Right after I think I’m moving to some new phase the old waves circles back to swamp me, slamming me into the surf with a mouthful of sand as if to warn me how bad it could really hurt me, if it wanted to. Maybe send a riptide that drags me out to sea, the sea of grief we have all been floating in since you sailed out of our lives.
I’ve been thinking a lot about your last moments, how your mom said there was so much pain, though it was hard to let you go it was even harder to see you suffering so. I regret not flying to your side. You didn’t invite me, and I didn’t feel welcome, intruding myself. Your sister and brother and mom were all there, plus R. and the kids. Not flying to your side was probably the right decision for everyone else - but what about you? Would you have been happy to see me in those final days? I think maybe, just maybe you would have. Maybe for fifteen minutes, which was the length of our last phone call. Your name is still on my call list, and always will be - the number was disconnected the last time I tried it, wanting to hear your outgoing message, wanting to hear your voice.
After the funeral when S. grabbed my arm before I left, stopping me especially to say that she had read that final email, and that it was important to you, made you happy, gave you closure, how I wept. It is still impossible to write these memories without crying, which is distressing the dog who, seeing my sadness has loyally followed me around the house all day, settling wherever I settle with a sigh that is totally human.
These thoughts that jostle. How grateful I am to you for loving me. For your decency and kindness. For your amazing intellect and unshowy humility. How sorry I am that I failed you, us. There was a time I know you would have taken me back. My parents thought so too and made sure I knew it. Then, finally, you moved on. How glad I am that you were happy with R. I can see it in your face, the set of your eyes when you are smiling next to her in pictures. I am so sorry she didn’t get to spend the time with you that I did.
I couldn’t sleep last night and found myself watching another moonshow. Right after you died, I experienced an extended period of insomnia. I never felt tired, I just couldn’t sleep. Sometimes I’d go to bed only to get back up in an hour or so. Other times I just didn’t go. The dog got a lot of late night walks. I always ended up in the same place, in my living room watching the moon drop into the ocean. Last night was the Full Snow Moon, and it was like a snowball in the sky, big & round and white & bright. I sat there remembering our first night in the city, arriving just in time for morning rush hour to start whoosh whooshing past our place but we were so tired we slept right through it. Whenever I drive down B. street I look at that bedroom window that got the beautiful late afternoon sunlight, the bed placed between two sets of windows with plantation shutters, a room I shared happily with you and little H. who has been gone now for more than a decade. I always hated that rainbow bridge sentimentality but you know I really do hope that you and he had the reunion you just missed, arriving from China less than an hour after his last breath. You tried to comfort me but I was bereft. I wrote that poem and you cried and we held each other on the bed he’d never again share with us.
It’s a beautiful sunny day in February and you are dead and I am crying over this unchangeable fact and I don’t know what to do with all of this sadness. I feel, often, I have no right to it…I sometimes feel others feel that, too, and I don’t blame them. Everyone assumes ex-spouses had some sort of enmity or else why would they be exes but that was not the case with us. I always missed you. I never stopped loving you. I guess I never will.