It’s been too quiet here. I’ve been sitting with my thoughts.

This is the anniversary of the day I lost my partner, my lover, my life. Gone and not gone. My heart still holds the music of our love. Hopes and joy, the memories that twine and untwine like grasses in the wind.

I miss Jack. He listened and asked questions, drawing out my inner thoughts and words with care. “Remember, I am your safe place.” He was. He is. His words comfort still, bring smile and laughter.

It’s been a long year. I got through another loss recently. My mother, after a long run with cancer, died the first week of May. May been a difficult month the past few years. Sad memories. Learning to allow them, to listen to the wind and the breeze, weaving then intertwining the memories they find.

Still working on memoir, I move between then and now, realizing I am a different person and can let myself be. The narrator of things past, the protagonist, a woman, wife, a mother too strong to give up, too weak to leave. Faith and doubt blocking the way. Curiosity and questions always seeking, yet afraid to find. Eventually seeing. Choosing to fall, saying the words, to God and counselor, “I’m done. I’m ready to have the conversation. I need to leave. What do I do?”

One lawyer, the year before I left, said I was in a tough place. I knew that; my ex told me in our early years he would always be self employed. If I ever put him through divorce, I’d get nothing but trouble. I tend to believe people, mostly family and friends. But people in general tell you who they are if you listen. Words and silences speak their truth. I stayed too long in that marriage, even knowing the danger. Until finally, I couldn’t. Leaving was hard. I felt broken, unlovable. And then there was Jack. Healing and hope.

I took all these thoughts of pain and loss, of love and healing, north to my mother’s funeral, expecting to write. I even brought laptop and books, thinking time may allow memories. I wrote nothing or little at best. I was there for my mother’s funeral, a long year and sudden painful demise. Cancer. I spent every moment with my sisters and my sons. Grieving loss, building new friendships and bonds. Sharing laughter. It comes in oddest moments, to meanings it may or may not explain. Then laughing at it again.

In every loss, there is so much to think about, saying to myself, “don’t over think.” All week, I said it, “dint over think. ” I’m not ready for more, not ready for Jack’s memorial, and no more time to prepare. “Pick clothes, lay them out, don’t worry if they’re right. Go to work, come home and rest.”

Tomorrow will come and be what it will be. Today, the memorial. Remember Jack and see his sons. “We got through some tough stuff and built a strong relationship.” It’s what he said, making plans for things to come. It’s what I’ll say this year and the ones after, building a future with his sons, with my own, with my sisters, my family. It’s what we do. It’s how I smile, how I laugh.

It’s how the words, these and others, come. Unexpected. Unexplained. In the quiet of acceptance and the moments of readiness, so hard to allow. And yet I do. When I don’t realize I can, because I’m weak, because I’m strong. Building strength I may not see until I’m further beyond. Until I’m told what others see. Until I need strength again, and fear my weakness, but go not knowing if I can.

Life is strange. It’s like the light best seen in darkness, the breaking of day, the finding of hope, an artist’s eye seeing what moves from palette to paint surface. Light by dark colours working magic. Brighter not by denying the dark, but allowing light to see beauty where it did not see before.

My life has that feeling. Beauty. Fear. Awe. A wonder at the magic of allowing what will come. Honesty beyond words.

That’s how I was with Jack. Open to pain and honesty. Long silences. Not many words capture that place. Words are just snapshots in time too full to empty all its joy and sorrow. Honesty allows. The wind blows. Time intertwines.

I pick up a stone. One memory to hold. One visit to Jack’s grave. My books in tow I sit and write, I read to him, I chatter and laugh, looking again at his last photo to me, the day before he died. Burrs by the river, “Thought of you.” “I love you. Now stop bugging me. I’m trying to write.” My laughter. Another recent post as he worked on his book. Unfinished like our life. One day I want to read it all, and over again.

Hope. Honest hope. I leave my stone, and wonder what will come.

June 30, 2021

Another possible blog post shunted off to the drafts folder, well really, sitting there for weeks. I may come back to it, but today the tears want out. Not hard sobs, Jack, like when I first learned you drowned. These are worn, frustrated, disoriented tears. The kind that shiver through a body too drained for emotion, but ripe with it. I can picture them, tiny trails gasping their way across scorched rock, cracked clay. Winding through evidences of distress or trauma. Ridiculous. Hope filled lines, tiny breaths rushing between scenes trying to avoid excess anything.

I slept three hours again between noon and three. Not true. I set the alarm, but my body fought letting go at the beginning and surfaced confused, too soon at the end. There wasn’t really a plan for the day anyway. Good thing. There was a brief hour or two of clarity at the beginning where I looked at my journal, reviewed some poetry, and made notes for longer writing.

But phone calls. I’m not over remembering the call, ‘silence’, him assessing the wait as I sobbed. Already knowing why he called. “Jack drowned this weekend.” Memory is tactile for me. It’s how I process. I still feel your body warm beside me, your hands gentle, your kisses soft, and one desperate upon my mouth, before you left. Wanting me. Loving me.

It’s hard feeling things intensely. Touch is important. I joked for years that I listen through my hands. They spent enough time with language falling off them. ASL. My smile at your forming ILY and smiling proud you got it. I love you. Those memories I want to feel. But lately, my body listens too hard. It yells over the memories of smiles. It yells loss.

May long weekend. I felt your heart stop touching mine. I felt it going, fighting it leaving. I tumbled with your heart. I felt it go. I begged to be wrong. And words. The call. I hate words. I love them. I want you Jack, your words, love, laughter, and all the joy I had remembering them. Waiting for you to come home. I have the memory, and words telling me you’re gone. They hit my chest in a wave of imbalance, a tug of fear. Shock.

Why is grief so much fear? Loss such a chasm?

It crashes in where it doesn’t belong. The dentist’s office calling. Jacob’s appointment. Another kind voice, explaining, rationalizing, insisting I understand. I do. But the telling, and retelling. Reasons they may not see Jacob, may not keep him as a client, flood over me. I can’t hold memory together. Focus. Listen. Their email bounced back. No way to call. Who do they email? Why they are calling me. No way to reach his staff. Simple. Fact. Context. Clear. I want to hear what they are saying. That it isn’t because they don’t like him, that it isn’t because he doesn’t need them. That they just need connection. But all I hear is the swish and score of water dragging rocks. Heaving me over the edges. My body. My head swirls.

I apologize and excuse myself. Promise to follow up with the group home. Let them know if I can get through. And even though their words say not my responsibility, I’m awash in words on why they called, I can’t hold them separate. They are loss over loss.

I can’t. Not today. Why? I slept. I’m sure I slept.

Did I sleep? I don’t know. And so I sleep again. After the call. After my text. And two or three emails, to group home manager and staff. Searching out clues. Who do I tell? What do I ask? Why is there an email address I haven’t used and dentist said bounced. And the answer comes back. Adamant. The address is right. It’s the one everyone can access. So I try. But it bounces. Flings itself up and over, bounces back without any sense of why. So I email again to the manager and dentist. One note combined. One clear, concise ask – why? I don’t know. It doesn’t work. Why? Apology. I hope they talk.

And all of this means nothing to the day to day I need to heal. I’m working at it. My head. My heart. My job. Go back to work. Jump box to box, work and home, go back to it all. Rocks I can’t miss. My body complains. At more than this drudge of tears that won’t come.

Why is so much of life about disconnecting? Losing and loss.

I wonder if the motions of my day mean anything at all. Shoppers stuffing buggies with mis-labelled essentials. Pop. Chips. Multi-buys of chocolate bars. Wanting baby clothes we used to share. They say things are opening up. I wonder. Logic disappeared months ago in swirls of ideas like water down the drain. I don’t know anymore what I don’t know. I pushed hard the last months, all my best storytelling used up on pictures drawn in the air. ASL categories, this one and that. Grocery and garden centre, front end with online, eventually curbside. Store areas mapped out as claw-hands drop in locations separate but all there. And cell phone, photo at the ready, curbside number to call. Will it still be that? Wipe, wash, story to spin. Swish. Swirl. A rock falls in, dropped from the air. Ideas weighing. Nothing that helped me hold you. Not Jacob either. He went, but isn’t gone.

I want to hold on, hold together. Know my hands are worth more than grasping at air.

There is no guarantee. No one who can promise me what will come. Just me, in the river. Thrashing. Nose above water. Flailing imagination. Covid brought colours and labels like waves over rocks. Bruises piling up. Mapping the years. Last year and this, promise and pain. Have I ever held on? Has anything I ever wanted held together? Why does it feel like so much repetition? Loss. Longing. The distance between. And always I’m reaching for a solution, a way to hold it together.

She’s right. I come back to it. The sound of her voice, rushing like water. Like she said, it’s not my responsibility. But responsibility isn’t what I was trying to hold. I wanted your love. I wanted time. Not these tears. They come and they fade. Evaporate in air.

Breathe. I have your love. I do. That I will hold.

Asked, “what is faith?” I .. hesitate. /A tiny voice / alive in me, raises itself / just enough to whisper, /”faith is life.” // Curious, I lean in to see, and /earn a smile. /This tiny bud beams at me. There /beneath its childlike form, crayon in hand, /a drawing, incomplete /but shining.

So I’m playing with the idea of pauses, line breaks, my relation to the words written and reflecting on them.

I wrote these before the shutdown …. before …. well, before.

Faith has been on my mind frequently the past few years. Divorce, breaking a life, learning to open, look inside. Not wanting to see. Some places are dark, a little bruised, torn, struggling to heal. Some places still unexplored. It’s hard to venture into the unknown. Trust. Especially hard to trust myself.

I made a mistake, entered into a relationship that wasn’t one. I am the one who stayed and stayed, who had to move away, shift, push my mind, my heart and my body off the known edge. I am the one.

Those are hard words to say. Words I once knew as insult or assault, now given some time and space, a little faith allowed some elbow room. These same words ‘the one’ become freedom.

I can let go of the accusations  Told there’s always ‘the one’. Oh yes, always the one who …. fill in any sin, error, wrong that could be dredged up.  An odd turn of phrase yet clear judgement and penalty. Faith. It was often the source or reason for anger turned against me, for judgement, for penalty. Faith. Having it too often required me to forgive,and  forgive again. To be the one who lived faith, who walked it out regardless any truth in the actions being forgiven.

Still. Faith hopes. It’s hard to kill hope. Faith comes with every new day, a light in our darkness. I think it’s stubborn, like me. Faith insists on living, even in the darkness, even in disaster, even in hatred and disgust, demeaning moments that try to beat me down. I may pause, let tears come. But like the image, though tiny in form, faith stubbornly sees colour and light; draws hope where there is none.

Faith. Is willing to be the one.

Faith.