Of all the games I played as a child, I loved none more than one we played the first summer my family lived in a development of new houses that all looked alike. Our street had attracted families, with plenty of kids to gather outside, after dinner on long summer nights. In addition to my favorite game, we played red rover, hide-and-seek, and kickball in the middle of the street. Our parents were home for the night, so we didn’t have to watch for cars.

Though I found the town bitterly boring when I reached high school, Mt. Holly was a perfect place to be a child. The town and the times were considered safe, allowing us to walk or ride bikes pretty much anywhere we wanted to go. Downtown Mt. Holly had stores and a movie theater that on Saturday showed matinees for kids. My next oldest sister and I went alone to the matinee, using our allowance to buy big bright-colored suckers I couldn’t finish in one sitting, so I wrapped and saved in my sock drawer.

The town had been named for a tree-covered hill, the Mount. I collected leaves there in the fall and pressed them between sheets of waxed paper in books, lifting them out later to admire. Woolman Lake froze solid in December, and we spent cold afternoons on the ice, skating backwards and even attempting slow spins in our clean white boots atop slender silver blades.

In summer, we could fling ourselves into the murky water of Rancocas Creek, using a rope some older kid had tied to a tree. Because the town was surrounded by farms, those hot, humid afternoons, our parents bought fresh tomatoes, ears of sweet corn, juicy peaches and luscious ripe cantaloupe at stands set along the narrow back roads.

The game we played on some summer nights was called Treasure Hunt. One member of our neighborhood gang chose or bought the treasure, while another hid it, in front of or behind one of those houses that were hard to tell apart. Once the treasure was safely out of sight, the rest of us started to search.

Years later, I can’t recall if I was ever lucky enough to find the prize. Neither can I be certain what the treasure might have been. What remains is the feeling of hope and possibility at the start. I always believed I would go home with the treasure in my pocket.

I am thinking about this now when instead of finding treasures, I am experiencing profound loss. In fact, I have lost a treasure. Nearly three decades ago, I did find the treasure, a man named Richard, who became my husband, partner, friend, and not to mention, my life. He left this world after four and a half years keeping stage four cancer at bay. Though his death was long anticipated, it hit me like having all the air suddenly sucked straight out of my body.

To say that since his passing I have lost my way is a bald understatement. More than lost, I am stuck, not knowing if I should stay or where I might head if I could find the desire to go. There are no familiar landmarks. The road seems nonexistent or blocked, the way chunks of coastal highway in my home state of California unexpectedly fall away, a victim of winter’s torrential storms.

Perhaps I am thinking about the Treasure Hunt game today because I am needing the girl who fervently believed she would find the prize. I could use her help right now. That girl was a military brat, which takes a special grit most childhoods don’t require. Our family moved every year or every other year, to an unknown place we’d never been. We existed for long and shorter stretches without the parent whose first loyalty was to country, not us.

The hope I felt as a young girl that I could find the treasure kept me going through those wrenching moves. Each time I said goodbye to friends and favorite haunts, as I’d done on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, before boarding the S.S. Matsonia in Honolulu Harbor bound for Los Angeles, I clung to hope that I would make friends quickly in my new home. Early on, I learned to bring wishes for a good or better life, as we sailed, flew or drove into the unknown, leaving everything familiar behind.

Losing Richard, my one great love, has felt like a hollowing out of my soul. Along with his absence, his death has robbed me of daily rituals I leaned on, though I didn’t realize it until he was gone. Conversations about nothing important vanished, and with them the knowledge that difficult challenges can be faced, by talking them over with my spouse.

I am thinking now that to find the treasure on those lovely long summer nights, I first created a map in my mind. As I visualize the old neighborhood, I realize I can’t draw a map to my new life because I can no longer imagine a treasure can be found. How, I ask myself, did that young girl, skinny and short, have such faith, when she’d hardly experienced enough time on this earth to become familiar with its prizes?

Years ago, before I met my husband, I reached a point where I felt all my confidence dribble out. A man I thought I loved left me, without a word of explanation or warning. Rather than confront me with the old I think we should see other people, he simply stopped calling. Up to that point, I believed we were riding happily down a road that had no end. I left messages on the phone he refused to answer, to which he refused to respond. The journey I’d been on, during which I assumed I would continue passing one memorable site after another, was suddenly done.

A friend suggested some short-term therapy at a moment I was entertaining the same thought. That led me to a counseling center not far from my San Francisco neighborhood, at the end of the J-Church streetcar line, in a tall Victorian that before being turned into therapists’ offices must have been someone’s home.

Week after week, I sat in an uncomfortable straight-backed chair across from my therapist, Barbara. She gently helped me walk down a rocky path to the past, whose hard lessons had turned me into a woman repeatedly drawn to unavailable men. Midway through the second year of therapy, I had a blind date with a man I’d only spoken to once on the phone. We met on a stunning September afternoon outdoors, overlooking a scene straight out of a travel poster. San Francisco Bay shimmered feet from the wooden deck where we sat that fog-free afternoon, pretending to be interested in the salads the server had brought, while our attention was completely absorbed in one another.

That first date with Richard lasted twelve hours, until we stood on a hill not far from Coit Tower, amazed by the clear sky and huge full autumn moon. It was a night out of a romantic film, perfect for falling in love, which we gladly proceeded to do.

I lacked a map for being loved by a man I adored who had no intention of leaving me. Somehow, I managed to stay on the ride. But even after we’d passed decades together and our relationship fit like a pair of comfortable old slippers, I still feared that my wonderful husband would one day up and depart.

The evening Richard received a call from his doctor letting him know the MRI he’d had that morning showed probable malignant lesions in his spine, I sobbed. After years of expecting to once again be alone, I now had evidence of how Richard was going to leave me. I knew next to nothing about cancer, especially since the disease had metastasized to his spine. All I could assume was that at any moment, my beloved husband was going to die.

Four and a half years later, he was still alive, though thinner and weaker, with numbness in his feet and hands, and hearing and hair loss from extensive rounds of chemotherapy. The toxic brew had miraculously slain cancer cells over and over again, but the cancer had finally won. As I’d known would happen, the chemo no longer worked. This time, I knew my husband’s life was nearly over.

The night after Richard’s death on an otherwise beautiful fall morning, I was left with a huge chunk having been sliced out of my heart. The bed where he spent most of his time in those final weeks seemed to hold his absence. I would sit on the bed, as I’d done so many days when he was there, talking to Richard about what my life was like without him. Unlike the confidence I showed while he was alive, assuring him when he was gone that I would be fine, I let him know that fine was the last word I would use to describe myself now.

And yet I managed, day after day, to get up out of bed, my first thought of Richard and how he was feeling before realizing once again that he was gone. Going out to shop for groceries or take a walk, I would return to the house, expecting Richard to be there, asking how everything went.

As time has passed, though, I have started ever so gradually to accept that one part of locating the treasure now is to be grateful for the ones I’ve already had. The other side is to realize that the treasure of a great love is never really lost, even after the loved one has departed.

Unlike those earlier abandonments by men I’d fooled myself into thinking adored me, Richard only left reluctantly, when he finally had no choice. In his last few months, he repeated an almost daily reminder – he was fighting to live because of me, because he loved me so much. Unlike many relationships in our busy world, what Richard and I shared will never die, or even fade. Our love is like the pure white wedding dress kept safe in a plastic bag, looking as beautiful decades after the ceremony as it appeared on that one special day.

In an essay written by Ann Patchett, she tells the story of how she eventually decided to end her first, rather dysfunctional marriage. A chance encounter with a stranger in a swimming pool was key. Sharing her conundrum about whether to leave her husband, Patchett listens as this woman she’s never met before asks if her husband makes her a better person.

I think of that question nearly every day since finding myself alone. That’s because I am in some ways fine, as I assured Richard I would be. But now that he’s gone, I realize I’m only fine because of my years with him. Not only did he make me a better person. He also gave me confidence that I could survive, even alone.

Many days I hear his voice, soothing me or explaining how to do some task I’ve never done before. One afternoon, he led me to a tool chest in the garage and helped as I tried figuring out how to use a screwdriver, with its vast collection of different-sized points. He’s helped me think things through in a logical fashion, taking time to explore alternatives, and then settling on one, when it becomes apparent this is what should be done.

Richard is, in fact, helping me create a map to my new life. Importantly, he is lending me the infinite patience he possessed, bolstered by faith, to trust that even when the route looks unclear, the way will reveal itself in time.

 

Patty Somlo’s books, Hairway to Heaven Stories (Cherry Castle Publishing), The First to Disappear (Spuyten Duyvil) and Even When Trapped Behind Clouds: A Memoir of Quiet Grace (WiDo Publishing), have been Finalists in the International Book, Best Book, National Indie Excellence, American Fiction and Reader Views Literary Awards.