The Cruelest Month

It’s March, little sweetheart. TS Eliot once called April “the cruelest month” but however mournful, even he did not know my sorrow. March is mine. March is the month you were taken from me. March is the month of the bitter anniversaries if your accident, our ten day vigil praying for your recovery, your tragic passing and soul-ripping grief that has followed me to this day.

Each day this month, little sweetheart, perhaps more than usual, perhaps more than any other, I must pray and be mindful, find ways to be kind and endeavor to busy myself with the work that remembers, honors and conjure you - The Most Beautiful Spirit, the blessing and very reason of my life.

Please be near me, won’t you, little sweetheart? Please help and guide me. And take me to you the moment heaven will allow. With all my love forever.

Mighty Forces

Little sweetheart, it's been a funny month. I've felt so fragile - ill for parts of it and anxious about things during other days.

These weeks and those few ahead are always so loaded for me because of the bitter anniversaries they bring around the terrible tragedy of your passing. Our last days, which I couldn't possibly have known for being such at the time but feel somehow in retrospect full of ominous signs. I remember even resisting saying "the last day" the very first time I began to utter it, still in the hospital praying for your recovery. And as March approaches I feel all this so keenly yet again.

Help me to keep focused on the things you have planned for me, little sweetheart. Please help me honor and listen for you. Please help me hold your memory and sense your guiding presence because I know you will lead me, as you always have from the moment you found me, the way I'm meant to be going - our way. Together.

Reach for me, my darling girl. I will follow.

With all my love... xM

On Grief

 Little sweetheart, I'm watching the new film "Jackie" for a second time tonight. It's set on the day, just a week after JFK's funeral, that Mrs Kennedy gave the famous interview to William Manchester. It cuts back and forth from their discussions that day and flashbacks from the tragic events of the week before. It's moved me very deeply and I wrote a little something about it. It's below:

"I don't know what anyone is saying about this movie or Natalie Portman's performance but it is an absolutely shattering and truthful depiction of grief. It is harrowing and as difficult to watch as it is to tear one's eyes away from. For anyone who has had the most important thing in the world, the person dearer to them than anyone ripped cruelly from their life, this film will touch that place that we, the always and ever aching, feel forever, and carry so close to the surface that even taking breath a bit too hard will bring to keening. Every note here is true and familiar to we the bereaved, not least the incandescent rage - the lesser known twin of sorrow that the uninitiated cannot imagine. What an unblinking, vital film this is for the broken. For us. For me. "

My sweetheart, I'm feeling you closer tonight and for that I am grateful. I love you with all my heart and soul forever. 

All these broken places

I understand so many things now that I never could've pre-ruin. I know why people are compelled to visit their lover's graves and to linger there for hours. I know how grief sits at the very top of ones heart, perched there always and ready to come forward at any time, even if you accidentally breathe just a little too hard. And I understand that odd phenomenon where people cover their mouth with their hand when something extraordinary or terrible happens because that's what I did for hours in those first hours after your accident, little sweetheart. That's exactly what I did when I was still so much in shock that the tears, that have never ceased to this day, had not yet fallen. All I could do was involuntarily clasp my useless hand over my mouth, trying, I think, to keep my soul from flying away, fleeing my body and spiriting itself into the undiscoverable place mortals may not yet know. I cupped my hand over my mouth in those hours, my love, I only now understand, as a kind of animal instinct to keep my soul within my being. But even so, I think a not insignificant part of me did indeed leave my shell and it, along with a large and jagged piece of my life, my youth, the man I was, fell and was broken to bits, left there on the cold tile hallways outside the ICU of that hospital, never to be recovered. Never, ever to recover in this life. Only the next. In the next, my little sweetheart. In that place, my darling, come for me and carefully peel my trembling hands from my mouth to let my spirit soar, untethered and unafraid to you.