So many days I still find myself sitting in sorrow, acknowledging the ache in my heart and succumbing to this new reality. It feels like the penny of forever just dropped and shed a light on the hole in my life – the dark, deep, lonely hole. Sometimes I can’t muster the effort to shake it off so I sit for a while and let the feeling sink in. It’s real. It’s forever. It hurts.
I wonder at times if I’m testing tears when I indulge these moments of sadness – if I call them will they still come? Crying in private is preferred to the bursts of grief that catch me unawares, the ambush, the gush of emotion that renders me speechless and embarrassed – those moments when the tears are testing me.
It’s been six months since his passing, half a year. The shock of his death has turned into resolve – he is gone. Reality has settled like a stone in my chest, my heart tries to beat around it. The stone is the lump in my throat that is sometimes impossible to swallow. I’m past thinking this is unbelievable, I’ve moved from shock to another plain – these days I persevere.
I’m still treading water and surveying the coastline. I’m not sure which direction I’m going to swim, but at least I’m not sinking anymore. The support I have received buoys me, many people are helping to hold me up. Ultimately this challenge falls to me – sink, swim – the choice is mine.
We lived through a spring without him, flowers bloomed and training wheels came off the bikes. Summer arrived with warm days that stretched into evenings and we walked the beaches. It’s autumn now, leaves are changing color and the rain has arrived in earnest. He has missed all of this. We have collected days and they have made weeks, now those weeks have turned into months – six months. And still it is but a drop in forever.