Troughs

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.
~ Shakespeare, Macbeth

This was a rough week. How so? Why? Each morning I’ve gotten up outta bed, fed the cats, sifted the litter boxes, made the coffee and then stopped – The Amazing Bob isn’t here! Yes, yezzz, you know that. I know that. There seems to be peaks and troughs to this mourning shit and I’ve hit a mondo one. I feel as though I’m collapsing under the weight of this monster grief.

All I can do, at best, is sit, read, pat the cats, knit and nap. I don’t want to rejoin the world – attend the Friday morning drawing sessions, go to the Deaf socials and MeetUps, lunch out at Froggies or Sparkle Boys. No, I just want to stay home in our little cottage where TAB’s energy still swirls.

I’ve a vague, hovering sense of guilt about the changes I’ve been making – the “new” chair, changing his study into a guest bedroom, moving my painting studio up to the first floor (How will TAB bake his cookies if my easel’s in the middle of the kitchen floor?!! Oh…wait….) – as though I’m betraying him in some way. No. I’m keeping myself busy so’s I don’t sit weeping all day. Keeping the house just exactly as it was when my beautiful man was alive, like a shrine, will not bring him back OR ease my torment.

So today, before the heat comes, I’ll trike, learn how to use my new camera, read, knit, put in a few hours of work and cosset up Rocco and Coco.

I’ll function.

my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping
but
I shall go on living.
~ Pablo Neruda

It is always sad when someone leaves home, unless they are simply going around the corner and will return in a few minutes with ice-cream sandwiches.
~ Lemony Snicket, Horseradish

Teddy wondered, and not for the first time, not by a long shot, if this was the day that missing her would finally be too much for him.
~ Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island 

 It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”
~ Toni Morrison, Sula

‘It was too perfect to last,' so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic - as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy than He stopped it ('None of that here!'). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation. But it could also mean 'This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.' As if God said, 'Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next.'
~ C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“O weep for Adonis - He is dead."
Peace.
He is not dead he doth not sleep - he hath wakened from the dream of life.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Tell all my mourners
To mourn in red-
Cause there ain't no sense
In my bein' dead.
~ Langston Hughes

Sometimes words are not enough.