Just a few days...

It's just a few days now.

It is in my awareness constantly.

Sometimes front and center,

sometimes in my peripheral vision,

but constantly there.

January 28, 4:59pm

Each year is different.

This part seems to be the same.

Every year the dread begins Christmas night,

really, probably a bit before,

with the remembrance of the "last one".

The awareness begins increasing

until by mid-January,

it is constantly there once again.

 

Sometimes it is just there, just awareness.

Sometimes it is sadness.

Sometimes it is sorrow.

Sometimes it is full-on grief.

But it is there.

My awareness that his physical presence is gone.

 

The more I am aware of his physical absence,

the more I feel his un-physical presence,

that intangible "touching" of our spirits.

His name comes easily to my lips.

I dream of him more -

and strangely, I dream of Lanny's Judy more.

(Yes, though I did not know her, I dream of her.) 

The dreams are different now than they once were.

They bother me because in them he is always...

...the odd man out, the observer.

Even when I try, in my dream, to include him,

he is the man on the sideline,

watching, enjoying, but not interacting or participating.

This has been the case since a "vision" type dream

several years ago - a story for another time.

Still, they are better than the nightmares I had

in the early days.

January has always been a hard month for me

because I am a Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) gal,

but the last 12 have been...

there is not a right word

but sad on top of SAD,

well.............

 

That first one in 2013 when I walked him Home

was only a preview of the pain that would come.

And that initial relief for him that he was well at last

was but a preview of the healing that would come to me

in the years to follow.

Grief is different now than it was in the beginning.

Then it was harsh, all consuming, excruciating, unending pain.

Now it is softer, melancholic, bearable.

But it is still grief.

That walking-him-Home January,

he was calmed by my singing.

I sang for hours and hours at a time.

The song that particularly seemed to calm and comfort him

was Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.

(Link leads to Alan Jackson version on YouTube.)

I find myself humming that song these days...