“OMG, just look at who the illegal chihuahua is playing with.”

“It’s my new stuffed teddy bear, Aussie.”

“What do you call it, Commie? And where did you find it?”

“It was hiding under the shoe rack in the Senora’s closet.”

It was probably this snatch of conversation between our two local canines that reminded me of one of Bernie Glassman’s frequent responses:

“Bernie, what did you do with the shirt you picked up from the cleaners earlier?”

“It’s hid-ing.”

“Bernie, where are our flight tickets?”

“They’re hid-ing.”

“Bernie, it’s your turn to make dinner.”

“I’m hid-ing.”

“Bernie, where’s the dog? You took Stanley with you earlier, didn’t you?”

“He’s hid-ing.” Bernie really did leave Stanley alone by a pizzeria once. He went back, found him, and bought him a slice of pepperoni to compensate.

He didn’t say it, he chanted it, going up with hid and then back down. The mail, the tax forms, the dirty sweater supposed to go into the laundry, and even he himself—all were hiding when they weren’t where they were supposed to be. Sometimes I gave it right back to him:

“Eve, where are you? We’re going to be late.”

“I’m hid-ing,” I’d chant in the bathroom, busy putting on makeup.

And sometimes I did indeed feel so much like hiding, getting away from the rush of our life together. In the beginning we argued often about schedules, like this:

“Eve, are you coming to Poland in April?”

“Next month?”

“No, April 2029.”

“That’s more than three years from now, Bernie!”

“Now is the time to put it on the calendar.”

“I’m not scheduling the rest of my life this minute. I need to leave room for spontaneity. I need to leave room for surprises.”

“That’s not how I work,” he’d insist. “Believe me, life is a lot simpler when you put things on the calendar.”

Eventually, I had to agree with him. Putting things on the calendar indeed put some order into our disheveled lives. It dictated beginnings and endings and offered at least a delusion of structure. Now, more than seven years after his death, I like to schedule things way in advance. Maybe by doing that, I can pretend there will be no interruptions or surprises, like death, let’s say.

But so often back then, I wanted to hide. Go down to the basement and shelter behind the sheets hanging on the lines, or hide eternally in the woods. It’s Zen Peacemakers, I used to argue silently. Can’t we be more stationary?

He was an exemplar of someone busy busy busy, and still at the same time. Never any hurry, just a sprightly gait to his bowlegged legs as he put a phone, cigar, and a pen inside his shirt pocket, so confident he almost burst into song as he made his way to the car.

Confident of what, you might ask. That love will win out? Peace? The arc of the moral universe? I don’t think it was any of those. More like a deep sense that life was not shock-proof and that this moment, yes, even this moment when he started his beloved Toyota, contained everything. No need to wait, hope, or pray, it’s right here. And if you can’t sense that, you’re hiding not from tasks, expectations, or a life you never bargained for, but from your own emptiness, so quick, so awe-full.