because someone will appreciate this

Driving to work today, the rain was coming down slow but steady. My cd player has a shuffle function, so it flipped over onto "Come What May." I turned onto the back road I take down to my office, that passes through a neighborhood. Down the road, I saw a big white vehicle pull out. It was followed by an old white hearse. I've never seen a white hearse before. I could see two more limousines waiting on the side street, so I stopped my car. I wonder if people my age even know to stop for funeral processions.

where oh where can my baby be?

Sarah will no doubt give me some grief because she hates that Pearl Jam cover. But I like it, and I was listening to it on the way to work today. This day has been slow, unusually so, and that makes it drag on longer. There's a bit of sun now. Today I cleaned out my gmail boxes, slowly deleting almost every email my exhusband sent to me in the past two years. That's been a peculiar exercise. I thought about mass deleting them sight unseen. But in the end I succumbed to the temptation to read through them. It make me a little sad to see how many of them were just links and nothing of substance. In the end there weren't very many of them. What a melancholy exercise and one I don't look forward to ever doing in the future.

I think this time of year this go around has some bad mojo, because so many people I know are in a rough headspace. I question why I even want to write this entry. But I think it would be disingenuous of me to pretend like these things don't ever cross my mind. I don't want it to seem like I'm some quivering emotional slab of jello but neither am I completely disconnected to things that only happened a year ago. I try not to write a lot about this here, for many reasons. Someone would hopefully say something if I was being excessive I hope.

There are days when I miss my husband. I miss feeling that I had a connection to someone, that bond to weather life together. I miss someone telling me I was pretty, and I miss someone rubbing my head. I miss feeling like I had a partner who understood so many of my peculiarities. I miss the person I married, somewhere back there.

No going backwards though. I knew when I dialed 911 that it would end everything. I suppose I just didn't think it would all happen so fast. Those memories are still so visceral.

My aunt wrote to me one day and said it was foolish to think grief gets 'lighter' somehow. You just get stronger, she said, and you forget how much you are carrying. I think that is true of many of us. The brutality of it has faded in twelve months, but that sense of loss might never vanish entirely. I had too much invested.

No answers are easy for love. I try not to brood about loss, and focus instead on the world I know. It's strange to think I've gotten so old and still not learned how to say certain things. Maybe after this year, it will just become easier to carry.