Ticking off the Days

I didn’t post last week. I avoided writing until Tuesday afternoon and then was completely uninspired.

Yesterday, I realized why: I’m approaching the fourth anniversary of March 19, 2014, the day my life changed forever, March 19, 2014. The day David phoned me from the hospital in Seoul, Korea, and told me he had leukemia. Seventeen months later he was dead.

I hadn’t consciously thought of the date, but something inside me has been ticking off the days.

I’ve fallen back into the trap of expecting the grief to ‘be over’. Although I say to close friends, ‘you never get over this’, I’ve yet to completely accept that. Or I fear I’ll turn into a whiner. But that’s not the underlying danger: forgetting is. Deliberate forgetting to avoid the pain of remembering and the natural forgetting as memories fade over time.

I don’t have clear, extensive memories of what our children were really like as they grew up, just brief vignettes and memorable incidents. I regret not keeping a ‘mother’s journal’.

My friend, Susanne and I took our weekly walk yesterday, on the bike path. Today there’s about a foot of snow on the ground and it’s still falling. I’ve been inside the house, watching the snow fall and hoping no more large limbs fall from our moribund trees. We have wonderful tall maples and evergreens on our acre lot, but many of them aren’t healthy. Last week, during a heavy snowfall, a major maple tree limb fell into our circular driveway, missing Jim’s car by inches. Before we’ve had a chance to hire someone to remove it, we’re in the middle of another nor-easter. Last night I spent a half an hour dragging the moderate-sized limbs to our big compost heap so our snowplow driver can clear most of the driveway.