Tuesday, May 27, 2008

She's All Better

That’s what they say, I reckon. Or maybe even the dreaded, “she’s over it”.

But I’m not so much. Better in many ways yes, but not ‘all better’ and certainly not ‘over it’. The thing is, you never get over it, the death of a spouse, but I reckon you get through it. And by my reckoning, the through part takes a lot of slogging.

One of the things that makes it hard is that no one ever mentions him. His sister and I talk-we laugh and reminisce about his humor and his foibles. But around here, even with people who knew him longer than I did, it’s as if he never existed. And the fact that they don’t mention him kills me by inches.

It’s knocking me hard these days because tomorrow is his birthday. It would have been his seventieth. June 27th would have been our fifth wedding anniversary; this coming November would have marked fifteen years together. All these milestone dates, and yet there’s no one here with whom to celebrate. The calendar is both an easer of grief, and disrespectful of it, the way it just keeps relentlessly moving forward, moving on.

It’s likely the day will come, nine years and a day from now, when I will have lived as many years without him and beyond him as I did with him. I try not to think of that too much, because it just hurts so damn bad.

No comments: