Its a roller coaster ride that doesn’t really ever end. I stopped writing in the middle of last month. As I approached the ending of the month, I got swamped by feelings of inertia, of a different loss.
October 25th was the eighth anniversary of my husband’s death. I was also swamped with the sixteen year old memory of the early October loss of my brother Richie, number 7 of the 8 children. I still can hear the keening cry of my mother over the phone. as she lived with the unexpected news. The first of us to die, he was almost forty seven years old.
This anniversary was no longer a day that required special plans to provide selfcare for the day. It was a day where I didn’t need to feel the physical sense of peace at the beach, the water, or the botanical gardens in order to be okay. This year it still wasn’t okay that he was gone. But the disquiet, the remembrance wasn’t filled with loss or aching loneliness. Finally, I could say I was more like myself, more me than I have been in years and years.
Trisha Yearwood put out a new album this summer. She wrote and sings a song about September leading in to October, when you withdraw and everyone knows to leave you alone with what you lost. That song that hit a nerve in me and uncovered Heart hurt that I didn’t know I still had.
I lost my bearings this September and went through a different grieving than I had experienced before. I felt a whisper of the deep unmooring of grief that I felt at his death. But today my grieving is peace-full. Today I remember and feel the love again.
thoughts keeping me awake 