A dip in the road
As yesterday wore on, I found my heart getting heavier by the hour. I chalked it up to the 15-month “sadiversary,” of which I’d been very aware, and while my glass felt relatively stable, the water was sloshing out of the top a bit.
I was standing in line at the grocery store after work, and the man ahead of me had a gray goatee. It was dark gray, not mostly white, like A’s was, and while this man still had more dark hair, his face seemed older, the lines around his eyes deeper. And he was short, shorter than I, not tall like my sweetie. And as I waited and stared, I realized that not all the older men I see with gray goatees look like him to me anymore. They all did, that first month, but now it’s rare. He was one in 6 billion. I look at his pictures, and I am blown away by the handsome face with the twinkling eyes, and I want him still, as a woman wants her man. I thought he was gorgeous; he never understood how I could think that.
I stared at this older man that looked nothing like A, but he stood there, paying for his groceries, and the posture was what took me back, to several trips to Safeway. I can see A so clearly, so alive, so in command of himself. Such a manly man, without ever being macho. And I wondered again how it could be that that man is not here, and this man, who was obviously older than A, was. I was rattled and emotional, because I don’t know how a man who shops and pays for groceries can be dead. That will only make sense to those of you who know this loss; it will sound like insanity to anyone else.
As I walked out to the car, I thought “I still can’t believe he’s gone.” But as I drove home, I realized that that wasn’t true. I can believe it’s true; my problem is that I don’t understand HOW it could have come to be true. That’s the part that always gets me, and has from the start.
Back in the worst of my grief, I sobbed over and over again, “How can a person just disappear? How can someone be here, living his life, and then suddenly not be here?”
How can my strapping, vibrant love be making cabinets and enjoying life one day, and not make it through the next?
How does life turn on a dime?
I still don’t know. I see him alive and well in all my memories. He never had a cold, even, in all the time I knew him. I don’t understand how it happens, and yet I know that it does, to so many of us. Some of us are tormented with watching every painful, and suffering-filled moment until the end; some of us with not having seen anything coming, and coming to grips with something that seems impossible, if only we didn’t know better.
There is a reason I don’t follow this line of thought much anymore: it’s crazy-making. But sometimes I just have to let it have its way because it won’t go away. Days like yesterday. It’s the same old mental merry-go-round, and eventually I will step off, because it makes me dizzy and not a little ill.
I miss you, Sweetheart. And you know I love you.