Sex

I am a fortunate man, I know that.  I still have Marty, I can still reach down, hold her, hug her, feel her breath, listen to her beating heart when I lay my head on her chest.  That she is still with me is a blessing.  I miss intimacy; I miss a passionate kiss, a gentle caress of the cheek, a hand on the middle of the back moving slowly up and down.  Let’s face it, I’ll tell the truth as best I can, I miss sex.

I miss the tactile, sensual, carnal, visual, passionate, instinctive part of having sex (sorry kids you weren’t adopted).  More important I miss that sense of connection, the emotional and physical intimacy you find when making love to and with someone whose heart you hold dear.

I miss the closeness and the touching of the body that only happens when you are sharing that most intimate, that most personal of acts.  There is nothing in the world that connects two people like sex.  Those people in life who say sex is not an important part of their relationship are clearly having sex because when you’re not, you feel the importance of that very simple and complex act of loving.

For me, as I matured, I was able to see sex in a couple of different ways.  As a teenager and a young man the carnal, visceral aspect of the act of sex ruled my understanding of the process.  As I grew up and gained insight I was able to understand that sex was more than the instinctual carnal part of the psyche, it was a way we satisfied another instinctual part of our being, a singular intimate connection to another person.  This is a consequence of the strokes, this is what both Marty and I miss, as connected as we are, as much as we have grown together, we both miss the power of sexual contact.

There is nothing in life that replaces it, that captures the intensity of human connection.  Sex, the physical act of loving, our outward sign of giving and taking love cannot be replaced in a caring, loving relationship.  It’s the ultimate connection, and it is a force of nature, it is beyond the drive to simply procreate.  

Marty and I are able to laugh at ourselves and our forced celibacy but it is a part of our life I really miss, Marty, not so much, it’s not really on her top ten things she misses.  It doesn’t come close to missing walking, thinking, talking, all of that stuff. 

  

Celibacy, at 57, is not something I have chosen, it’s not a part of my life I would want to adopt, but it seems it is a part of my life that is gone for now, I don’t think I want to say gone forever, I can’t deal with forever.

It’s a real conundrum.  I find myself at loggerheads between desire and reality, past and present, new and old normal.  I want something that appears to be in my past, that I am not ready to forget or forgo. 

I do realize I have options.  There’s infidelity, assuming I could find an appropriate and willing infidel, but there are way too many emotional, psychological and moral issues with infidelity.  An affair causes too many people too much pain and the associated guilt would be too much for me to handle. 

 

I thought about a trip to Las Vegas and finding a resident call girl, but that doesn’t really do much for the important part of a sexual relationship, the thing I most miss, intimacy and connection.  Besides, that carries with it a certain ick factor, not that there’s anything wrong with women making money anyway they can.

Neither of these options really addresses the seminal (pun intended) part of sex, the connection, that psychic, emotional raw connection that only real love making provides.  Sex brings a sense of attachment, an intimate knowledge and understanding of a couple’s emotions, passions, feelings and love.  It is the most outstanding outward display of an internal feeling.

All this sex stuff is decidedly uncomfortable for me and it is difficult to confess my angst about the loss of it.  It is one of those issues where real honesty comes hard because sex is such a personal part of our lives.  It’s not something I have ever talked about with friends, though I bet Marty did, I hope her friends think of me fondly.   

All of this is quite simply another part of a difficult journey; it is another aspect of being a caregiver to one you love.  As our journey has gone on it is my truth, my discovery about loss due to Marty’s strokes.   

I am a fortunate man, I know that.  I still have Marty, I can still reach down, hold her, hug her, feel her breath, listen to her beating heart when I lay my head on her chest.  That she is still with me is a blessing.  And that is the most important part of our life.

Looking for Passion

Great and Wise, Marty’s amazing doctor, once told me a brief story about a bad weekend he once had. He told me he was home with his family and he just didn’t feel himself and was being a bit of grouch around the house. Apparently Mrs. Great and Wise caught on to the bad mood kind of weekend he was having and sent him out of the house, to work. He said he went to his clinic, talked with a couple of patients and actually saw a couple of people and immediately felt better. This is a guy who loves what he does, who is driven to help. What I heard was a man living his passion.

I read and follow the blog of a woman I have never met named Kit. Kit is a remarkably multi-talented woman who occasionally posts videos of herself playing Native American flutes she has made. She once posted a succession of videos of her working and smoothing and then playing one of her flutes. What I saw was a woman passionate about what she was doing. I don’t know Kit, I admire Kit, and I could see through the filter of the electronic maze how much she loved what she was doing.

My trainer, Gretchen, loves to make me sweat. She has this really delicious and wicked smile when I groan just a bit as she hands me the medicine ball. She starts her day somewhere north of 6 a.m. with something called a boot camp which I suspect is about as bad as it sounds. She is still jazzed, smiling and challenging at the end of her day because she loves what she does. Gretchen is driven to physically challenge herself and her clients because of her passion.

Marty was a passionate woman about many things. Marty would play the piano until this one little spot in her back really started to ache. I can’t tell you how many times I watched her play, eyes closed, head moving just a little to the beat of the song, completely lost in the music. Our first major furniture purchase was a piano, it was not a nice to have, it was a must have because of her passion, her need to be touched by the music. She felt a palpable connection and passion to the piano and the music she made from it.

We once had the opportunity to tour the Sagrada Familia, a Catholic cathedral in Barcelona Spain. It’s been under construction since 1882 and is still only about ½ finished. That’s what I saw, this immense very elaborate cathedral that needed to be finished. Marty, looking at the church with different eyes and with a different heart was entranced by the soaring spires, the carvings, the stories the building told her. She walked around the building completely amazed with tears in her eyes, she was moved, I just kept moving and looking and watching her.

I have always been envious of people like Great and Wise, Kit, Gretchen and Marty. I always wanted to have a vocation or even an avocation where I felt great passion. It just never was.

Yes I loved and cared and was passionate about my family and my children. Yes, as a born and bred Texan I was and still am a Dallas Cowboys fan (as hard as that is now), but I have always struggled, I have always wanted to feel that burning, driving need to do some thing. On the whole I enjoyed my work, I loved working with people, but I never once felt a compulsion, an obsession to do it. It just never was, until…..

…..Until I saw Marty lying in the ICU at Parkland Hospital after the surgery from her first stroke. As I said, I had felt passion before, the good and bad kind, the love and anger; I just hadn’t felt it the same way I did when I first walked down the aisle of the ICU and into Marty’s curtained off area. When I saw her laying there with all of the tubes and machines and blood crusted in her hair I found my great drive, my beautiful obsession, my passion.

Marty always wanted me to be more passionate, more demonstrative about things, about her. She clearly went to a lot of pain and trouble to get me there. But there I am, what never was, is. I now completely understand and I feel the obsession, I feel the compulsion, I feel the need, I feel the passion. It took me 50 years to find my passion and it turned out, like so many things, it was always there, right beside me.