I don't know what to do with all of this pain so here I am. I write other places but this is a dumping ground for grief. What A. said about being sick - people get tired of it - is true about sadness too.
I do most of my crying alone. Still daily.
I probably should stop listening to Coldplay.
The trouble is all music reminds me of you. Music rushed through the bloodstream of our marriage. At least the pandemic has stopped everyone going to see live music (we always said that, see not hear live music). Remember the last concert we saw on Fillmore? Goldfrapp.
A couple of weeks in the wilderness didn't change much. Or might have, but your mom sent me the last picture of you. I wanted to ask for it but couldn't, then she offered.
I should have been ready but I was not. The cry that ripped up and out of me scared the girls. Later I went on up the hill and sat on a rock and scream-cried for a half hour until the rain started coming down hard.
I have to ration myself, how often I look at it (and the one with P. on your birthday, his last picture with you). My monitor is blurry with fingerprints, me touching your wasted face. Oh my god. Oh my dear.
Is it stupid, it is stupid that I take comfort in the towel beneath your right elbow, that I have the matching one in my bathroom at this moment. It’s pretty but a shitty towel, somehow it repels moisture.
There is an ocean of difference between not talking and not being able to talk.
My husband watches me cry - in the supermarket, in the woods, in front of the TV, on a walk, in my sleep. He offers what comfort he can which is none which he knows so doesn't take personally.
I keep thinking of me and you and your mom at ChaChaCha’s, our Sunday place. The last time the three of us were together. The happy way the two of you smiled at me when I came through the door, waving me over.
I keep thinking how that last time, we didn't touch, it was the middle of the pandemic and I'd been across the country and most of the way back and I was concerned about infecting you. How I didn’t know yet, though of course you did.
I keep thinking.