You are everywhere

It's been a familiar journey through grieving you.  I was sorting through my bookshelf last month in preparation for a garage sale, and I noticed the section of books on trauma, grieving, and healing.  A lot of those were recommended by you.  But on the top shelf, I saw a little purple velour book with silver foil writing, titled Happiness.  It was a birthday gift from you the year I was trying to make peace with divorce.  Inside, in your artistic, miniscule handwriting, you'd written a wish for "making my dreams my future days."  Words inscribed for eternity by a hand that's not here to share its words with me anymore.

I also rearranged my love board - a few old things taken down, a few new things pinned up.  For the past nearly four years, there's been a letter tucked up near the bottom.  You felt badly for sending a format letter instead of personalized notes to each of us, and apologized for your exhaustion as you battled your disease the first time.  You expressed your deep gratitude for our love, our taxi services, our presence at appointments, our slumber party "dates," our gifts, our care for Bella.  You thanked God for the gift of life.

It disorients me a thousand times over to read your words.  Your energy is so present when I see and touch these things.

If I had to pick a time to grieve, it would be summertime.  The warmth, the sunshine, the fresh air - it's easier to find joy in the moments.  It's easier to forget for a while. 

Now, autumn is coming...a season of settling, of darkening, of closure.  On Labor Day, my mom handed me an envelope of newly developed pictures to see.  Among several others, it held pictures of two events that stood out to me in their contrast: pictures of me graduating, and a picture of me as I left to sing at your funeral.  I'm the same confident, poised Amanda in both.  I'm wearing the same wide, beautiful smile. 

Just don't look at my eyes.  The elation set against the sadness - I can barely look at myself.  My broken heart is tangible, I would imagine even to a stranger.  Taken not even two months apart, the photos don't even look like the same woman to me.

I had two girlfriends over to my home for the first time on Friday.  It started out by looking for a certain goofy picture of my dog (with a popcorn bag stuck over her puppy-head) and morphed into trying to find the one remaining comedic, drunken picture from my wedding.  Laughter, stories, wine, good food...

and the evening froze when I turned the page of my photo album to photos of you, Bella, and myself, on the nights I used to watch her while you finished your life coach certification.  Three gorgeous years before you got sick, while leukemia was still a foreign word to you, you sit on your red velour couch in the little upstairs apartment on 4th Street, contentedly gazing at me in the dim lamplight with Bella zonked out on your lap.  At four years old, she's so tiny, so innocent.  My face is chubbier, but younger and brighter - not nearly so lined and tired-looking.  Your hair is still blond, your skin has color, your body isn't swollen and bruised.  You radiate health and contentment. 

We both had such different dreams, ideas, and plans for our lives back then.  Where we are today...who could have imagined?  Who would have wanted to?

I turned a few more pages.  I found the picture you sent me of yourself and Roberto, the two of you glowing as you snuggled a brand-new, 6 pound Bella.  I returned to my shelves and pulled out the album of our time in Italy. There were no words, and I couldn't stop looking.  It's still sitting open on my dining room table; I can't put it away.  Not yet.

Kelly and Mel honored my silence.  They let me have my moment, and joined me in gazing on my memories with reverence and love.

I sat in lecture yesterday feeling pretty good at first - I knew I'd just aced our first quiz.  The day's chapter covered bone structure and function, and honestly, I feel like I should have been ready for what was coming.  I ought to have expected the heavy, I-can't-breathe feeling that descended over me as my professor explained how red bone marrow resides in spongy bone, how the trabeculae protect the precious blood-growing tissue. 

The last time I cried in this class, it was 2001 and we were discussing sub-arachnoid hemorrhages.  I cried the day we discussed aortic dissection, too.  I remember sharing this with you, how grief could steal up on me in the middle of a biology lecture, two years later.  How the tears came in the most unexpected and inopportune moments.  You helped me know I wasn't crazy, that this was part of the process that I would always and ever be learning how to navigate.

I just never could have imagined this, today.  Here I sit at work, unable to focus enough to study until I write what I need to write, crying in yet another disadvantageous place - and really wishing I could talk with you about it.  Intellectually, I know this is "normal" and that I ought not to judge myself, because every grieving journey takes its own path.  Emotionally, it's a different story.  This won't ever feel "normal" or "ok."  I accept that, but it sure doesn't make it easier.  The memories are everywhere - you are everywhere - and I'll process some of those moments here, because you and others have helped me to know that giving space to the heartache, giving voice to the process, is the only way we heal.