Every year, for me this day (June 5th) is one of the most emotionally difficult days of the year; it’s my man Jacques Transue’s death day, in the bright early summer of what unfolded as the disastrous year 2003. Jacques died, after all those years of withering through dementia to death; I was crazed with grief (actually, I still am, it never went away, though the sharpest edges have worn down some, they would have had to); and then in November the flesh-eating bacteria came for me, and I just barely survived their onslaught, coming out disabled and disfigured, with almost all of my previous life gone.
Mozart’s disastrous year was 1791 — it’s chronicled in H. C. Robbins Landon’s 1791: Mozart’s Last Year (1988) — and ended with his death in the dark winter, but also embraced great triumphs, notably Die Zauberflöte. (More on Mozart’s last year below.)
I can’t tell you much about 2003 between J’s death in June and the appearance of a painful swelling in my right armpit in November. It’s almost all lost to me. I presumably spent this time in Palo Alto. I know that I was teaching a seminar at Stanford that fall, but I know that only because people have told me about it. My actual memory is blank.
I recall my response shortly after J’s death, because I wrote some about it in postings on the net: I wept a lot, and raged. At him: how could he have abandoned me like this, how could he have left me, damn him, how could he have just gone and died on me like this? And I sat with the flannel shirts that were heavy with smell of his body and mourned. Now, I fully understood the irrationality of my response, but I also realized that I was, like, the millionth person in the world to react this way; I would endure. Meanwhile, I wept, bitterly.
But sometimes I fall back into that hole. And then I miss Jacques terribly — well, the Jacques who mostly melted away in the 1990s, over 3 decades ago. But still…
In the latest New Yorker. In the 6/1 issue, in the category “Brave New World Dept.”: “Breeding Ground: The climate is changing. Microbes are evolving. Are we ready?” by Shayla Love, about a case of necrotizing fasciitis (popularly known as flesh-eating bacteria), caused by the organism Vibrio vulnificus in the warm waters of the Chesapeake Bay.
Despite the very high mortality rate of V. vulnificus infections and the extravagant procedures needed to reconstruct parts of the patient’s body, the article chronicles an amazing success story. As it happens, I have a parallel story, involving NF caused by MRSA — methicillin-resistant Staphlococcus aureus. I told my story in two postings on this blog:
— from 7/20/25 in “Bad history”
— and from 7/22/25 in “Bad history II”, with the Jacques connection:
It definitely was not [hospital-acquired]. Probably acquired through garden soil — unexpected perils of being a gardener! — though that’s not sure. Not from a hospital or through sexual contact, in any case, since both were absent from my life between June 2003, when my man Jacques died, and November, when the NF suddenly appeared. It is, however, likely that my immune responses were muted by extravagant grief (and, before that, the toll of dementia caregiving [over many years]).
An extremely rapid response, followed by enormous amounts of surgery and many months of post-surgery wound treatment, saved my life and my right arm, though the arm was gravely damaged neurologically in the process. (The undiscounted cost of the surgical and hospital services was in the millions of dollars; this is remarkable medical care. I mention this because the incidence of NF has been rising rapidly, for several reasons, climate change being one, and that will make treatment harder to supply.)
More on Mozart’s last year. From Wikipedia on Mozart’s life:
1791. Mozart’s last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of high productivity — and by some accounts, one of personal recovery. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera Die Zauberflöte; his last piano concerto (No. 27 K. 595); the Clarinet Concerto K. 622; the last in his series of string quintets (K. 614 in E♭); the motet Ave verum corpus K. 618; and the unfinished Requiem K. 626.
June 5, 2026 at 9:04 pm |
my long-term grief parallels yours; I grieve for us both, and for all who have loved with such passion.
This small poem that I wrote sometime in the years after Bill’s death distills one of the few things I learned from being widowed:
no title
Love licks his wounds,
Savoring the taste.
June 6, 2026 at 5:25 am |
Oh my, thank you for the poem. Triggering reflections on what makes some pairings so deeply satisfying that their loss can feel like the end of the world.
One is your partner’s providing strength and support, standing together with you against a world that is often both hostile and dangerous.
Another is your complementing each other, fitting together to make a whole than is greater than the sum of its parts.
Still another is your inspiring each other. In a quotation from the American tv series Major Crimes, Rusty telling Gus that he loves him and saying the mantra: You changed my life. I am a better person because of you..