This picture was taken one year ago today.
"I've missed you so much" I say to my mother when I wake up. I read a good book, I read an intriguing newspaper article, I see a film and I think "I miss you so much!" as I wonder how I would have described it to my mother. There's a subtle shift in verb tense, of which I am well aware.
There are other people in my life, certainly. I do have other people to talk with. Yet it's not the same. I never anticipated this grief. I survived the death of a beloved sister and father when I was young. I miss them, but they don't haunt my days.
I saw the sprightly production of Cenerentola by the Met. The Met HD program is about the best new thing in my life. I've been reading: Shirley Jackson, George Eliot, Sinclair Lewis.
And plans are afoot: plans to travel to England again! A Ploughman's lunch, peut-etre, which I just recently learned was an invention of the English Country Cheese Council of less than 50 years ago. And I had had such fantasies of Chaucer and Shakespeare at The Tabard ordering "ye olde ploughman's lunche".
2 comments:
Grief is in incredibly wild and crazy but deeply personal thing. We all do it differently. For me, the month of May is an anniversary of loss, and while it goes unnoticed by many around me, on certain days it is as fresh as yesterday. And that's just the way it is.
For what it's worth, I don't believe we actually "get over it" as so many suggest. That's just too much to ask of a human being. Instead, we simply live past it, and our past becomes a part of us.
I'm so sorry about your mother.
I'm curious as to what you are reading my Shirley Jackson. I hope you are enjoying it. I love her writing :)
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