A year ago, hospice brought all the equipment to the house. The reality of how limited our time together was became tangible, but even then we had no idea that four days was all we had left.

This entire year has felt like a countdown. Get through Christmas. Just get through our anniversary. Just hold on until the end of the school year. Survive the summer, my birthday, his birthday, Thanksgiving. I have not been strong, I have not been courageous, I have not been many of the things people say about me and to me. I have only, just barely survived, but even that was not by choice.

More than one person has told me that the first year is the hardest. I am more and more certain they are wrong. The first year has been excruciating, don’t get me wrong, but the closer I get to the anniversary, the more I realize that this is really just the beginning. We knew a year ago, that our time was limited, but now I fully understand that my time without him is endless, and that feels even more impossible to bear.

I miss him from the moment I wake until the moment I close my eyes. I do all the things necessary to keep my home, keep my job, keep my life moving forward, but I… I am still so very angry. I am still so very sad. I am still so incredibly lost without my best friend. I do not understand the “why,” I do not understand the purpose or the meaning of any of this and the idea that maybe we aren’t supposed to understand provides no comfort either. Robert Frost said it well when he said, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life; it goes on.”

I keep thinking this will ease up, that I will turn some magical corner, that acceptance will arrive on my doorstep but in reality, it feels like the waves just keep coming. At every turn there is a song, a funny story, a sight, a sound, a meal, an event, an issue, a question, a memory – every where in every thing and all around me exists a world of shared memories, shared stories, shared lives. Except it’s not anymore. My first Christmas card in the mailbox was from the funeral home. A student chose “hoity-toity” as his vocabulary word this week. “Billie Jean” comes on the radio every time I turn on the radio it seems. A “To My Wife” birthday card fell out of his unused tablet this week. I think the Highlander needs new brakes and it will be the first time since I met James that I’m going to have to pay for someone to change them. There was an actress on NCIS last night that I knew from somewhere else and he wasn’t here to tell me where we knew her from. I made my annual trip to the mall and couldn’t even finish my pretzel – I haven’t eaten one by myself in years.

And I still open the bedroom window every single night hoping to hear the owl.

Life goes on. But only for one of us.