Thanksgiving 2006 was a totally different picture.  I was still a wreck.  It’d been only 4 months since A had passed, and I had informally abdicated my role as keeper of the family finances.  The bills were disorganized, unpaid, overdue, and stacked with other mail to the point that I couldn’t get the desk shut properly. I really had no idea what was in the pile.  I knew I needed to take care of it, knew I didn’t want to pay late fees, knew, just like breathing, this was something I needed to keep doing whether I wanted to or not.  And still, I walked past the desk thinking “Later.”

Now it’s “Later,” and I felt satisfaction getting the bills paid, other things organized, and walking envelopes out to the mailbox.  No dread.  No avoidance.  No cloud hanging over me, other than my recuperation which of course is going more slowly than I would wish.

It’s funny to me that for so long, every single thing I did was tainted by grief, and even the most mundane things were remarkable because of it.  And now, every single thing I do is remarkable because the grief is absent from it, and it gives me pause as I consider (happily) the change.  I wonder at what point every single thing I do will be entirely unremarkable.  I must say, I’m rather looking forward to that.

Now I just have to wait for the biopsy results, and for my body to heal.  Surgery sucks.  And mine was minor; I hope it’s my last one.

Many thanks to all of you who sent your good wishes; I appreciate it.

This is my third birthday without him here, but A sent me a gift.  There are these catalogs that are wholly connected to him, and they do not come regularly, and they do not come randomly.  They come when I really, really need to hear from him, or for special occasions. It’s really uncanny; you don’t have to believe me.  It’s enough that I believe.  The one that arrived yesterday was from a company he bought my birthday present from in 2005.  He also messed around with my iPod, playing DJ; he hasn’t done that in awhile.  I felt him near today, a stronger presence than I’ve felt in awhile.  I am loved.

I always liked the round 20 years that separated us.  I like evenness and multiples of 10.  I realized this morning that I was gaining on him now.  We’re only 18 years and an infinity of distance apart now.  I meet that fact with resignation, like so many others.  There is no “over it”; I regularly shake my head at a reality that I do not understand and live with regardless.  My understanding is evidently not required, however much it may be desired by me.

Tonight I sat and ate cake at my friends’ table in their new home, surrounded by boxes…my friend who, it seems, was the other reason I was meant to go that guitar camp in California…and she told us the story of her widowed grandmother, who felt her husband’s arms around her waist as she did dishes one night, and who saw the dog wagging his tail eagerly as he stared intently at the empty space behind her.  And I know that it is not in all of our heads; that this is a UNIverse, where nothing is lost, and in that, there is hope and the strength to endure.