Day 112

Sadness is a fog I can’t find my way out of. I take the dog for epic walks, an hour and a half or longer, six miles at a go. I wear earphones and listen to the same song over and over on repeat. When my husband travels like now I go for days without speaking. I’m a human dishrag.

And then I’ll snap out of it for awhile, and feel almost normal and even be able to speak of you with J., or K., or my husband, and be fine, voice trembling a little maybe but no breaking down and wailing.

And then I find myself in front of my computer gazing at a picture of you with tears dripping onto the keyboard, and fucking Coldplay is in the background, and a whole hour has passed.

In that last picture your face is skeletal but your essence is there. It is a terrible picture of suffering, your eyes receded, bright and gleaming, into caves of pain and the unbearable tenderness I feel for you when I look at it.

I go back to the picture with P., from a distance you look like you are smiling next to your best friend. You both look good - of similar height and weight. Your useless arm disguised by a coat. But zoom in, leaving P. out, cropping to just your face, and your pain is so evident it is like a punch to the throat. Your eyes looking inward.

My eyes selfishly return to the towel under your elbow, one that used to hang once upon a time in not one, but two different bathrooms in two different homes in two different cities that we shared. Many a morning you wore it around your waist while shaving, while steam from my shower fogged up the room. Did you remember that, I wonder. Or maybe it was just the nearest thing to mop up a spill, a cup of coffee knocked over. Or to dry tears.

I look for a sign from you everywhere. K. says the signs are in the box but I can’t look in that just yet. I wanted to go to a psychic, almost did. But I didn’t while I had money and now I have none and that’s good, because I was planning on blurting all sorts of details to the psychic so the psychic would say all kinds of reassuring shit that would in fact make me feel better, even as I know she’s helping me with the con. Of course it’s all about wanting to hear a narrative from someone, anyone, that maybe the fact that there are no signs, not a one, zero zilch nada niente, is because in dying you cured yourself of me once and for all, and will happily haunt your new family which is as it should be and I deserve this pain, I do, and yet I was hoping I was really hoping after that email - not the last but the second to last, the one from you, either just before, or just after the diagnosis, I’ll never know - that you forgave how much I hurt you, that it mattered to you to know how much I loved you and always will.

Your mom sends me pictures from the deer camera, different wildlife caught in freeze frames. Two fawns with their shy white spots - I wonder if they made your mom think of your kids, as I did. A doe jumping, her legs elegantly tucked. A young buck, fuzzy horns just sprouting, inches away from the lens. A coyote standing and staring with glowing eyes; a bird flying up, startled perhaps by a click from the camera, the sun filtering through the architecture of its flight the way you imagine heavenly light would illuminate an angel’s wing. Doesn’t feel like a sign though.