I wrote this next thinking about a grieving friend at the beginning of the month.  These thoughts did not seem appropriate to send but I like them.  It is me writing to the me of three years ago.  It is the affirmation of that part of the struggle.  That part of the path.  And so —

Again, thinking of you.  Our season is finally changing — snow mounds shrinking and turning a uniform gray, people walking without huddled, squashed faces and birds singing with unbridled enthusiasm.  During the first years after David’s death, changes of season were are hard as holidays and family celebration days. I wrestled with the twin pulls of a past that I could not re-create and a future that looked awfully bleak.  The first fall I wanted to paste the leaves back onto the trees and paint them green.  I did not want David to miss the autumn.  The solace I found was in the center — putting rice into the cooker at the end of the day, running around the block holding on to the back of Julia’s bike as she learned to ride a two wheeler, reading about atypical development in children, walking the dog and shopping for food.  Searching for and then finding the quiet center.  This process of grieving is not passive.  True, some of it seems to require vast amounts of sleep that can be impossible to get.  So much requires will and grit and persistence.  It is work.

Even in the depths of despair there needs to be an ember of wanting some future that will not hurt so much.  To have any less is to lose the future to the past and not touch the present.