There’s a lot of poetry floating around in my head (mostly the kind that one would submit to Okay Donkey or Sad Goose Coop – corny, weird stuff – you know the type) but I’m busy, too busy to focus on poetry at the moment. That isn’t, as you’ve undoubtedly noticed, preventing me from writing the blog entry. I’m busy but still procrastinating of course. 

It’s been more than a month since I last chatted with you. Hey! How are you? How was your July? Mine? Oh my gosh. Thanks for asking. Crazy. It was crazy. I hardly had a moment to sit and contemplate. I’m not even sure what I’d be contemplating but that’s the point of contemplation, isn’t it?

I’m so close to being finished with the latest novel. It’s like when you see an image in the distance and watch it form gradually as you draw closer. I know what’s going to happen and I know how it’s going to happen. Now, it’s just a matter of putting the final few thousand words on the screen. Sometimes, that’s the hardest part. It’s so easy to start writing but what if I can’t finish it? What if I can’t write the ending that I envision? The first 60,000 words roll off the fingers but the last 10,000 arrive one letter at a time.

I’ve been thinking a bit about grief lately. More than usual? Probably not but perhaps with more awareness. This month would have been my 30th wedding anniversary. I know I’ve mentioned before that we never really cared about marking particular days and even missed our actual anniversary date more than once. But now that there’s nothing to mark, I’m more aware of the date approaching. 

This has made me consider the changing face of grief. I’ve seen a bit, in my half century (plus). Life and therapy have encouraged me to understand my own grief and trauma, without comparing it to others, without why me-ing. But there are times when I feel the weight of it more. 

Trust me when I say that is NOT a plea for sympathy. 

As most grieving and traumatized individuals would tell you, after the initial event, we don’t really want people to sympathize. Learning to sit with – acknowledge, if you will – our experiences, talk about them, accept them, is part of the process of changing. 

It’s not like emerging from a chrysalis. I’m pretty sure no butterfly has ever thought, “if only.” It’s more like becoming fluent in a language. Initially, there’s a lot of struggle, trying to figure things out. Then, as we become more experienced, we recognize what things mean but we can’t always communicate. Over time, we get more fluent, but we still forget and still communicate poorly on occasion. 

The changes we experience are things that no one who hasn’t gone through it could anticipate. Unless you’ve lost your partner, you probably won’t understand those days where partnered people seem to surround you. While we were driving home from treatment one time, Ken pointed out all the old people we passed. There were so many. His unspoken message was clear:  why won’t I grow old but all these other people have? 

As his end was approaching, I was looking at my future. He saw a lot of people who had already achieved an age he never would. I saw so many silver-haired single women, sitting in groups at the coffee shop, alone together. 

Colin Hay’s song “I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You” captures the experience particularly well (which shouldn’t be surprising because this is a man who knows grief). “I still find pieces of your presence here” is exactly what my life is like. 

It’s not just that sometimes I open a drawer and find something that I can picture being held in Ken’s narrow, long-fingered hands. That definitely happens but sometimes it just makes me laugh, like when I stumble across the yellow, banana-shaped, banana slicer – I think I told the banana slicer story in an earlier post.

It’s also that I am as likely to find pieces of his presence in a moment, a memory, an image from a movie, or even in words that I write. His presence is inside me, not captured in an object or a place. That’s lovely and difficult, not something for sympathy so much as understanding. 

Anyway, because you now think I cry myself to sleep every night – what an exhausting thing that would be – I’ll point back to Hay’s song – “I don’t want you thinking that I don’t get asked to dinner.” 

Yeah, that’s not a weird announcement that I’m dating. No thanks. But I am living joyfully because I should. Otherwise, what’s the point? A slog of sorrow and a lonely death? Not for me, though I do think ‘A Slog of Sorrow’ would be a delightful gothic poem or maybe an Irish drinking song. 

And on that note, it’s time to wrap this up. I’m going to breakfast with friends this morning. What are you up to today? 

Much love.