My taste-tester is gone. I, the neophobe, relied on my beloved to sample foods on my behalf and even more importantly, to cast judgment on whether or not I would enjoy the taste myself. He, a neophile, never shied away from sampling. My concern – that I would be stuck with a plate of food I did not like or an unpleasant taste forever lingering on my tongue – was foreign to him. In all our years, I only ever knew him to truly hate one food – a turquoise Skittle of all things, which he promptly spat out the car window. (In full disclosure, he wasn’t fond of quinoa either, but he didn’t say it “tasted like ass” as he did of the Skittle.)

Now, in his absence, I stare at menus, evaluating ingredients and casting personal aspersions at their combinations. My dear child credits me for his wide-palette, citing the fact that I encouraged him, when we ate out, to choose dishes we did not make at home. What was really a broke mother’s way of not overpaying for mac and cheese or chicken nuggets off a kids’ menu inadvertently created a fearless foodie on par with my beloved. During our family vacation to Maine, my then teenage son ordered a fresh lobster dinner half again as large as James’ order. When asked if he’d ever had lobster, he nonchalantly answered, “No, but it sounds good.” To his credit, he ate nearly all of that market-value splurge.

Today, an overcast, on-again-off-again rainy day on the Pacific coast, and with the tide yet too low for some of my scenic destinations, I found myself in want of plans. My stomach eventually asserted itself as Chief Decision Maker and I found myself pulling into a one-of-a-kind, small town eatery. Before going in, still sitting in the safe, uncommitted seat of the rental car, I perused the restaurant’s online menu – my neophobia wanted to at least insure they had some options that were guaranteed to be somewhat palatable. Once so assured, I grabbed my notebook and headed in.

I had parked in the back (due entirely to my complete inability to parallel park) and followed the restaurant’s sign down some rain-worn wooden stairs. For the naysayers who don’t believe in love at first sight, believe me when I say that’s precisely what happened for me. The restaurant’s back, with the help of multiple sets of old, french-style doors, opened to an extended seating area. The small cafe tables were surrounded by wildflowers, herbs, potted and hanging plants – color in all shapes and sizes. If I were to design a cafe, this would be is exactly. Through a closed, glass-paned door, I saw a man chopping peppers. Fearful of walking right into the kitchen, I had to ask people seated nearby if that was, in fact, the entrance (it was). Once inside, I was directed down a short hallway full of the this n’ that’s of a tourist town store and to the host stand who led me to a booth by the front window where I was perhaps a hundred yards from the ocean.

Opening the menu I realized my circadian-rhythm-challenged body had been hoping for breakfast but the restaurant, operating on Pacific Time, was in full lunch mode. I skimmed until I found a category of “brunch offerings.” My relief was short lived, however, when I realized how drastically this limited my options. Not only was my conservative palette a significant factor, but my breakfast preferences run sweet and these three brunch options were all savory. With a vacant seat beside me – read that: no culinary advice forthcoming – this neophobe was going to have to be brave. I quickly chose the spinach and feta frittata for its straightforward, innocuous ingredients and because it came with home fries and toast and I am all about side dishes when I eat. To be completely honest, it was the toast that really sold me on the choice, as with a little jam, it might satiate my first-meal sweet tooth.

When I gave my order to the waitress, she seemed particularly pleased with the choice – especially when I added a glass of orange juice. The menu touted “organic” and “local” and I had no doubt the quality of my meal would be top-notch.

While I waited, I opened my notebook and checked my list of things I wanted to see and do in the area. Confirming my plan for the afternoon, I then turned to a writing I had started a couple days ago. I reread the lines I had written and tried to mentally compose what to write next when the waitress placed the glass of orange juice (and one of water) in front of me. More true to the color than even Crayola, it was the most perfect orange juice – juice that is orange – that I have ever seen. My pencil gave pause, my thoughts on my story faded as I marveled at a simple and yet elegant glass of juice.

Moments later, my brunch plate was placed on the worn table in front of me. “Jam?” the waitress asked. She set an apparently randomly-chosen squeeze -bottle in on the table of an unidentified red jam and I delighted at the prospect of squeezing jam onto my toast. I spread the perfectly softened butter and then swizzled jam on top unintentionally creating the most perfect piece of toast. I placed it back on top of the frittata just as it had been served and then I sat back and savored the moment.

I have spent the last three days (and the next five to come) on the Oregon Coast. It took me nine hours to drive 118 miles yesterday because I pulled over at every chance to savor the view. When booking the trip, the only amenity required for each hotel choice was that it had a view of the ocean. The sound, the beauty, the breeze, it just does something to my soul and I wanted to seize every opportunity to relish it all.

When we pause to savor a moment, a taste, a view, a sound, a smell, when we stop to relish, we make time very nearly stand still. When we are fully present, aware of all our surroundings, when we are mentally still, it is much easier to recognize blessings, to acknowledge gratitude and with gratitude, we find joy.

The breakfast – nay “brunch”- did not disappoint my picky taste buds. The frittata was light and fresh, the organic home fries had just the perfect amount of light seasoning and roasted crispness to delight my taste buds and the toast, the seemingly banal side choice proved, beyond what I had even hoped, as the pièce de la résistance.

I finished writing this on the balcony of my hotel room, again a hundred yards and in direct sight of high tide on the Pacific Ocean. The clouds persisted and the temps remained cool so the beach was all but empty. But during the time I sat there with pencil and paper, I watched dogs frolicking in the water and sand while playing endless games of fetch. I watched parents with small children fly kites in the heavy breeze. I saw couples holding hands while they strolled leisurely along the water and I witnessed swimmers braving the waves and cold to laugh in the ocean. Every one of them made time pause today. Every one of them held still the hands of the eternal clock while they played with their dog, helped their child’s heart soar or crossed a bucket list item off their list. At the end of the day, the vacation or this life, when the questions loom, “What was it all? What did I have? What did I do?” we will have this. We will have all the moments we savored.

Before leaving the area the following day, I stopped once again at the restaurant, this time definitively during breakfast hours. I ate an amazing home-made crepe filled with Oregon pears and huckleberries. I once again, marveled at the glass of juice that defines the color orange and I once again paused to smile at the plants and flowers off the back room. I could retire in Yachats, Oregon and eat at the Drift Inn multiple times a week and want for nothing more. For now, I have these memories to remind me that joy comes in all shapes and sizes – from the orangest of juice to the sweetest of jams – and I am all the better for having savored every moment.

I spent last week driving the Oregon Coast. I spent weeks and weeks researching and planning the trip and I was giddy with excitement to see in person the majesty of the Pacific Northwest. I can say in all honesty, it did not disappoint. It took me nine hours to travel just over a hundred miles last Sunday because I stopped at every pull-off and every state park to soak up the view, the smell and of course, the sound of the waves on rocks.

I witnessed Thor’s Well, The Devil’s Churn, Spouting Horn, Cape Perpetua and all the small coves and beaches along the way where the combination of massive rock and massive wave created jet-like sounds that reverberated in my soul. For seven days and nights I was in earshot of the ocean. The rhythmic tide was my constant companion on this otherwise solo journey. I alternated between the highest cliffs to my toes in the water, back and forth, all day long every day. I was awake as the clouds rolled in over the water and I fell asleep only after the sun had set beyond the horizon.

I sat and watched the endless flow of water to rock and back again, crying for how alone I felt, crying for how small and insignificant I felt, crying for how endless the world is and how short our time here is, crying at the majesty before me, crying in gratitude at being able to see and feel it all. And then, for the last two days of my trip, I dipped down into California to see the redwood trees in Jedediah State Park.

I grew up with woods behind my house. The college I attended was known for all the trees on campus. I moved from Illinois to Pennsylvania mostly for the beauty of the mountains of trees out there and I now live on a farm in Michigan set in the woods. A lifetime ago, I walked through woods while the man I was with told me the scientific names of the trees and showed me how to tell one variety of pine from another. He spoke of the forest as though he were telling stories of his life – as things he knew not just from books, but from his soul. It is a day I have never forgotten because it’s a day when I first realized how much I loved the trees, too. It was the moment when I realized how my whole life hadn’t just coincidentally near woods, but that, from the moment I had been able as an adult, I had chosen the woods, if only in passive context, as where I wanted to be. It wasn’t long after that that the redwoods became the only entry on my bucket list, the only thing I knew with certainty that I wanted to see before I died.

The redwoods were on James’ bucket list, too. We were so busy living our dream here on the farm that we didn’t even talk about bucket list things until it was too late for him to start crossing them off, but the trees were one of only a few things he had jotted down and so my visit to the redwoods wasn’t entirely a solo one. With a small container of ashes in hand, I set off into the woods in Jedediah Park. I didn’t pick the biggest tree, where everyone would stop and take selfies. I didn’t pick the tallest or the most obvious tourist spot in the park.

I chose a tree just off to the side of the path, where the sunlight was shining down through the leaves, but far from any trails or viewing areas. There were ferns and the biggest clover I have ever seen growing underfoot. The air smelled dusty for lack of rain and the blue of the sky was almost impossible to see for all the trees. I brushed aside a pile of needles and leaves and my words and tears mixed with the ashes that I left at the base of the tree. I placed the needles back over the small pile of dust and stood there a long while wondering how a tree can live so long and a man cannot. My tears came from a depth of sorrow I cannot describe but there, beneath the majesty of that tree, I felt the beginnings of acceptance. I hate with a fire that still threatens to consume me, that he is gone, but I am slowly starting to realize that is the reality I have to move forward with. There, with branches reaching to the heavens, I felt a shift towards that acceptance, a movement in my soul to let go of what should have been and just to hold on to all that was. James and I talked about where he wanted his ashes to be. Originally he had wanted them to be scattered here on the farm, but when we realized staying on the farm might not be a permanent choice for me, we revisited the topic. “I want to be wherever you are,” he said. Among the trees is where I will always be, somehow, someway, and so shall he.

I’m a binge-watcher. I really only want to watch a show that has as many seasons already out as possible so I can indulge in multiple episodes without having to think about what to turn on. Easy, simple and void of decision-making (except when the show runs out). Starting a new show is quite precarious. I wish they came with a set of hashtags to tell me what topics will be covered so I know which shows to avoid. #cancer, #loss, #death all feel a little too close to #mylife for comfort and I wish I could avoid them entirely.

The show I was just moderately hooked on, for example (again, it seemed easier to just watch an “okay” show than to spend time hunting for a “great” one) decided to have one of the main characters die of a recurring cancer in the last season. The plot and dialogue got to be so intense and #familiar that I had to quit watching halfway into the series finale. I just could not do it.

And perhaps I should have known, when I turned to a new show, that if it had the title of “Tiny Beautiful Things” (not all that dissimilar to “Blessed Little Things” if you see where I’m going) that I should have known to avoid it like the proverbial plague. And I will admit, first off, (before some of my family goes looking for the show,) that it is raunchy and modern and rough in ways I don’t entirely enjoy, but the writing – oh my dear goodness, the writing just hooked me. I have opened up my notes app and captured portions of the show in just the first few episodes, but more importantly, I have noted the author (the show is based on a book) and will be looking for it at the very next bookstore I come across. The show, using a self-help columnist’s poignant words, guides people in all the ways they find themselves to be lost. Which, feels a lot like #me.

You see, I am lost. I mean, lost. I could list all the reasons why, but if you’ve been here for more than half a minute you already get most of them. But what I have come to realize is that nearly every one of us feels lost. Right now. At all stages of life. Whether you are retired and aging and trying to grasp what is to be the legacy of your life or you are young and starting out and trying to make sense of the dreams you have and all the ways life is pulling you or maybe you are in between, staring down the barrel of a life you feel you lost control of or never had control of and now your map seems muddied and the course unclear.

In an effort to find ourselves, our purpose or our direction, some of us will turn to a higher power to give meaning to our path. Some will maintain that this life is all we get and will try to glean purpose and meaning through other methods. Some will avoid finding their purpose for fear of disappointing themselves or others. And others may never realize the tremendous purpose they served for this world until long after they are gone. Years ago, a pastor advised me that if a choice brought me closer to God, it was the right choice, the right direction. I can’t say that my faith is in that same place as it was then, but I have come to believe that if a choice brings joy, then it should be pursued. I don’t mean momentary pleasure, or indulgence, or quick gratification of some sort, but I mean deep and abiding joy – that should be the compass.

This life, whether it’s all that we have or just a small fraction of a master plan, cannot be entirely about struggle and loss. We need those things to truly understand and appreciate joy, but they cannot be what this life is about. At least I cannot being to find purpose or meaning or even the point of tomorrow if it isn’t rooted in something positive. Hope, afterall, can only exist in optimism.

So while I continue to struggle – to grieve, to feel personally and professionally, emotionally and socially, physically and mentally lost – I am setting my sights on finding joy. Beyond just finding it – savoring it, embracing it, feeling grateful for it and sharing it.

Last night I sat on the porch and spooned some of my husband’s ashes into a container. It is, I think, the most surreal thing I have ever done. With his empty porch chair beside me and tears flooding my face, the dog at my feet, the cat in the yard and our dreams out in front of me, the depth of my sorrow seems to know no bounds. Slowly, with measured breath and a deceptive calmness, I gathered fragments of the man I loved to take with me when I leave on vacation. I cannot go on our bucket-list vacation without him, and if he can’t go see the redwoods with me then I’d at least like to leave some part of him to live amongst them forever. Later, when I had gathered myself back together, brought the dog and cat in for the night, locked up the house and turned down the sheets, I opened the bedroom window, glad for the cool change in temperature. As I lay there, thinking about the days ahead, the dog lifted her head and the cat jumped in the windowsill. Silently, I held my breath and listened for the sound they heard first. It was far off, but it was clear – the owl. And there, with everything I had in me, I grasped onto that joy and I held on tight, feeling that if even for just this moment, I might be on the right path.

There is an invisible side to grief that I think a lot of people don’t realize. A complicated, tightrope walk that is happening beneath the facade of those making their way through their personal journey with loss. It might be easy to nod and say, of course there is this layer, it makes sense that healing is a process and a that there will be ups and downs, but the reality of the rollercoaster is far more complex, far more tenuous than might be imagined.

Today, the owl house got hung. The owls are what James and I thought might remind me of him; we thought they might be something that might provide me with a sense that he was still here in some way, a comfort from nature. Having an owl house that he built and gave to me only solidified that concept and made the hanging of it carry far more weight than just providing a habitat for some amazing raptors. After a lot of research, I had decided to place the house in a tree that overlooks the pasture. An ideal spot for barred owls where they prefer to look east, out over a clearing of some sort with easy entry into their homes, but far more than that, it felt symbolic, a way to imagine James himself looking out over his beloved pasture with the morning sun warming his face.

The arborist I had hired through the recommendations of colleagues could not have been better suited for the task. While this was the first owl house he had hung, he was as excited and eager for the project as I was, and handled the entire event as far more than a professional task to be accomplished, but with a gentleness of spirit that acknowledged all that it meant to me. We weren’t sure how it was going to go, there were unknowns and challenges that we anticipated, but it went up perfectly and without a single hitch. At least not a hitch that anyone else might have felt or experienced.

For me, the entire process, from the start of my quest to get it hung to standing back and admiring the success of the house up in the tree, had not only a weight to the task, but it was an emotional dam being held back by extremely tenuous threads. But there were things to be done and people around and so, like most times, that journey through those emotions has to wait, has to be pushed back and dealt with at some other time. The appearance to the world is that this was fine, this was maybe not easy but that it wasn’t debilitating.

My to do list carried me from the edge of the pasture to the garden to water, where the first ripe strawberry of the season awaited me. Fellow gardners can relate, each “first” each season brings a delight to the senses that reminds you why you work so hard in the dirt to begin with. I have been hauling water for weeks now, and so the berry wasn’t just the normal celebration of another bounty headed my way, but was tangible evidence that I was being successful, in some small way, even if I wasn’t doing it James’ way, even if Mother Nature wasn’t cooperating, I was doing it. But I didn’t even pick the berry, I let it stay on the plant for another day, as I wasn’t quite ready to step through all the emotions that signified to me.

From the garden, I headed out to solve a tractor issue. A loaded quest for sure, taking me far out of my normal realm of tasks this time, I had the deeply appreciated patience of a man at the tractor dealer who explained everything to me as though he could visibly see my emotional dam about to break. With my current issue solved and future concerns allieviated, I left the store feeling successful and proud, but the moment I saw down in the driver’s seat, the emotional dam burst and I cried and cried.

For me, these emotions are always and I mean always right under the surface. I know that will lessen and soften with time, but this road I am on makes every single step feel like I’m walking in a minefield. For the sake of the world, I try to hold it together, keep those emotions at bay, appear normal even, but it’s exhausting and it’s constant and the weight of all of that brings me to my knees behind closed doors – even just car doors – more times that anyone might imagine.

So maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise when later in the afternoon, an argument erupted. An argument that I had been trying to navigate around, trying to escape, trying to diffuse but without success. There is too much bottled up to survive the last straw. There is too much to explain to make it make sense to anyone else- in fact just the fact that I have to explain it at all makes his absence grow. He would understand what I feel and what I mean and what I need.

I am surrounded by people who love me and care about me – people who are also grieving his loss. But I do not think even they understand this journey. People want to help, they want to support, they want to be there for me, but they can’t understand all the triggers, they can’t understand the weight of those triggers or the fear that I will publically lose my shit, or the desire to not release the dam of emotion in harmful or damaging or unintentional ways. They can’t understand how much I have to do on my own to prove to myself that I can. They don’t understand. This journey is a solo one. No matter how close my support network is, each one of us walks this path alone.

I don’t share any of this for pity or even in apology to those I hurt with my words today. I just mean to share a side of grief that is unseen, unfelt, unknown to those outside this path. Learning to manage these emotions isn’t something I do for my own well-being, it’s for the people around me. I know I have to let the emotions out, I have to process, I have to work through and not around, but I cannot do that in the presence of others. I cannot explain, I cannot make anyone understand, I cannot scare the general public with the strength and fury of these things inside me. I am angry. I am in pain. I am so very broken but I have to be strong, I have to stand up and move one foot in front of the other, I have to carry on even -and often- when I do not want to carry on at all. The world may well recognize that I’m not walking through a field of daisies right now, but I do not know that it can feel the tremors of the landmines, either. It does not know how scary it is to set each foot down. People cannot see how tightly my teeth are clenched or how hard it is to stand still and smile when you know you’re standing right on top of an explosive trigger.

I do not know if owls will ever reside in the house he built for me. It’s too late this year, and there are so many other creatures that may wish to call it home for a season. I hope some day they do, but it is enough, today, to know that James and I together have provided a place for such magnificent bird to call home. In this new world without him, he and I still did that together today. And the strawberries we planted together continue to flourish. And the tractor he loved continues to bless me with all it can do around here. We are still in this together, he is still helping me move forward. There is joy in all of that, for sure. But it is not without deep, unabating pain right now. Every single thing is filled with his absence. Including, and especially, me.

I had just stepped out of my car and taken about three steps toward the hospital on my way to an orthopedic appointment. I was a bit started when she spoke to me. She looked vaguely familiar; I want to even say she had a bohemian look about her, although there is absolutely nothing in my recollection now that points to anything specifically so. In the way she approached me, I thought she was going to ask me for directions, and I was already rehearsing my response knowing how bad I am with directions anywhere.

“Excuse me,” she said, “but I am a reader of license plates and I wondered if you could explain yours to me?” The question caught me completely off guard, but immediately conjured the explanation that was going to tug at my heart more than I felt prepared to deal with standing in front of a stranger in a parking garage.

“Someday Farm,” I said, “It means ‘Someday Farm’. It’s what we call our farm,” I went on, the pronoun sticking in my throat like it does every time I say, “we” anymore. She didn’t say a word as we both kept walking toward the building, but her demeanor somehow prompted to me to keep talking, a rarity with people I don’t know. “We always said, ‘Someday we’ll get cows, someday we’ll get chickens…’ so we named our farm, ‘Someday Farm.’” By this point we were nearly to the doors of the hospital and I looked to the outside stairs leading up to the floor I needed to get to as an escape hatch, but she stopped and faced me and asked one more heartwrenching question before I could retreat to the stairs, “Do you still have all those animals?”

I stared at her. Later, I would wonder why that was the question she asked. Why didn’t she ask if we ever got those animals? What prompted her to think we wouldn’t still be living that dream? “No,” I finally quietly replied. “My husband recently passed away and so we had to get rid of the cows…” my voice trailing off as I tried to suffocate the feelings of anger and loss and grief quickly rising up in my chest.

“I am so sorry,” she said, and looking at her, it was as though the same feelings were rising up in her. She truly was sorry. I’m not sure I have ever met anyone who so clearly fit the term “empath,” but she definitely is one. “I don’t even know you,” she continued, “but I feel like I should hug you,” she said.And in a move I cannot begin to explain, I took a step forward and hugged her. Which I never do. Especially to a stranger.

We parted ways, me making a quick escape up the stairs and I continued on to my appointment. The encounter had been unsettling and yet I didn’t feel unsettled. She felt like a friend, she seemed familiar, it had seemed so honest and true and real.After my appointment, having all but temporarily forgotten about the previous encounter as my mind raced toward my next dreaded appointment at the dermatologist (dreaded only because of the reminder of why he was gone, not that I had any particular concerns for myself), I got to my car and had just turned the key when she approached from a few cars away. I immediately thought how odd it was that we had both finished our appointments at the same time, but then I realized she was talking to me and I put my window down and heard her say, “I was just going to leave this on your windshield,” as she handed me an envelope, and then, “and this sucker,” and she handed me a red Tootsie Pop. I didn’t know what to say or do. I don’t know what I said or did. She walked away, I put my window back up and I sat in my car and let the tears roll. It took several long minutes before I even opened the envelope. Several very long moments.

“Dear Ms. Someday Farm,” the card read, “It was nice meeting you today. I am soo sorry to hear about your husband. How painful. I have this weird thing where sometimes it seems like God uses license plates to whisper to me – this morning he used yours. Through you, I needed the “someday” reminder. Someday = at some time in the future – one day, by + by in the fulness of time.” I flipped the card to the back and continued reading, “I go to the River Church and have great hope that Paradise is our future for those who reach out to Jesus! Someday is coming.”Inside the card was her business card, including her name, telephone number and email. The back of the business card carried this message:

I haven’t heard the owls since the day James’ died. I have begged for him to talk to me. I have cried on my knees on the floor asking him to just let me know he is okay, wherever he might be. I have sat on the porch steps at the tail end of dusk, like he and I used to do together, and I have listened and cried and spoken to him. “Talk to me!” I plead. “Talk to me! Tell me you are okay!” Just this morning a wood thrush sang it’s two-phrase ditty outside my bedroom window over and over on repeat until I thought I would go mad. Even then, I voiced out loud, “Is that you? Are you trying to talk to me?”

Later, after all my appointments had been survived for the day, I invited my sister over to sit on the porch and talk. I had briefly texted her about my initial encounter with the woman, but now, seated side by side, I handed her the card and waited for her response. “Am I crazy?” I asked when she finished reading the words.

“No,” she said, without requiring any further explanation on my part. “This is a sign, for sure.”

Today, a stranger that felt familiar literally handed me the words I needed to hear. She literally handed them to me. I have heard people say before that faith in a higher power is something people do to provide an explanation to the unexplainable. It’s a crutch people lean on to give themselves comfort. But my life story has shown me that faith is hard. It is not something easy to lean on or lean into, it is an enormous leap without tangible evidence.

“…have great hope that Paradise is our future for those who reach out to Jesus! Someday is coming.”

My grief threatens to consume me most days. I struggle every moment of every day to keep it at bay long enough to do the things I am required to do – hour by hour, minute by minute. This place, this farm, this was our Eden, this was our Heaven. But today, at least for a moment, I could set my sights ahead and think “our Someday has yet to come.”

After all, red Tootsie Pops are my favorite.

Someday is coming.

I wrote it eighteen months ago. During my annual writing in November, when I participate in National Novel Writing Month, I wrote my second children’s chapter book. James listened as I struggled to get words typed each night. He asked regularly about my current word count and he even helped me map out the storyline one night at our kitchen counter, so that I could see my way through to the ending that already existed in my mind. When the very rough draft was completed, he asked for his own copy and he took it to work in a binder to read on his own.

For one reason or another, not all ones I can articulate well, I decided to read this draft to my class this spring. What started with instructional intentions – a desire at least to show revision and editing once again with my own work – has become a favorite part of the day for author and audience alike. Reading my words out loud to an actual audience of children has been heartwarming and rewarding in ways I didn’t even expect. Just yesterday, while reading a particularly harrowing chapter of events, a student sitting on the floor to my right kept gasping. It was an appropriate reaction to the text, but it took my own breath away knowing she felt that moved by my roughed-in words and descriptions. The students, for their part, are a very enthusiastic set of guinea pigs, willing to listen and give advice and ask questions. They have caught inconsistencies, they have recommended changes and they have showered me with more praise for the storyline than I fear is earned on its own merits.

The story itself includes bits of me in some ways and bits of who I wanted to be as a child in others. With parallel storylines of a ten year old girl and a sea turtle, I tried to share how we all navigate ourselves through some rather cliché rites of passage – the loss of a parent, the weight of decisions and the challenges of friendship.

This morning, as a mostly brain-free activity after finishing standardized testing, we gathered on the rug at the front of the room to once again dive into my story. I named the paired parallel chapters with what my students have come to refer to as, “VCW’s” or “Very Cool Words.” (One of the class’ very astute suggestions was that I provide a kid-friendly definition for each chapter title as some words are beyond the scope of fourth-grade vocabulary.) Today’s chapter was the second in the pairing, with the sea turtle’s side of a situation titled, “Opportunity.” The sea turtle, named Finn, had weathered a storm with her best friend in the previous chapter, coming out on the other side of the tumultuous weather event to find that her friend, a fish named Bumper, was now missing.

It has amazed and surprised the students that despite the fact that I authored this text, I have forgotten portions of it. It was, afterall, a draft- written all in one month, with absolutely no consideration to revision or fixes as I went. And I haven’t picked it up since. So as I read today’s chapter, the words caught me as much by surprise as my first-time listeners poised at my feet.

Eighteen months ago, James and I were blissfully unaware of the cancer that had spread throughout his body. We were months away from knowing how limited our time together was; we were months away from knowing we weren’t in remission. It’s been nearly five months since the cancer took him and I am still falling to my knees, weeping from depths of sorrow I’ve never known, collapsing in the anguish of a life without him more often than I even admit to my therapist. Just this past week I have raged with grief and sobbed in my loneliness more days than not.

So today, as I began reading the chapter where my sea turtle is faced with the realization that her best friend might be gone for good, I heard the words on a far more intimate level. They were my words, not in that I had authored them, but in that today, they were meant for me to hear.

One day, while trying to nap in the sand at the bottom, a sea anemone spoke up.  “You should really try something new,” she said.  

“Are you talking to me?” I asked, looking around.

“Yes.  You are the saddest creature in this whole ocean, at least as far as I have seen.  I’ve seen you down here day after day just moping about.  I think you should try something new.  You’re in a rut.”

“A rut?  I’m in a rut?!  No, I’m at a loss!  I’ve lost my best friend, my only friend and I have no one else!  I don’t know where to find him!  I don’t know where to go or what to do!”

“It can be really horrible to lose someone we love,” she continued.  “I understand how you feel, but we can’t be sad forever.  There’s a whole huge ocean to explore!  There are more creatures to meet and new things to discover!”

“But I don’t want to do any of that without my friend!  What if he came back?  What if he returned and I wasn’t here waiting for him?”

“Do you think your friend would want to return to find out that you’ve been here, miserable this whole time?”

“Yes!  I mean, wait.  No. Was that a trick question?” I asked.

“It's not a trick.  Wherever your friend is, do you want him to be miserable?”

“No!  I would never want him to be miserable!  I would want him to be happy!”

“So,” she said calmly, “if your friend is someplace without you right now and you don’t want him to be miserable just because you aren’t there with him, don’t you think he would want the same for you?”

“Well, I guess so, but…”

“There is no ‘but’.  If he cares about you at all, like you care about him, he would never want you to be upset or moping about!  He would want you to be happy and enjoying your life!”

I sat there in the sand thinking about what she was saying.  In my mind, I could understand her point, but my heart still hurt so bad.  All I wanted was to be with Bumper!

“Have you known this friend your whole life?” she asked me.

“Yes, well, no.  I mean, I met him after I came to the ocean.”

“Were you happy before you met him?  Did you find any joy at all in the ocean before you knew this friend?”

“Yes," I answered somewhat reluctantly.  "I remember floating in the sun and loving how it felt on my back.  I liked to swim with the other hatchlings.  We used to have these races where we’d…”

“See?” she interrupted.  “You can be happy without your friend being right beside you.”

“But, but...but what if my friend is gone forever?” I asked hesitantly.  It was a truth I had been scared to admit, and one I had never uttered out loud until this moment.

“Ever the more reason to start finding some joy, don’t you think?”

The sea anemone didn’t say another word and neither did I.  I stayed at the bottom, only going up to take a breath or two, but for the rest of the afternoon and all through the night the words of the creature rang through my heart.  Wherever Bumper was, I would certainly want him to be happy, of that I was certain.  And if Bumper was, gone - gone forever gone - well, then he would always be gone and there was nothing I could do about that.

The next morning, I decided to set out and try exploring a new place.  Before I left, I thanked the sea anemone.  “Thank you, I am going to go explore for awhile.  I will probably come back just to check and see if Bumper returns, but I think I will take your advice and go.  Maybe he will be here when I get back.”

“Wherever you go,” she said, “your friend will always be with you, in your heart.”

It took every ounce of everything I had to not completely fall apart in front of my student audience. They knew I was struggling, and I admitted to them that it felt like these were words I needed to hear today.

I’m not ready, yet, to face this world without James. I am still so very deeply angry. It is going to take more than just encouraging words from a sea anemone to get me out the door on my path to finding joy. But, I heard him today. I heard my beloved talking to me. Neither of us had any idea when I wrote these words or when he read them that they would reverberate on such a deeply personal level for me a year and a half later. I pray, I beg more than pray, but I pray that he is someplace full of unimaginable joy. I know he would want the same for me, I do. But I wish, more than I have any reasonable, sane right to, that my story could turn out like the sea turtle’s. My class doesn’t yet know, but Finn and her best friend Bumper will be reunited before the end of this story.

I hope James and I are one day, too.

I’m not sure anymore, what I think heaven is like. I used to believe, really believe in all that the Bible said, but not anymore. My faith is convoluded at best and nonexistent at its worst. But today, today I had to believe that heaven was right here on earth. Not for me, I don’t mean to imply that today was my sort of heaven, I faced a lot of fears and cried a lot of tears today, but for James, I have to believe that perhaps he was right here today, making this his heaven for the moment.

The pile of brush from last fall was daunting. James barely had enough in him to clear the fallen trees, and so the pile that was normally neat and ready to burn was all but a mess. I had cleared it enough a month or so ago to make the drive to the barn passable, but this massive pile of branches and roots bothered my need-things-to-be-tidy self and so I spent more time in a yellow seat, scared to death of rolling the tractor – moving branches twice my height to a burn pile and clearing out the mess from last fall. To me, it meant facing my fears of the tractor, but to James’, well, this was precisely his kind of day.

With a high of 65 degrees, the sun felt magnificent today. I spent the entire time in the yellow seat talking with James. I needed him with me, to guide me, to help me, to calm my fears of the tractor tipping over. I needed him today. But I know that he would have relished the project. He would have loved the time on the tractor, the time clearing the brush out, the time making room for the compost and all that the garden will need in the upcoming weeks. He would have loved today. And so I did everything I could to love it for him.

Usually, we would have both been working near each other even if not on the same task, but today I had to deal with all the brush and then tackle the asparagus patches in the garden. We didn’t exactly prioritize the garden last fall, so the dead stalks, hollow pumpkins and all the supports and detrius from the harvest were still present. Heck, there are still carrots in the ground. Being in the garden without him feels like the worst sort of hell I can imagine. Second only, perhaps to being alone on the porch, the garden was a shared place of work; he had the tasks that he enjoyed and I had mine and together they made a beautiful, abundant garden. But today, while I kept an eye on the bonfire of branches, I weeded alone. Tackling only two of the raised beds, the road ahead to harvest is daunting at best, one that I’m not even sure I will engage fully in this year, but the asparagus and next the strawberries will bless me with their abundance with little effort on my part and so I dug my hands in the dirt and I sucked up the silence.

I feel stuck. I can look all around me and see this absolutely beautiful property, this amazing farm, this gorgeous home and I can be so full of anger. I don’t want it without him. I don’t want anything without him.

I sat on the porch for a while, my hands cut and bruised like his always were. I listened to the chickens and I watched Trudy in the yard and I looked out over all our dreams and I just cannot for the life of me feel the joy that we shared. I am just so pissed off. My words to the heavens are not kind. My prayers all went unanswered and I am left with nothing but heartache and sorrow. Sorrow so deep I fear it will consume me. I want you back. I want you here. I want our life back.

Today is the kind of day you and I loved the most. Warm temps, budding flowers, signs of spring everywhere, days like this felt like heaven. Whatever our to-do list, we would have spent the day together. They were my favorite kind of days. They were yours, too. Wherever you are, I hope it is heavenly. Truly, I hope so. But here, without you, it’s nothing short of hell.

My to do list isn’t even my own.  It’s really James’, but he isn’t here so it has become mine.  The things on the list -chores around the farm- would never have felt like chores to him.  They only feel that way to me for the emotional baggage that comes from each one.

I spent hours on his yellow seat moving brush from last year’s piles, hoping to get it burned down, but it was too wet to keep a flame.  

I cleaned the garage, a task I haven’t done since we said our vows, but one that was long overdue.  The end result speaks volumes to the path ahead: only one car needs to fit here; the potting bench has a new home with the shift in priorities; the cabinets repurposed for my needs. 

The day ended as all our days together did – sitting on the porch, soaking up the sun, listening to the birds, the frogs, the chickens, even the horses across the road.  

But the seat beside me is empty and my heart feels the same.  I’ve never known loneliness like this before.  The lack of companionship, the lack of conversation, the lack of shared moments.  

A year ago, on a day just like this, we sat here, he and I.  I can’t recall what tasks we crossed off the list that particular day, but I remember the tears that flowed as we sat here on the porch.  “What if this is our last spring together?” I wondered out loud.  We were only just beginning to grapple with the diagnosis then, but the concept felt inconceivable and terrifying.  

And yet, here I am.  Crying those same tears, sitting beside an empty chair trying to navigate the inconceivable, terrifying path ahead of me. 

Alone.

I lost my shit on a customer service rep today.  Lost.My.Shit. Demanded, in a voice that scared the dog, that she needed to put her supervisor on the phone.  Repeatedly.  Sternly.  When she said she understood my frustration I told her she couldn’t begin to understand my frustration. I was loud, I was adamant, I was pissed.  

I was very terse with the vet later this afternoon as well.  I spoke my mind mostly calmly but quite seriously about being kept waiting for over forty minutes for my appointment and eventually broke down in tears from her patronizing tone suggesting that I was doing a good job caring for a pet that must be very important to be, “given my recent loss.” 

My therapist should have been forewarned, I suppose, since my appointment with her came on the heels of my first couple of days back at school and then a day like this.  I completely lost it on her couch and only somewhat joked that she should bill my insurance double for this session. 

I don’t have it together.  I’m not even close.  I am angry every single day and my grief is tangible and agonizing.  I scream in the car, I cry at the grocery store, I fight the urge to throw things daily and I beg and beg and beg for his return.  

My whole life I have wanted one singular thing: to connect deeply with one other human being.  To know and be known.  I’ve never been one to have a large circle of friends or even to have a girlfriend or two with whom I share all my secrets. I’ve had my heart broken when I wrongly thought I had found the one to share such a connection with, and I struggled mightily during the years I was single, trying to make meaning of my life without someone that wanted a similar connection with me. 

And then came James.  I will never claim our marriage was perfect, but the connection between us was.  He was my truest and deepest friend.  And I am completely lost without him.  I look around me and see a life that I enjoyed because it was shared with him.  The tasks and hobbies around the farm we enjoyed doing because we did them together.  When I look ahead, I see no path, no direction, no way forward to joy, because he isn’t there.  I’ve lost my purpose.  I’ve lost the very thing that gave my life meaning and joy.  And there is no way to get that back. 

I was reassured by my aforementioned underpaid therapist today that it is not uncommon to have such an existential crisis in the midst of grief, but she also quickly acknowledged that simply knowing that doesn’t make it any less burdensome.  I told her I don’t even feel like myself.  I’m not at all the sort to speak to a customer service rep like I did today.  I’m definitely not one to visibly lose my temper after being kept waiting.  And I don’t generally cry in front of people but Lord knows that went by the wayside about a year ago. 

The little things that previously brought me enormous joy can never begin to fill the void of his loss.  The crocuses are blooming, the daylilies are sprouting, the chickens are all finally laying eggs again, but none of these blessed little things that we used to delight in do anything for me now.  She reminds me, this patient therapist of mine, that I am healing, and healing takes time.  I tell her how I feel self-absorbed, I feel irrational, I feel selfish and childish and weak.  She says I have to cut myself some slack, give myself grace and recognize that I am doing the very best I can.  But I don’t like this person that I am.  I don’t like feeling this lost, this hopeless, this angry, this lonely, this sad.  I just can’t seem to find a way back to the joy, I can’t find a way back to me.  Not yet, she reminds me.  Not yet.  Right now, she reminds me, I am drowning in grief.  Right now, I have to weather this storm.  

She definitely doesn’t get paid enough.

Outside my window the snow falls and falls.  A never ending sky of gray, never ending flakes of white.  Underneath the layers of winter lie hopeful shoots of green.  For want of spring. 

Outside my window the trees stand lifeless, leafless.  Waiting. No bud, no green, no leaves appear.  No sign of life or breath except the drip- drip of sweet water into pail. For want of spring. 

Outside my window the cranes call.  The goose, the wren, the finch. The wings in the air multiply.  Rising, falling, soaring. For want of spring. 

Inside my window, with gentle fingers, I push hardened seeds into pots.  Soil warmed by water and light, I will coddle and cajole until they open up, take root and grow.  For want of spring. 

But inside my heart a cold steady winter continues.  The ground of trust and hope and love remains frozen, forsaken. The dark outside world a hardened space. The horizon brings no joy.  For want of spring.

For want of spring.