I have thank you notes to write, calls to make, people I should hug for 100 years, lovely people who sent wonderful things, beautiful pieces of art, music, prayers, offers of coffee and friendship. I’ll reply soon and acknowledge how much I appreciate you. I’m so sorry and I know some of you are worried and maybe even hurt. Please forgive me. I’m trying.
But what is it? I can’t move. I sit on the couch and look outside to watch the wind blow through the trees and I think, “Dad would have loved this garden,” and then I cry. Grief is nothing to trifle with and I’ll hold grief’s hand until he feels like moving on. We sit quietly together for long hours these days.
Mom sent me a small box of photographs and they arrived today. Going through them was wonderful, but now I can barely breathe.
Jim wanted to walk through a park with another couple tonight but I couldn’t do it. Some of it is also because my ankles creak and crack with arthritis and so I’m slow. It’s embarrassing to feel like an old woman. Sorrow and shame. Humiliation. He went without me.
On the other hand in the afternoons I sit in my wicker chair, right in the middle of the lawn, and water the flower beds in the sun. Sometimes I close my eyes and almost fall asleep. Sometimes the breeze brings mist across my face. It feels like a caress. I miss that kind of tenderness. I don’t feel it much myself these days, but I understand this is all temporary and tomorrow I’ll laugh. He’d eventually laugh if he were grieving me.
That’s all I’ve got. Here is a simple but beautiful song from someone hardly anyone knows.