Dear family, friends and loved ones, 

I am currently teaching idioms to my fourth graders and I realize that sending a thank you card before the holidays might seem like putting the cart before the horse, however, looking back on our journey over the last couple of years and my journey since I lost James last December, there is nothing more important to say this holiday season, than to express my deepest gratitude to all of you. 

It is not hyperbole to say I would not be here writing this today if it weren’t for my sister, Julie.  She was here in my (and James’) darkest hours and she has remained present when I’ve needed her, nearby when I was uncertain and at a distance when I had to go it alone. Likewise to Rob, I am deeply in debt for all the times he helped fix things around me while I was still trying to fix things within me.  My gratitude extends to my dad, who has walked this road before and who has shared his support and insights with me to help me navigate this unwelcome journey. To my second mom, Judy, and her email chain, your love and support was multiplied by all your friends and family who took me into their hearts and prayers.  To my son, Jacob, and his wife, Carissa, more than just delicious scones and banal tech support, your visits warm my heart in immeasurable ways. To my brother, Garrett, and his family, thank you for help with garage doors and deck stairs and other decisions that may feel trivial to you, but felt mountainous to me. I am thankful also for my Aunt Marg, who has her entire church praying for me and who sends me anecdotal emails that light up my heart.  My appreciation goes out to my mother-in-law, Evelyn, as well, who helped me heal while her heart was still breaking.

My deepest gratitude to my friends – from Jaime who left her classroom and showed up at my door immediately upon hearing the news to “The Heathers” who have continued to invite me out and check in on me – your strength and support has lifted me more times than you can know. Deep thanks to Steve and Jess, your friendship meant the world to James and will always mean the world to me. My gratitude goes out to Marissa who “co-taught” solo last year – picking up the slack for me in my physical and mental absence – you are the reason I was and can ever hope to be “highly effective.” 

I am blessed to work with an amazing team of gentle-hearted people who didn’t just allow me, but encouraged me to put family first and who have been there before and since to support in any way they can. Likewise, in all their precious ways, I am grateful for my students, who have hugged me and handed me tissues, who have written me note after note to encourage me.  Your compassionate hearts give me hope for our future.

To all members of “James’ Army”- including my extended family and circles of friends,  from my high school chemistry teacher and his wife; to Sarah, a kindred widow herself, who knew to recommend a book on joy in the midst of my grief – you all have touched my heart in so many ways this past year.  Diane, your note forever lives in my wallet, and the cards, emails and blog comments that all of you have sent me, have reminded me again and again that while grief is uniquely personal, it is also universal.  

I would be remiss to leave off Trudy, Charlotte and the flock.  You all gave me a purpose, if only, in the early stages of my grief, to get out of bed to fill food and water bowls.  I am especially thankful to have Trudy to talk to, if only so I don’t question the sanity of talking to myself so much.  I promise more walks and less tears in the days ahead.

Above all, I am forever and ever grateful for James.  For his humor, for our shared dreams and above all for his love. This home, this farm, this life, this path I am on would not be possible if it hadn’t been for you. My love for you, Chief, is bigger than Germany. 

May you all have a season, a year and a life full of blessings and, most especially, full of gratitude.

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.

You know that party game where someone asks you, “If you could have dinner with any person alive or dead, who would it be?” In the few times in my life when I’ve been in a group and this has been asked, people have astounded me with their answers: historical figures, spiritual leaders, even ancestors from generations back have all been suggested and I have been in awe thinking of the depth of conversation that might be had with such people.

For me, I’d like to meet Kate DiCamillo. More than likely, all four of my regular blog readers are shaking their heads and then doing a Google search to even know who that is. She’s my favorite author, a children’s book author, and while I love several of her books, my dinner guest selection really has everything to do with her book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.

I’m sure I’ve told the story before, but I bought the book without knowing a single thing about it. It was on a display shelf at a Scholastic Book Fair and I bought it for my niece, probably part of a Christmas present. She presumably read it and it sat on her bookshelf for a good many years until one day when she cleaned off the shelves and bequeathed my classroom with the books she no longer wanted to read or treasured. This book was among them. It still doesn’t explain why I chose to read it. Many, many, many books have been donated to my classroom over the years and I haven’t stopped to read but maybe two. But somehow this one just caught my attention and I stopped to read it.

And I have never stopped. I’ve read it every year to every class and it breaks my heart and gives me hope and makes me long to be such an author.

We are in the midst of the book now, with my two fourth grade ELA classes. We use it to work on our summarizing skills as the chapters are just the right length and with just enough content that students can really hone in on the most important details and by the end of the novel we’ve done enough modeling, practicing and checking that they are really good at independently writing their own summaries. At least of fiction texts. But the truth is, I just applied a standard to this text because there is no way I will ever teach and not read this book to my class. If I were teaching high schoolers, I would find a way to make it applicable.

But today was the day when my students got to really feel the power of the written word. Today is the day when, for me, they get to be a part of the magic of a book – of the way it transcends the moment you are in, the way it provokes strong emotions and connects the experiences in our own hearts to the fictional characters within the pages of the novel. Today was the day when students ran to get the tissue box and it wasn’t just because Mrs. Koehn was crying, but all eyes were damp and red. And we haven’t even gotten to the ending. Lord help me when the ending comes.

I won’t say what happened. If only because some of you have yet to experience this novel and I don’t want to detract from that experience in any way by revealing any events, but today would have been a day when James would have asked me about school and I would have only said three words and he would have hugged me and known what a hard day it was for me all because of this one chapter. And that was before, well, before.

In all honesty, if Ms. DiCamillo were seated across from me at a dinner table and I could talk and ask her anything, I’m not even sure what I would ask. She could tell me all her writing secrets and the story of her inspiration for the novel and she could tell me her daily writing practices that lead to such amazing chapters, but to be honest, there has to be something within a person that gives them words such as these that can time and again move hearts such as mine. I think, in all honesty, I would simply thank her. Not just for the experience of her books, not just for all the emotions that conjure up and spill over, not just for all the ways my heart breaks and mends with her choice of phrase or word, but for helping me help students fall in love with reading.

As I closed the chapter and we sat down to write our summary today, one of my students said, “Are we going to read more books like this one this year?” I asked what he meant by that and he said, “I’ve just never read a book that made me feel like this.” I assured him that I hoped many of the books we read together and that he chooses to read on his own make him feel this way.

Presidents might have changed history, spiritual leaders might have changed religion, our own ancestors would surely have amazing personal stories to tell, but Ms. DiCamillo changed the hearts of many of my students, turning them into readers and for that, I’d sure like to buy her dinner.

She has a beautifully unique name, but for reasons I couldn’t begin to explain, I called her “Petunia.” She moved in halfway through my first year of teaching with scars on her heart that I would sometimes see evidence of even if I never knew the cause. But more than any of my other third graders, she shared my sense of humor and we enjoyed playful banter during our time learning together. Her name was mentioned many times over dinner along with the other students who brought joy to my days and who made that year so special to me. At the end of the year, she wrote me a little card, in the way that third graders do sometimes, and she signed it, “Betunia,” having misunderstood my nickname for her this whole time.

She kept in touch in the years since, this beautiful flower of a child. With her easy smile and gentle heart she would stop by my classroom to say hello, share a hug and catch me up on what she was doing. Sometimes months would go by between visits, sometimes years, but I only needed to say, “Guess who stopped by today?” and James would know from the smile on my face that I had seen “Petunia” again.

Yesterday, she sent me another email, catching me up briefly on her life. A college senior now, majoring in a well-suited field of psychology, I have no doubt the positive impact she will have on people however she chooses to apply that degree. In her update, she shared that she had proudly bought her first car, including a picture of her beside it, and telling me that she named the car, “Betunia.”

I sobbed the entire drive home, not just for the wish that I could share that with James who would understand instantly what an impact this had on me, but because I’ve been searching for my “why,” searching for my purpose, searching for my reason to stay in teaching or my reason to make a change, and she just handed it to me. Again.

Maya Angelou is credited with very wisely saying, “People may forget what you say. They may forget what you do. But they will never forget how you made them feel.” As teachers, we hear this quote so often it has perhaps lost its impact. Until we turn it around and realize, it’s also how the students make us feel, too.

Petunia’s gifts to me in this life are immeasurable. She tickled me with her third grade freckles and easy laugh and she delights my soul now with her heart of gold. She is my reason for teaching. She and all the students like her are the reason I spend more time at school than is reasonable. She is the reason I agonize over lesson plans and spend hundreds of dollars a year on books for my classroom. She is the reason I can endure the senseless meetings and bureaucracy of the profession. She is the reason why I love my classroom so much.

Keep reminding me, sweet girl. Keep reminding me.

My sister was replacing some of the bushes on their property and wondered if I wanted their old ones. With a fall to-do list longer than my arm, finding a home on my property for the old bushes wasn’t high on my “yes” list, but I do love adding to my perennial beds and “free” is too good to pass up when it comes to landscaping. Before the day was out, there were four spirea bushes in my driveway on plastic sleds awaiting their new home.

I had been at school for the entire day, working through my school to-do list that was equally as long and so the bushes sat overnight. To be honest, I didn’t have any immediate plans to get them in the ground as there were several more pressing items to take care of, but, on Sunday, when I was unable to fix the mower myself and would have to wait to get it in for service, and when the forecast called for rain by early afternoon, I decided to get them in the ground so that Mother Nature might welcome them to the farm with a slow, steady soak.

It took Trudy and I several minutes of walking around and discussing options before we settled on where they should go. Every place I found meant moving something else or rethinking my original plans for the space, but that’s the way farm projects go. With my canine supervisor right on my heels, I finally decided on a couple of spots and got busy digging.

The bushes went in easily enough and I think they will flourish in their new home, but moving them in did mean moving some other plants around and it wasn’t long before I found myself staring down a task I didn’t want to do. I had two Japanese painted ferns in two different spots that needed to be relocated. They both looked out of place where they were, but my plans for moving them were much more complicated than just digging a hole and relocating the plants. I stood in the lawn, leaning on my shovel, staring at plants that I had more consciously than not ignored moving for months, knowing all that would be involved when I finally came to terms with it. It didn’t take me long to realize, however, that nothing would ever make the task easier and so today might as well be the day.

Where The Red Fern Grows is one of my all-time favorite books. I’ve read the book more than a dozen times I am sure and every single time I have read the story out loud. The first time I read it was with my son. Jacob was then around eleven years old, and it was our nightly read aloud. We both loved that time spent reading together, curled up under blankets on the couch, reading the story of Billy Colman and his dogs. But when the book ended, tears streaming down both of our faces, my son yelled through his heartache, “I hate this book! I hate this book!” It was, for both of us, one of the first times a book had made us feel a loss so deeply that it was hard to imagine it was a work of fiction. His perceived hatred wasn’t at the book really, it was at the power of a story to wring our hearts out with sorrow. I’ve read Wilson Rawls’ classic book to my students every year that I’ve taught third or fourth grade. I still cry with deep heartache every time, but I absolutely love the story, and I love the lessons it includes for my students. So I continue to share it with that hope that they not only realize some of those lessons for themselves, but that they too, see how powerful books can be.

And so it was today, that I moved three Japanese painted ferns, ferns with beautiful red stems and the closest things I know to a “red fern” to the spot under the maple tree. There’s been a rock there for years, ever since our dog, Eli died. Eli’s sudden death was the first loss James and I suffered together and a heartache that hit us both harder than we could have imagined. Two of Eli’s stuffed animals still sit in front of the stone, untouched by the wild animals that pass through, untouched even by Trudy, despite her shared love of stuffies. There’s a smaller rock, beside Eli’s stone where Beatrix is buried. The only grown chicken we’ve ever lost, James had done everything he could to save her when an egg got stuck, but she didn’t survive. He buried her before I came home, knowing my heart was too tender to see one of my feathered girls gone.

And so today, under a tree James used to tap for syrup, I dug a new hole for the ferns. Between the trunk of the beautiful maple that has doubled in size since we moved in and the stones of my beloved pets, next to the bench that looks out over the pasture, I dug a hole for the ferns. And then I walked back to the house, into the bedroom, and got the urn from my nightstand and then sat on the porch next to James’ empty seat.

For the second time since he passed, I opened up a container that holds the last tangible remains of my beloved and I scooped ashes out. It didn’t feel any easier than when I did the same thing this summer and it didn’t feel any less surreal. I knew James wanted some of his ashes to be spread on the farm and I always knew some would go under the maple tree, but there was still nothing that could make the actual doing of it any less emotional.

Before I planted the ferns in their new spot, I spread the small cup of ashes in the hole. My hope for a heaven feels like just an optimistic wish anymore, but I wondered, as I combined ash and dirt, if Eli had come running when James left this earth. I wondered if all the animals that were loved and cared for by him were there to greet him. I thought about what Billy says in the book when he buries his second dog beside his first. “I buried Little Ann by the side of Old Dan. I knew that was where she wanted to be. I also buried a part of my life along with my dog.” I put the ferns in place and carefully filled the dirt back in around them and I thought about the passage in the book that explains the significance of the title.

“I had heard the old Indian legend about the red fern. How a little Indian boy and girl were lost in a blizzard and had frozen to death. In the spring, when they were found, a beautiful red fern had grown up between their two bodies. The story went on to say that only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern, and that they never died; where one grew, that spot was sacred.”

The rains never came this afternoon, and so Trudy and I went back out at dusk with a bucket full of water and gave the ferns a good soak before we headed to bed. These ferns might not have been planted by an angel, but I know more than one angel lies beneath them.

Someday, sooner than I want to admit, Trudy might have a spot under the maple as well. An impossibly hard thought for me to even let pass through my mind. All I know is, someday I hope to see all of them come running toward me when we are reunited once again. Someday. But for now, they have a sacred spot under the beautiful maple looking out over Someday Farm.

Yesterday, as a part of a new character-building curriculum, I played a game with my students called “Choose One.” The game gave students a choice of three items and asked them to choose one to be “gone forever.” Created as a way to provide some practice with group dynamics, discussion techniques and how to disagree with kindness, my class debated and discussed the three options on the board with their tablemates and then, as a class, we discussed which of the three we wanted to vote “off the island.”

The first slide had something like shoes, gloves or hats. The second one had yo-yo’s, kites or bubbles. The third was plane, boats or cars. Each time, the students had lively conversations with each other and we spent time talking about the group dynamics and, in addition to the virtues of each of the three choices, we discussed how to include the quieter students in our discussions and so forth. But the fourth slide made me think outside my classroom. The choice was books, TV or music. We, as a class, made the decision that TV meant anything that would show movies or videos and the class resoundingly and almost without hesitation promptly voted to get rid of music. Perhaps it was because their precious video games fell into the TV category, but some of them didn’t even feel like it was a difficult choice. One kid explained it as, “Well, at least books and movies could be educational, but music is just, well, it’s just music.”

I didn’t assert my opinion, I didn’t say anything other than to comment on the kind ways I had witnessed groups interacting with each other. But in my mind I thought of the impact that music has on me, especially right now.

Just a couple hours before this game was played, for example, a colleague down the hall was playing music in her room before the students arrived. She does this every day and it’s always great music from the 80’s that I can hear as I make my way to and from the copier before school starts. But this morning, the song caught me and gave me pause. Michael Jackson was singing, “Billie Jean,” a song that had become an inside joke between James and I. I can’t even tell you how it started but no matter where either of us were, if we heard that song, we would text each other the phrase or sometimes a short audio clip of the song to say, “Billie Jean is not my lover!” Car, grocery story, department store, no matter where we were, the song always made us turn and declared our imaginative disdain for Billie Jean as far as lovers go, or a quick text was sent for the same declaration.

Today, I sat across from my mother-in-law at lunch, talking about both of our late husbands, Sarah McLaughlin’s “I Will Remember You,” played at the restaurant. And while I waited in line at the grocery store tonight, my phone caught the title and singer of a song called, “In the Stars” by Benson Boone, which it then started playing the moment I turned my car on. Let me just say, these songs don’t hold any punches on a day already steeped with emotion.

Today, I might have voted music off the proverbial island just to get some emotional peace, but I can’t say I would agree with my students that it’s something I would want gone forever. I might struggle to listen to Katy Perry sing “Roar,” or Marc Cohn sing “True Companion” or Sarah McLaughlin sing nearly any song she wrote, but it’s because they touch me so deeply that I would never want them gone for good. I wonder at what point my ten-year old fourth graders will turn that corner with music when it becomes all-consuming and their way of feeling heard and seen in the world.

For today, we will hypothetically vote it off, but I hope it isn’t too long before they also feel the power that comes from songs.

I can’t remember the last time I slept well. No matter what time I go to bed or whether or not I take melatonin, I am always awake for some part of the night. It isn’t just that I can’t sleep, even when I do, I have the most vivid, disturbing dreams. People I haven’t seen or thought of in a lifetime play starring roles and many of my dreams are so violent in nature, they remind me of the ones I had when I was pregnant.

Last night, a man I knew in college showed up in my dream. He was the brother of a dear friend of mine and the only blonde, other than Kirk Herbstreit, that I have ever been attracted to. And for one brief moment in time, in all the ways of a naive college girl, I thought he hung the moon. I can’t say today and I’m not sure I could even back then why we never dated. But last night in my dream, he was sitting beside me on a bench somewhere. He said nothing, but he put his arm around my shoulders in a way that my dream-self felt extraordinarily comforting.

Facing me when I woke this morning was a birthday that James didn’t live to have. We knew last year, as we celebrated his 51st, that there wouldn’t be another unless an entire series of miracles occured. But this dream, this ephemeral moment that lingered on my mind as I reluctantly got out of bed, and specifically this gesture by this man so long ago forgotten, reminded me today that sometimes what we hope or wish for isn’t the only path to joy. Even today, knowing the reality of how my dream with James was cut short, I wouldn’t begin to wish any of it away.

I have no idea where this man from my college days is now or the path his life has taken but I would imagine he would feel much the same way. Wherever he is, I am ever so grateful that he showed up in my last night while I slept to remind me of the joy that I found on this path, and to restore my hope that maybe, just maybe, such joy will be found again.

My best friend in college was named Jen. Not Jenny, not Jennifer, but Jen. She was the first vegetarian I knew and she defended women’s rights in ways that were gentle and persuasive. She was completely focused on her studies, a pre-med major, she never dated, didn’t party and was meticulous about her work. Years later, I was invited to a small reception after her wedding to a man she met while in graduate school. Seated at a table with her friends from high school and college combined, I learned that she was known in high school to be quite social, that she loved the McRib sandwich and that she was called, “Jenny”, a version of her name I would never have dared to utter in college. She had reinvented herself when she went to college and it became apparent, seated at that table of friends, that we had known a very different version of her.

There is a version of me that exists in the world right now. “Survival Girl” is the superhero name I’ve given her as she saves me time and time again from situations where I feel like I might drown in my grief. Going out with the girls for music Bingo? Survival Girl is the one who shows up. She can hear all the songs James would have not just sung along to, but how he would have hammed it up, making everyone laugh, probably messing up more than one lyric intentionally or not be the death of her. “Survival Girl” is the one I take with me at the grocery store. She can shop for one without getting overwhelmed by the tangible absence of him there. Every food is a reminder. Every dish I intend to make speaks directly to his absence as head chef of our household. “Survival Girl” is the one who goes out occasionally to a dive bar a town or two away. She sits and listens while others sing karaoke, surrounded by strangers who do not know her story and who let her sit peacefully alone in a crowd satisfying my need to be social without have to actually interact with people in any meaningful way.

But every superhero has their kryptonite and for “Survival Girl” it’s the empty adirondack chair on the front porch. It’s a tough one to face on any given summer afternoon, but pulling up the drive after being at school all day is more than even “Survival Girl” can handle.

James’ work schedule meant he was home by noon every day. He would often work around the farm in the afternoon, but even when he took a much-deserved nap, he always set his alarm to be up by the time I came home from teaching. Weather permitting, he sat in his chair on the porch with Trudy at his feet waiting for me to come home. I can hear him trying to keep Trudy from running right to my car as I pulled in the garage, an effort that was all but wasted on her enthusiasm. I would kiss him as I passed by to my seat on the porch, and leaning in, I’d smell diesel fuel more times than not. He’d have his work boots on and on cool days a plaid shirt over his stained t-shirt. And a hat. Always a hat on his head.

We would sit and talk, or more accurately, I would talk and he would listen for as long as I needed to vent or celebrate or explain my day. When I’d finally come up for air and ask about his day he would dismiss his side of the conversation with the always ironic, “My day? It was nothing. I look at dead stuff.”

Those seats are the reason we canned so much salsa. Our hours looking out over our property often led to a snack and hours later, feeling blessed beyond reason, one of us was bound to make the understated declaration, “Pretty good life we have here, Babe. Pretty good life.” Even “Survival Girl” can’t survive that empty seat. Not after teaching all day and pulling up the drive. It hits me every.single.time.

So instead, I pull into the garage and go straight into the house through the mudroom and I change my shoes and Trudy and I go for a walk. It’s a good change for both of us, even if the empty seat is still there when we come back up the drive after our walk. By then it’s time to come in and start dinner. It’s time to do the things around the house that need doing. It’s time to move forward.

I kept in touch with Jen for a few years after she got married. As far as I know she never went back to eating McRib sandwiches or any meat for that matter. She never changed her nickname or became an extroverted socialite. I don’t know how long “Survival Girl” will exist. I don’t know how long I’ll need to avoid, cease, alter or change my daily habits and routines to ease the sharp sting of his loss. I know that for now, it’s a necessary part of me. It’s the only way I can move forward without him. It’s the only way I can say, “I’m good,” when people ask, knowing I’m often far from it. It’s the only way I can mow the lawn, pay the bills, cook dinner, grocery shop, or just sit on the porch and still hold myself together.

So when I attend Game Night with my friends in a couple weeks, you bet Survival Girl will be the one showing up. She will laugh and smile and play cards and lose at Scattergories using all her superpowers to hold it together, to be funny on his behalf and to be strong despite being alone. Maybe someday I will feel a return to my old self. Maybe I will be able to exist in times and places with people and not tangibly feel his absence. Or maybe this is just how it’s going to be. Maybe “Survival Girl” is the new version of myself that will forever move forward from here. Maybe these changes aren’t just temporary fixes but permanent solutions to survive without him.

Maybe the empty chair will always be kryptonite.

An hour ago I heard it, the all too familiar sound of the tractor coming up the drive. For one split second, just one tiny fraction of a moment, my heart skipped a beat. I forgot, in that second that the John Deere was being returned from being serviced this morning and I thought, oh how my heart thought it was him.

Fifty-five minutes ago, I steeled myself at the back door. Having quickly realized my mistake, in the few short moments it took the man to drive the tractor up the rest of the drive, I relived the loss but I shoved the heartbreak down. I walked outside and held a conversation about the repairs without giving any signs of internal struggle but the moment I closed the mudroom door behind me, I lost it.

For forty minutes, I sat on the couch with my back to the front windows, not wanting to see the vacant yellow seat, wishing beyond words that he would walk through that damn kitchen door. It is really something how sounds, glimpses, and even smells can take our hearts to memories.

Five minutes ago, I pulled myself up off the couch. I wiped my tear-streaked face and I grabbed the barn key from the cabinet. I sat on the pew in the mudroom and put my boots on and I opened the door and faced the empty yellow seat. I sat down in the place he spent so many happy hours and I drove the tractor to the barn.

Grief means losing our loved ones over and over and over again. It means reliving the loss, feeling once again the heartbreak. It means facing the emptiness repeatedly. Ask anyone who’s lost someone, “What was the last thing that made you think of your loved one?” and they will tell you. Their loss might be fresh or years gone by, but they will know, there was something, just the other day, something that stopped them and reminded them of the person who they still love.

An hour ago, I was going about my weekly chores without a thought and perhaps in another hour I will be back to the tasks on my list once again, but in the middle is the rollercoaster of loss and mourning. Someday the peaks of my joy will surpass the depths of my sorrows, someday I will be able to move more quickly through the downturns, but for now, I am grateful for the slightest abatement, the smallest of upturns to bring me back to even ground. For now, knowing that every memory that has brought me to my knees, there has been a life force just strong enough to bring me back on my feet again. For now, this is enough.

I don’t post as often as I write anymore. I have more drafts lately than published blogs. I say, “I’m good!” far more times than is true and I show up and laugh and converse even when I want to do anything but. I have come to realize that my grief makes some people uncomfortable. “She should be over it,” is the feeling I get, “She has to move on,” the unsaid judgment. I am moving forward even if people can’t see that. I am learning how to exist in a space that he doesn’t. I am trying, desperately at times, to find and savor joy even in fleeting moments, but I miss him. There aren’t words to do that ache justice. I miss James. And so I write about it, because that’s what I do, but that sense I have from the world, that “it’s been long enough, she has to stop this,” keeps me from hitting “publish.”

Just now, I was writing about my very ordinary day. My day that was as typical as they can be for mid-August. A day that started with sleeping in followed by lazily working on the crossword then moved to spending a few hours outside in the flower beds and time with my chickens. This evening the kids stopped by on the back end of their trip north (mainly to pick up their dog) and we shared a meal and some memories and some laughs and even their visit was as typical as they come. As they were leaving, I finished loading and started the dishwasher and after they left I moved laundry and turned on the TV, so ordinary, so routine, so banal.

And yet, somehow, today felt like anything but. This week has been the hardest in a while, starting with my birthday and including the thirtieth anniversary of my mom’s death. Throw in the fact that school is ramping up and in two very short weeks I’ll be back in the classroom, there’s been a lot to process and work through. But for all those things, I felt prepared, or at least armed. I knew spending my birthday alone was the best thing I could do for me. I knew I would not only think about last year, but for all the years and all the days and I would miss him terribly, but I would come out the other side. I knew Mom’s anniversary would also have an edge to it. Amplified by the loss of James, I knew to give it more berth than I have in recent years, to allow the weight of it to settle back in for a time. And while I knew that returning to school would have its own arsenal of landmines just waiting to go off, all the moments when I would expect a text or think to send one, or how it feels to return home to an empty porch chair, I am as prepared as I know how to be.

It was Mom’s anniversary, though, that reminded me that grief has no end date. There is never a day we “get over” our grief. There is never a time when we can say we are “done” with that phase of our life. There is never a time when the sorrow will be permanently shut off. Thinking about my mom and all the years since her death, I was reminded that the waves of sorrow never stop, they might soften, or come less often, but they never cease.

Even more, I was reminded that the waves don’t just come when we predict them. They don’t just show up on anniversaries or birthdays or other annual events. They show up in the midst of a conversation with the plumber. They come in the opening bars of a familiar song. The loss I feel for James rushes through me and stops me in my tracks as I start the burn pile, notice the length of the recently mowed lawn, or when I put my filthy work clothes in the washer. The grief took over me today on the porch, listening to the birds and the cicadas and Jeff’s tractor across the road. And the tears fell tonight in the kitchen, doing James’ parts of homemade pizza. He is everywhere but he is nowhere. Grief is manageable and predictable and it is overwhelming and catastrophic. Everywhere yet nowhere.

I find it hard to be around our friends because they fully possess that adjective; they are our friends. For all the ways they all try to not make that an issue, it just feels more apparent that something is different, someone is missing and that absence feels tangible and hard and cold. This life that I have is still so full of “we”. I wouldn’t want it any other way – knowing the only way I can hold onto him is in memories, I wouldn’t want to be away from those same memories, and yet. And yet. And. Yet. I have to find a way through. I. Singular. There is no “we” in this grief.

There is no “we” at all.

So forgive me for putting my feelings down and hitting “publish”. Forgive me if it seems too much, too long, too intense. Forgive me if the joy continues to be evasive, elusive, and fleeting. I know no other way but through and “through” has no end date. I will always be working through my grief. Thirty years from now, I will still be grieving his loss just like I do Mom’s. Hopefully most of the time the memories are attached to laughter and joy, but I know, from how much I still miss my mom, that sometimes those memories will knock me down, will take my breath and will give me pause. Because sometimes it’s joy that’s everywhere yet nowhere.