It's Going To Be A Long Weekend

I awoke to see a glorious morning outside my bedroom window. Light fog drifting across the pasture. Fairy wash clinging to seedpods of taller plants. Grass and flowers glistening in their coating of morning dew. Sunrise visible beyond the trees and hills surrounding the pasture. Small clouds glowing with reflected sunlight.

On my way to town I was thanking God for the wonderful morning scenery along the way, and my thoughts turned to Greg. His smile. His touch. His laughter. His everything. My everything.

Tears have been my companion since.

I felt lighthearted for the first morning this week when I got out of bed. I was enjoying the morning’s peace and charm. I wish I knew why pleasant thoughts of Greg hit me so hard. I know I will always love him and miss him, that will be a constant in my life. But this? 

How can grief be so inexplicable? I know grief will never go away, that is a given. I am having trouble understanding the suddenness of its arrival in the midst of a morning with so much beauty, a beauty that lifted my spirits more than they were when I first awoke. 

Is grief inexplicable? Is its sole intent and purpose to keep me from having happy days, where pleasant thoughts of Greg bring smiles instead of tears? It seems that way to me. Makes me feel as if grief has a personal vendetta against me and desires to keep me in tears instead of smiles for as long as it possibly can.

If this morning is any indicator of how my weekend will be, I have a long three days ahead of me. I will get out and do something somewhere else tomorrow and Sunday. Today I need to mow the yard so driving aimlessly this afternoon isn’t an option I can utilize today as I have so many times this year. 

All I can do at the moment is endure and hope for fewer grief-riddled days in the years to come. 

I may be sad. I may cry. I must be strong.

Healing Silence

God’s silence.

Songbirds are singing merrily. A lone cricket chirps in high grass. Tree branches and wildflowers sway in the light breeze but the trees nearby haven’t leafed out enough for the leaves to rustle in the breeze. I can occasionally hear the roar of the wind at higher altitudes.

The fine mist is accumulating on the new leaves and there are sporadic plonks on the roof of the Explorer when a leaf tilts downward and releases a drop of rain.

A lone Ford pickup truck breaks the silence but the hiss of its tires on wet pavement is soon gone.

I am sitting in a pull-off near Crocus Creek, but not close enough to the creek to hear the music of running water. I come here frequently because of the silence. No traffic noise. No voices to be heard. No radios or sirens disrupting the peace. God’s peace.

Today I need this peace. Cleaning, sorting, finding memories of Greg -- notes he had written, his work clipboard holding samples of some of the last things he printed, a tedious printed piece he had been proud of -- all combined to bring tears.

Tears that dampened the day as much as the intermittent rain outside the shop. I am not in the depths of grief that I have endured in the past few months, but felt that it wouldn’t take much to push me over that edge. So I drove to this silent spot.

I am sad, for my darling Greg is no longer in my life. The silent peace has leveled out my emotions so that the threat of tears isn’t as imminent as it was an hour ago.

The greens of Spring, the touch of the breeze, even the cawing of distant crows contribute to my peace.

I miss Greg more than I can ever say, my heart aches from his loss, and I know there will be many more times that I will experience grief so wrenching that I won’t know if I will survive it.

Today God’s silence has restored peace to my day, brought me away from tears for the moment, while I listen to the patter of a lively Spring rain that just now started. 

I will seek this silent peace many times in the years to come.

Old Habits

Throughout our lives, we acquire habits that we sometimes don’t realize we have until there is a drastic change in our lives. Since Greg’s death, I have discovered I have several old habits, all tied to Greg.

Perhaps the one I notice most often is catching myself listening for the sound of Greg’s truck coming down the driveway on a Saturday afternoon. When Greg returned home on a Saturday afternoon after golfing or gun trading, we usually went out to eat or riding around, most likely both.

I didn’t realize how many times a day I was in and out the back door at the shop and didn’t have to unlock it each time because Greg was at work, waiting for me to return with lunch or snacks, or just so he could leave for the day.

“Give me a hug,” one of us would say in the midst of a rough day. A hug to relieve our burdens and make them disappear for a few moments.

“Leave me alone,” I would tell Greg in the mornings when he got out of the shower, wide awake and ready to take on the day. I am NOT a morning person.

There are dozens of other habits. Tuesday afternoon I sat at Greg’s grave and talked to him about these habits, including the ones of his that I am taking on myself, like checking the doors at work three or four times before I leave for the day.

Old habits. Good and bad. They are threaded through the days of our lives.

One habit I will never give up -- loving Greg.

Boxing Up Our Life

On the corner of the desk in the office is a #10 envelope box. It is approximately 9.75”x12”x4.25”. In the box are business records for 2020. The box is perhaps three-fourths filled.

Greg and I officially closed the business in May of 2019 when he was diagnosed with cancer. I still do odds and ends of small jobs for long-time customers. That envelope box brings memories of busier times when a year’s business records barely fit into a 11”x17”x10” box; sometimes the records required a larger box.

Business records aren’t the only things I have boxed since August 2019. I have boxed up shotgun shells, books, coon hunting trophies, knives, dishes, photographs, and many other items. Some things were easy to box. Others brought tears and it was all I could do to place those items in a box and seal it. Some of the things I gave away, most are still in my possession.

In the process of boxing up our life, I wondered . . . is this what we all come to? Items in a box that our descendants may discard without realizing what memories reside within those boxes.

There are still hundreds of things that I should box. I will at some point. Right now there are many items I cannot bear to stow away. Wildlife prints. Shot glasses. Golf instruction videos. A&W mugs, Carhartt T-shirts.

I have boxes. I have time. I do not have the desire to box away all the memories of the life I shared with Greg. They are too precious to me.

The empty boxes can wait.

Tomorrow Through Yesterday

I’ve always liked music, just about any genre. Although music has always affected my emotions, it hadn’t had a huge impact on them until after Greg’s death. Now, the least bit of any music, sad or joyful, can bring me to tears.

Yesterday, for some inexplicable reason, I was thinking about Air Supply’s “I Can Wait Forever.” I looked up the lyrics and listened to the song. At the side of the screen was a listing of other Air Supply songs. One was “Here I Am.” I’m not familiar with their music so I looked at those lyrics also.

Two very different songs -- one of love that could be consummated tomorrow, one of a love from yesterday.

Both songs made me melancholy, caused me to think about my yesterdays and tomorrows.

All my yesterdays that will be there through all my tomorrows. All my yesterdays that will shape how I view all my tomorrows.

All my yesterdays. All my tomorrows. Can I wait forever to see my tomorrows move away from grief? Can I see my tomorrows without viewing them through my yesterdays? Can I live my tomorrows without feeling I am betraying my yesterdays?

Questions I cannot answer. I don’t know if there are answers.

Here I am. Memories aplenty. Missing Greg. Grief at bay for the day.

I will wait for new tomorrows. Hopefully not forever.

Forty-Year-Old Curtains

I shouldn’t tell this on myself but anyone who knows me knows that on a list of a million things I might like to do, housekeeping is at the very bottom. I despise doing housework.

Today, I’ve done what needed done the worst because it was getting on my nerves. In the process, I looked out the kitchen window several times, admiring the dogwoods still in bloom and the new leaves on the trees in the woods behind the house. I thanked God several times throughout the day for the beautiful day He sent.

And I looked at the kitchen curtains. They are in desperate need of replacement. The hems are unraveling as are the rod pockets so instead of the curtains hanging on the rods straight, they are at an angle because I have draped them over the rods. There are rips and holes caused by cats attacking the curtains through the years. This is not something new -- the curtains have been this way for at least twenty years.

I had bought a red-checked tablecloth that Greg liked. We were in Kmart not long afterward and I saw some white curtains with a little red vine embroidered in the corners. I put the appropriate pieces in the cart and when Greg saw them he threw a fit, saying he didn’t want any damn vines in the house.

So, I put the curtains back and have never replaced what I bought from Greg’s cousin when we bought our double-wide trailer in 1987. She had had the curtains for a few years before she sold them to me.

Even though Greg throwing a fit hurt my feelings at the time, later I got peeved and my stubbornness took over. While I have looked for new curtains a few times since, none have suited me like the ones with the red vines. Once in a while Greg would say something about the curtains needing to be replaced. I either ignored him or said, “I know it.”

I miss times like that, even though they aren’t what could be called happy memories. Greg and I were together, sharing a life and all the ups and downs that occur. One more day with Greg, even if we spent half of it fussing with each other, would be welcome.

Tomorrow is my birthday. Will I gift myself new kitchen curtains? Probably not.

Ragged memories are better than no memories.

Music in the Rain

A plunk. A plonk. A rat-a-tat-tat. A roar.

I sit in the Explorer and listen to the different rhythms, the different melodies, sorting through the different emotions rain brings to the surface. I watch raindrops land on the windshield, watch them pause, descend, combine into rivulets striping the glass. Some hold their positions, awaiting fresh drops to nudge them downward.

My emotions are as varied as the irregularity of the rain’s descent. At this moment they are calm. I have no idea how they will be ten minutes from now.

Travis Tritt is on the stereo, singing “I Can’t Seem to Get Over You.” For me, it is “I will never get over you,” for Greg is so much a part of me that I don’t believe I will ever get over him. Next on my mix is “Nothing Short of Dying.” I don’t know if Travis realized just how correct “that’s worse than being left alone” really is.

I threw some Bocephus in this mix -- “Old Habits.” Habits that have been with me for two-thirds of my life, embedded in my heart, may never disappear. Habits like listening for Greg’s truck coming down the driveway mid-afternoon on a Saturday. Awaiting his arrival home after a day of deer hunting, worrying if he’s not home soon after dark falls. Millions of little habits. Millions of memories that I will always have deep in my spirit.

The rain has become a light mist, making it easier to see what is around me, and I sit quietly, letting God’s handiwork soothe my soul. If the temperature was a few degrees warmer, I would enjoy walking in this mist until it soaked through my clothing.

That is something that Greg did not enjoy -- walking in the rain. I wonder if there is anyone who would enjoy walking in the rain with me.

Perchance, some rainy day, I may know.