Time Passages

Dear Rachel,

It's been exactly six months since you died. I remember that day (every little detail) as if it were yesterday. Hardly seems very long ago, yet in some ways it feels like I've been carrying this grief around forever. How are the next 50 years going to feel?

I know it's normal for time to pass quickly, the older one gets, but these past six months have had a strange sense of telescopic movement. The other night we were commenting on how we both continue to look at the phone table, checking to see if we have any messages. Old habits die hard, I suppose. There isn't an answering machine on the table. We dropped our land line back in July! But the strange thing is that Rod said something about how we'd dropped it several months ago and I honestly thought it was just last month. Where has the time gone? Not only does it feel like we didn't have much of a fall, but I have no idea what happened to our summer. It really is a blur. I think we spent most of it either numb or crying.

After your death, I remember deliberately keeping track of the days, thinking it's been four days since you died... five... ten... Soon it became the number of weeks and then months. Each milestone gets further and further apart from the last, somehow making this new existence for us seem oddly normal.

The first couple of months after you died, I'd wake up every Saturday morning and re-live all that happened to us on May 28th. I'd look at the clock as I'd get dressed or fix my coffee, thinking about what we were doing at that exact time on that awful morning. And then one day I realized Saturday had come and almost gone and I hadn't looked at the clock! I'd let that particular anniversary of your death go by unnoticed! That scared the hell out of me. I was terrified that I'd slowly begin to forget not only the details of that day but the details of you as well.

I don't think we'll ever get over losing you, but we will learn to live with the emptiness and sorrow. Time does help and I do see that Rod & I (and Amy) are beginning to heal - to have some sort of regular life together again. It's certainly not the same as it was, but it's not filled with the agonizing pain we felt in those early months. We're joking and laughing with friends and each other and we've begun to get out more, enjoying dinner parties and new restaurants. Amy has Paris to look forward to next May. Rod's mind wanders to the pile of nuts & bolts (oops, I mean motorcycle!) in the garage, anxious to get it cleaned up and running. I'm beginning to think about the new perennial bed I want to plant next spring. And maybe we'll finally get the wallpaper stripped from the kitchen!

Time will pass, but you won't be forgotten. You're forever in our hearts and minds. Not just on Saturdays or the 28th, but always.

Love,

Les