death

Cloudless October Sky

Poetry

It still takes my breath away. Realizing there never will be any new pictures. After I’ve recycled all the best and my favorite photos of us, of you… there will be no others.

No new memories to be made. No more laughter at silly mistakes. No more time to get things right. No more chances at a marathon. No new medals or PR bells.

The rush of anger that overtakes me— still, after 4 years— of letting go of everything we had and all that we wanted. It surprises me even now.

I have work to do. Some that I’ve tackled. Some that I’ve used simply to keep me busy and preoccupied. Some that I continue to avoid. Mainly because I fear what it will cost me in the doing.

Because I am afraid.

Of feeling too much.

Of feeling not enough.

Of forgetting.

Mostly— I am afraid of forgetting.

Happiness no longer shames me. But, if I am smiling in the now, will I still be able to hold your face in my mind? Will I still hear the echo of your laughter when I close my eyes? Will my stubborn determination to see the light of each new day still allow a space for you?

I believe it does.

Because even 2,103,840 minutes have not dulled the sharp edge of your loss. Fourteen hundred sixty-one days without you have not lessened the love you left behind.

Cloudless October sky, so much like the day you left. I wrap its beauty around me as grief twists and knots within me, and I acknowledge that I am capable of holding both simultaneously.

It is the complexity of our uniquely human experience. And I do not want to miss out on any part of it.

I still miss you.

Date night, December 2016

Calvin Keith Johnson

May 9, 1957 – October 23, 2019

The Witching Hour

Poetry

Why is 3am always the point at which I awaken in the middle of the night? Maybe it’s the time when the veil between worlds is the thinnest, as some believe. Or maybe my body has just been conditioned over the past 3 years to wake up at this precise moment every night.

Whatever the reason, it’s a pain. I wake up sluggish the next morning, trying to shirk off the night’s bad dreams and cursing my inability to create better sleeping patterns. Yet another thing I am forced to admit I have no control over.

But sometimes I am disciplined enough to open the Notes app on my phone and write, recording those misty thoughts and troubling dreams. When I return to those captured thoughts during the day I am often surprised by what I find. And often, when I sit down to write with serious intention, I think I am writing about one thing only to discover I am always writing about the same thing.