onward

Ten months. This space has sat unused, dormant, for ten months, the longest I can recall that happening. After so long it feels odd to be writing here, like revisiting an old home or putting on old clothes that have sat unworn for so long as to become creased and stiffened with age. Do I still belong here? Do my words? Does this space continue to have purpose?

*these are random photos in no particular order taken over the past 10 months

I have considered leaving this space forever, moving onward to a new space and leaving this as a testament to the time that Was, the time With Her, whereas I now will travel through the time After Her. There seemed a beauty to leaving this space as a sort of time capsule to Who I Once Was. With her.

I must acknowledge that I am changed, forever altered by loss and absence. In the past year I have learned that that moment of passing was not hers alone but mine as well, passing forward into a phase of my life that she would not see, not affect, not comment on or witness and to which she could not directly contribute. Her contributions now are posthumous, they are only in the living she once did. I have had to reckon with that reality and it is by no means a comfortable or easy one. I must wrestle with and explore this change in myself and discover what it means to be me - this version of me - and become acquainted with it. At times, I'd really rather not.

Continuing to write here, frankly, makes me uncomfortable, which is reason enough to do so. Death forces us to face up to what is uncomfortable, what is unpleasant, and I have continued to face that discomfort in the last year and a half, not only with regard to mortality but to many things. Writing, sadly, is somehow no long comfortable. Perhaps it is the knowledge that she is no longer reading my words: I had never truly appreciated just how significant it was to me, that knowledge that she read every word, viewed every photo. I learned days after her passing that she often shared my posts around her office. Knowing this is a gift, a treasure, but it is a treasure with a challenging weight as well; I can no longer write for her, and I had not realized just how much I did, how deeply my awareness that she would read my words inspired me to write them.

It all sounds terribly maudlin, as though I am still consumed with grief and have failed utterly to move on. Fortunately, that is not so, and so I know the writing must continue. As my therapist noted - was able to deduce without my even telling her - I am constantly writing; I have an ongoing inner narrative that is unceasing. To refuse to write, to continue to keep those words internal as I have all these past months has done me no favours, so it must end now.

There is much to say, there is much living to do. There is still joy and love and blessing, perhaps thrown into even more stark relief by the knowledge of loss and Grief. Grief my companion, my awkward travel fellow, who reminds me of the great value of What Is through awareness of What Is Lost.

While I wrestle with what it is to be here, one thing I know is certain: it is so good to be here.