a year

it is almost a year since she died.
you know it by the feel of the air, the smell of the leaves, the woodsmoke, the frost that lies in the valleys. you know it in your bones, in the center of your heart, in the back of your mind, in the middle of your throat. you know it in the clenched hands, in the dreams that turn stones and find bottles of pills, and you walk by and touch a blanket you know she touched, and you imagine the last few hours of her life even if you do not want to.
you will be flooded with this, even if you think you won't be. it is not a curse of the damned, just the tide coming in, it will come in, flood the lowlands, sweep away all safe places to step and leave slippery mud that holds footprints. you may not even know it, you may find yourself retreating, or picking fights, or walking into doorways. you may have trouble tying your shoes, or when you bend over to pick up a pencil, your eyes will fill with tears. there is no right way through this, there is only through. love may have found you in a million ways. walls might have been torn down and news ones erected, floors laid, windows repositioned, but it is still the same house. it is impossible to change anything enough.

i have no secret to survival, it is just that i survive. it is what i do with each choice i make or don't make, it is in waking in the middle of the night with my heart on fire with aching and learning to look at the moon.
the first year lasted forever, i was not sure how i would get through it. but i did. you did. you have. you will. this is the only time you will ever need to make it through the first year.
they say the first year is the hardest, and in some ways that is true, but i cannot promise it gets easier. it just gets different. acuity is replaced by ache. guilt and memory remain and haunt. i wish i could say otherwise. but there are a billion unanswered questions of what if and if only, and no matter how many years pass, those answers just do not come. they just can't.

advice? mark the occasion but safely and not in-the-moment. allow yourself to be busy or elsewhere or with friends. mark the occasion by standing by the stream, tasting maple syrup from a spoon, talking to her about how you actually feel. there is no need to be nice or not nice. go ahead and be honest. i think it helps to be angry even in the midst of sadness. this is not a simple grief, it is complex no matter how many amazing wonderful things may have happened since. but you may not be angry. you may no longer be sad. whatever you are and wherever you are, you are.

my path is just that: mine. yours is yours. i wish i could write to you to let you know that i am thinking of you, and holding you gently in my heart. hoping you will be gentle with your own. but this opens my own wounds--brings up all the festering sadness that lurks, for me, just below the surface. for me, and perhaps for many, this remains such an interior wound, and just because it is not visible does not mean it is not there.