This was our life

I’ve already made my grieving more public than is seemly.

I continue to mourn in writing as a heads up for those of you who may experience a similar circumstance.

An unnecessary heads up, I  admit. We all grieve differently.  Also, we each face our grief  differently at different times as we mourn.

I feel like I have entered a point that accentuates my mourning. I miss him more, perhaps, since his birthday. I miss him more anticipating the one year mark since his passing. Between Nov 7th and Feb 25th I have a lot of grieving to do. Seeing a picture of Burt, bearded and studying his watch, melts me.

That picture sits on the screen of the cellphone I had gotten for him to use. It takes its turn in a sideshow, the phone on a perch next to my bed.

I have read a lot about others’ losses and I am not prepared. My fragility is unexpected. I am steelier than this, I think, as I feel a wave of wish you were here. Wish you weren’t gone.

I want to be honest with you. You deserve that honesty.

I know, with a pang, that Burt’s going was timely. I am not sure how many more years, months, days I could have tended to him.

I speak of my public mourning, but I shed few tears. I am weepy over sad endings or beginnings in books. I tear up, I don’t cry. I did not rend my clothes as was an enviable custom, nor wear a color designated for widow’s weeds.

That term, I think a little too dispassionately, refers to the rended clothing. To the enviable custom.

Burt is gone, yet I sense his presence, his curiosity, his care. It’s the memories of him and not the loss, I recognize when I look at the phone’s screen and the many picture frames decorating the house.