The Anniversary
I thought I’d have something to say on the first anniversary of my wife’s death. Turns out I’m struggling for words. It’s a lot like the past year. Basically, I’ve spent most of the time picking up pieces and trying to make sense of things. One thing I’ve learned is that there is no sense to be made. Life is pretty random, and diseases strike without explanation, and no one can really tell me why my wife’s brain malfunctioned.
Another lesson is how similar my situation is to everyone else. Loss is all around. You just have to look. And the struggles to cope are real and ongoing and mostly private. Some people are willing to talk and share, but even with that they spend a lot more time alone with their grief than they do in a crowd. I have a sense, sometimes, that the world is mostly an ocean of pain, but that sounds too much like despair. Let’s just say, we all hurt.
The good thing all about all this pain is it how it can set things of beauty in high relief, if you let it, which may be the key. Letting it. Giving in to pleasure and bathing a wounded heart in the colors of a sunset, the melody of a song, or the warmth of an embrace. The past can crush you, but it can also lift you up. And it’s the choice we get to make, keep building on what we had, repurposing the stones, or live in the rubble of the loss. I’m pretty sure I’m in a rebuilding mode. And I got here by starting up there. And with that I’m now at the end, and if you’d like a literary reference look up Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.