Feeling It

If you don't feel the pain; examine it, acknowledge it, even look at it, it will not retreat.
For a myriad of reasons I have been in a real slump for weeks. I've experienced a recent disappointment, the death of a dream. Sometimes when this happens it awakens old hurts. And along comes the end of the school year with its award ceremonies and reminders that my husband and their father is dead. Relay for Life is next week-end, and Team Lucius is hard at work. . . I still stop and think: How did this happen? Surely, he is just gone for a time. I never thought I would be here at mid-life without the love of my life. It is hard to cook meals without thinking of Lucius, and sometimes I avoid the family atmosphere because it is excrutiatingly painful.
I still think of him mid-mornings around the time he would usually call just to say, "What are you up to?" After 25 years he still called me every day from work, usually a couple of times. I miss the sound of his key in the door. The girls miss the man whose approval they sought.

We miss him still. Always.

Sometimes Despair

My dear friend Betsey sent me a link to an artist's website this morning, she knew I was having a very rough patch and thought it would help. It did. The man's name is Danny Gregory, he is an artist/author of some repute. Recently his beloved wife died after living as a paraplegic for a number of years. She either fell or dragged herself over the balcony of their 8th floor Manhatten apartment.
There is something comforting to me in reading another person's words when that person has lost their soulmate. Not as in misery loves company, but as in this person does understand the depth, the breadth, the magnitude of my loss and pain. Even though I don't know him, and never will, he is out there and he knows. He articulated some of the very things I feel, some days on an hourly basis.
I do have the comfort of my faith, but sometimes we all need to know there are fellow travelers walking the earth at this time, who get it. And he gets it. No, we probably don't have the same spiritual or political belief system, doesn't matter, he gets it.
Reading this man's words have inspired me to shake off the present despair and know that joy is still in me. It is.