texting, helping with his stuff. When it came to the clearing out, I did not have to do it alone. His college roommate, two musicians from his early Woodstock days, and a dear friend spent days working through a lifetime of possessions, painstakingly identifying all those strange-looking musical objects, sifting through piles of clothes, and sorting out what instruments were playable. We found homes for everything – a complete sound system to a young musician, stacks of music books to a local college, his cloisonne vases to a local thrift shop, a cherished photograph to an old friend.

Four saxophones, his most valued possessions, were the hardest to part with, especially his gig sax. Its reedy, throaty sound was as much a part of our home’s soundtrack as our voices, the music we listened to, the sound of the television blasting at night (all gig musicians are a little deaf).  It was an extension of him, receiving his breath, his touch, his undivided attention. The day it sold, I knew he would be proud of me. I had gotten the best deal I could, just as he would have done.

Dealing with the money was another matter, which was substantial due to his ironclad commitment to saving. He was so proud of that nest egg, checking the market daily like a mother hen. “This will all be yours someday, Honey,” he had told me with love in his eyes. We both knew I didn’t need the money, rather it was a treasure he had built, dollar by dollar, year by year, gig by gig. He knew it would be in good hands.

I decided to think big. I doubt that my husband ever wrote a check for more than $1,000. Now I’m authorizing five and six-figure gifts from his estate – a scholarship in his name, bequests to music organizations for aspiring musicians, supporting the local food bank. Every check I write connects me to him in a way that fills the emptiness of his absence.

I think about legacy in a completely different way now. I had inherited property and money, but also a constellation of friends near and far. His celebration of life, which I could never have planned on my own, became a concert with twenty-five musicians performing old standards and his original works. The day was filled with so many teary embraces, stories of what my husband had meant to them, even offers to help mow the lawn, walk the dog, take out the trash. It blew the doors of my heart open. Suddenly, it wasn’t only about my loss, but the transformative alchemy of what we share and who we love.

Wendy Dolber fills her days in northern New Jersey, where she starts each day walking the dog and dancing in the kitchen. She Is the author of The Guru Next Door, novel/memoir/self-help passion project. She has had short stories published in Muleskinner Journal, Sixfold and Sequoia Speaks and has just completed a novel and a collection of short stories. @wendydolber, https://wendydolber.com