11 years

the day begins with orion rising just before the sun

and the cloudless sky is the deepest blue

and the sun is hot and the shade feels like liquid

and i remember standing on the bluff with you

11 years ago yesterday

you, me, the sky and the sea

and what felt like forever stretched out in front of us

i promised you my heart, and to stand by your side

and in that moment i told the truth

it was only later that i realized some promises cannot be kept

because, me? i chose to go on living.

and each day

i break the same promise

and

i do.

one thing

then someday you wake up and it is somehow 7 years later. it is not truly 7 years, since so much comes with you that it is as if it were brand new. dreams come and crush you with a glimpse of a profile, or a brief conversation, and you wake feeling completely dislocated and alone.

one thing that does not diminish is grief. yes, it becomes less frequent. but when it comes, it comes and sits and eats with its fingers from your plate, and picks at your clothing, and reaches in and tugs at heart and lungs and bowels. it steals sleep, breaks things at random, leaves with you in disarray, tucked around your tender heart. and you know, as you sweep up, as you straighten the fanned piles and eat bland food, that it will come again. creating order, gathering up, surviving, these are temporary. soon, the door will blow open with a gust of wind, and knock everything down again. but you take care, attend to the pieces.

one thing that does not diminish is guilt. it feels like heavy clay on thick soled boots. it makes you walk differently, deliberately, each step an effort. you feel you are moving forward but really, guilt is directionless, for guilt there is no "forward", but there is motion. i encourage you to walk, to remember how to move, since it is so easy to get stuck. so easy to be still and feel it suck you down into nowhere. there is no solution for this that i've found but movement. just keep moving.

one thing that does not diminish is sadness. the feeling of loss is always there. it cannot be undone. there is no un-losing.

interconnectedness

sometimes when you think you have it together, you realize you do not. or you did, and it falls apart again. unresolved grief surfaces, bubbles up or floods in.
i learned that kit died this weekend. jeff's beloved dog, a dog named so specifically for hope-kitai--a beautiful loving fluffy-butted blue merle collie with a runway length nose, and a heart of gold.
i imagine her standing at the edge of our yard, looking back over her shoulder just before her nose lifted the latch to the back gate and she vanished into the neighbor's forest.

when jeff died, my friend tammy came to the house to take care of the dog, and took her home. as i learned of jeff's death, i realized immediately i was in no shape to handle caring for a dog, especially not one so entangled and entwined with jeff and the struggle we had in trying to keep him alive- this dog, this one was rescued from a shelter in western new york, driven to new hampshire in hopes of giving jeff something to live for. this dog that jeff slept next to, arm over her furry side, every single night until he died.

when tammy took kit and i thought, i hoped, i expected, that i would find a home that allowed dogs and kit would come and live with me. and while the idea filled me with terror (such a reminder in every moment of what i had had, and what was lost), i felt it was the right thing, and pushed myself to make that true. then, finally, i had a house, i bought a dog bowl, a new leash, and the crushing realization that i just could not imagine living with the grief.

each time i had visited tammy, i would hug the dog and cry. i felt like a bad mom, like i had abandoned her, and yet, some of the worst sadness came from seeing her and knowing she was the last creature to see him alive. each time i saw her, each time i looked into her eyes i saw that. yes, of course, i saw her beauty and love, yes, of course i saw her spirit and silliness, yes, i stroked her long fur and kissed her long nose and rubbed her belly and smelled her popcorn feet, but my heart felt the connection with jeff, and with that the loss of jeff, and the immensity of the grief would overwhelm me.

so i did the only thing i could, i asked tammy if she could keep kit, told her that i just could not do it. and she said yes. more than 6 years now of love and treats and dog filled chaos at tammy's house. 6 years of painstaking grooming and sleeping on the sofa. 6 years of sneaking out of the fence and running for miles and miles only to be brought home from towns away, fur filled with burrs and sticks and mud.

yes i knew she was getting old, 14 at least maybe older. but i tried to ignore that. since as long as she lived, i had a connection to jeff, a tangible one, a shared one. granted, not one i could get close to since the pain was too acute, but i knew she was there, and there was such solace in that.
and now, with her loss, along with my very real grief for her.... comes the grief for my choices and powerlessness and, oh, the immensity of my regrets come flooding in. and what can i do? i can stand in the midst of it and flounder which is what this feels like now. wave after wave comes, rises, hits me behind the knees, knocks me reeling. it uncovered raw places, some anyway, those places that i try not to deal with. the ongoing unresolved grief.