I feel like I can remember every moment of Thanksgiving, every moment right up until that text, right up until I heard the news.

After that, my memory comes in fragments. Impressions. I know we went to Jessica and Nathan’s wedding, and we danced desperately, danced like we could out-dance our grief, danced like if we just kept moving, the pain couldn’t touch us. I remember Simona and Darren’s visit, remember talking until the early morning hours, crying on the couch. Our hand-me-down couch that my parents bought when I was in sixth grade, before I thought much about the word cancer.

I remember the people who brought us food. I remember Jessica coming over the day it happened, bringing us Chinese food. I can’t remember tasting a single thing.

And Christmas. I remember little about Christmas.

Christmas Eve, I remember driving around Titusville, the little coastal town Jesse and I both grew up in, I remember driving around that town looking at lights with everyone who was left: Jesse, me, my parents, his mother, his sister, my grandmother. Jesse and I spend Christmas Eve with my family, Christmas Day with his (and have been since we were dating as teenagers.) We listened to Christmas music on the radio. I coughed in the backseat, getting sick again. But the whole city was lit up, and we listened to the songs we’ve heard every December of our lives and looked at the same Christmas decorations we’ve been looking at since we were kids. The luminaries–tiny lights in paper bags. One here or there on fire, a little torch.

How many luminaries have I put out with my dad over the years? When was the last year I did that? Did I have any idea that was the last year?

That night, last Christmas Eve, we drove by my old house. I didn’t want to look at it. The yard Dad kept so nice was overgrown, the neighborhood weary looking.

Across Carpenter Road from where I lived was Lantern Park, where the kids whose dads were dentists or office workers lived. They always had the best lights.

And for a few moments, I could pretend I was sixteen and none of this had happened. And Vicki and Becki were joining us and Tom had stayed home. For a few moments, he could still be alive, just across town, and we could look at the lights that have always been there, will always be there.

The only thing I remember about Christmas Day is Vicki crying when she opened a locket Becki bought her with Tom’s initials on the outside.

The rest of December, it seems, I was sick. Then, everyone else got sick too. We limped into the New Year.

Like the transition between winter and spring.

Like how the daffodils poke up and bloom and you feel things are starting to turn around, and the trees bud, and you think about planting herbs. And then it’s 40 degrees again and things die all over. That’s how grief is.

I got the news by text message.

I was teaching, while Tom died. I was in Morton 205, upstairs. I don’t remember what we were doing. The schedule from that semester says my students read “Hills Like White Elephants” and “Araby” that day. Were we discussing those stories? What was said? What questions did I ask? What, really, does it matter?

All I know is that I got back to my office and pulled my phone out of my desk drawer and saw Jesse’s text: “Dad just died…”

I won’t try to describe the feeling.

That’s all I can write today. I was teaching. I got the news by text message. I’m talking about Hemingway, and my husband’s world is falling apart.

That was fall, and we’ve been through winter, and now we’re in spring, but it’s still fits and starts. One step forward, two back.

Thanks for bearing with us.

Love,
esb

At home, Jesse and I continue our sriracha obsession, and I have discovered I like breakfast. We’ve been milk-and-cereal folks all our lives, but now we’re eating scrambled eggs with sriracha, egg sandwiches with avocado and sriracha, and breakfast burritos with–you guessed it–sriarcha. (On off days, we have oatmeal or Bob’s Mill seven-grain hot cereal…without sriracha, sadly.)

For the holiday weekend, we visited my aunt and uncle in Charlotte, and it was a low-key, restful weekend of catching up and eating too much (my aunt is a brilliant cook) and watching bad sci-fi movies (Chupacabra Terror, anyone?).

Now we’re back home and busy tearing through our to-do lists, going grocery shopping, playing tennis.

This is what I love about January. Things get done. Diets are kept. Exercise schedules are maintained. Even the cold feels appropriate (though don’t tell anyone I said that). It’s a clear feeling–this month, this weather. The fog of last year, the overindulgence of the holidays, the muddy uncertain sad times start to fade and dissipate, just a bit. Replacing them is a clarity, a focus. The sadness is still there, of course, but it’s something you get used to, something you learn to expect, to accomodate.

I yearn for spring, for warm weather, for growing things, but this time feels right for now. A time for life to hibernate and for things to clarify as we prepare for whatever’s next.

The virus, whatever it was, got everyone but Jesse. My parents, his mother, his sister, me, and my grandmother. One after the other, starting Christmas Eve. As most of you already know, my grandmother wound up in the hospital as a result. As official Patient Zero, I felt awful, worried sick. Fortunately, she’s home now, recovering.

So now we’re back in North Carolina, still recuperating, the semester already under way, and honestly the last two months feel like a blur to me. Unreal. How strange what has happened to us. All the illnesses, the loss, the travel. Sometimes I wonder, did it happen? Did it really happen?

We are doing our best to start the year off right. We are eating more vegetables. Cooking more. Taking walks around the neighborhood. Today, I slept in and lazed around, drinking coffee, reading. This afternoon, we played tennis, and then I took a nap with the cats. Tonight, we ate a creamy butternut squash soup and a big pile of green beans (a vegetarian day for the both of us).

Tonight, I feel restful, calm, satisfied. One step at a time, one day at a time. One meal at a time. We move forward. Still in a daze, still a little bewildered, but sure of one thing: every day counts.

This past year has been difficult, to say the least. I haven’t written here much. How do you write that your father-in-law is dying? How do you say your husband is losing his best friend? I never found the words for that. So, I stayed mostly silent. Posted a lot of cat pictures. What else do you do?

We spent Thanksgiving with Jesse’s family. After Thanksgiving, Tom wanted to go to Key West, and we somehow made the trip south, got to the resort, which Tom had selected and booked, and tried our very best to have a good time. We smiled in all of our pictures.

See?

We did our best impersonation of a happy vacationing family. We ate Cuban food. We lounged on the beach in hammocks. Jesse, Becki, and I walked Duval Street. But we weren’t just a happy vacationing family. We were taking Tom on his last trip to Key West, and we knew it. We knew the end was approaching; we just didn’t know how long we had left.

The stress was unbelievable. But, the oddest thing is when I look back on that trip, it’s mostly happy memories I have. Tom was able to sit in a hammock, smoke a cigar, drink a pina colada, and eat Cuban food. One more time. And that is what he wanted more than anything else.

We came home on a Sunday. Jesse and I left for North Carolina that Monday. And on Tuesday, he died.

The first two weeks after his death were hell. I don’t use the phrase lightly.

I don’t want to write about those first two weeks.

There were bright moments, too. Our friends brought us food and kept us alive during the worst of it. We had a wonderful visit from Simona and Darren, two of the dearest people in the world. We received several amazing care packages. My students were incredibly supportive and understanding.

So now, we keep smiling for pictures. We have gotten good at it. It’s amazing how much pain you can be in and still manage to smile for pictures.

I guess, in a way, that’s what life is. Finding joy in pain, looking for beauty in darkness. Squeezing every tiny bit of happiness out of a bad situation. Enjoying the sun on your face and the sound of the waves hitting the sand, even when you know your world is about to come to an end.

So, I leave you with a picture and a quote. Goodbye, 2012.

“Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.” – Terry Tempest Williams

(To some of you: Sorry.)

(To the rest of you: You’re welcome.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about change lately. All the changes we’ve undergone the past couple years. The changes we might see in the coming few. We’ve stayed in the same city, in the same house, with the same cats, but it seems like everything else has been up for review the past couple years. Our church home, our friends, our jobs, our life direction, our politics, our outlook.

We still really like Indian food.

So, there are some things that haven’t changed.

Has anyone else experienced years of almost non-stop change? I’d love some advice, some words of wisdom. How did you get through it? Does it ever stop? How does one continually come under change after change and keep up the energy to face new ones as they come along?

I’m just tired, is all. There were times in my life when I welcomed change, embraced it. My hope is I’ll get back to that place again.

In the meantime, Indian food. It’s the best. Really.

Then, I walk into the living room, where our laundry is drying on the little wooden drying rack and on the couches. And then I know why.

Right after that picture was taken, Gracie jumped down to the floor, where Oliver sat. She curled up at his feet, and he gave her a bath. And then I didn’t care about all the cat hair on our clothes.

Yes, they’re keepers. Shedding fur and all.

Thursday, I was in my office trying to grade some literature essays after class. My head hurt. My eyes ached. I struggled to concentrate. I remembered a coupon I’d received for a free coffee, so I dug that out of a desk drawer and walked to the library for some caffeine. The sun outside was bright and hot. I was at the end of a difficult week, the last full week before fall break, and I was limping to the finish line.

The last couple weeks have been long, difficult, and stressful. I’ve been feeling frayed. Perpetually tired. On my way home from class Tuesday, I stopped to buy bubble bath and nail polish. A feeble attempt at helping myself make it to the end of the week.

But make it I did. The coffee Thursday afternoon perked me up enough to finish some grading before an Ann Hood lecture across campus.

And as I sat in the dim theater and listened to Ann talk about writing and reading and grief and knitting, I felt quiet and thoughtful. My eyes relaxed, and my headache eased away. The talk was inspiring and emotional and the perfect, perfect end to the week and beginning to my fall break.

After the talk, I chatted with some coworkers at a reception back at our building. I ate cheese and crackers. I felt lighter. Then I drove home, picking up a pizza on the way, and watched as the sun set over the river, lighting up the clouds in a blaze of orange and yellow.

My break so far has been restorative. Friday I did little other than read a novel, play tennis, and take a bubble bath. Jesse and I talked about our dreams. I watched A. and M. for a few hours, and we played outside in the balmy end-of-summer evening air. Yesterday, I had a nice long talk with one of the best human beings on the entire planet, Simona, and we too talked about our dreams. It’s so wonderful to talk to someone who understands how necessary it can be to have impossible dreams, and to be trying to make them come true. Everyone needs a Simona.

This weekend, Jesse and I have been painting our bedroom. It has been a bright orange–an exciting, happy color. But lately, it’s felt overstimulating, overpowering. We’re painting it gray. Neutral. Soothing. We’ve got a couple coats of primer on the walls, and we’re just about to start the color. It feels good to paint the walls. A new start. Exactly what a break should be, a time to rest and a time to recharge and a time to connect and a time to start over.

By the end of last week, though, I was beat. Friday was the last official day of summer. We decided to celebrate fall’s arrival on Saturday by going to the beach. We got up and cleaned the house and then drove down to Oak Island. But first, food. We ate at a little barbeque restaurant–BBQ sandwiches with slaw and fries and hush puppies–and once we were sufficiently stuffed, we left and then sprawled ourselves on some sand.

We spent hours on the beach, staring out into the ocean, talking about life and art, playing Bocce. Up the beach a ways, a couple of men wrestled with some fishing poles. Watching them, we realized they were about to bring something in. A little knot of people came to watch. It seemed to be taking them quite a while to get the fish in. What was the trouble? We saw something in the water and realized that what they were bringing in was not a fish. It was a sting ray.

Jesse and I hopped up and jogged down the beach to watch. The men finally got the ray out of the waves, somehow managing to avoid its barb. They cut the line and removed the hook as the ray flapped on the sand. It was beautiful–its dark waving fins, its pale white belly, its whipping tail. The men moved the ray back to the water, and it swam away, much to our collective relief.

The rest of the afternoon was sleepy. There was just a little hint of a chill in the air, and at one point I used an extra beach towel as a blanket, shielding myself from the wind. Fall was, it appeared, actually on its way. This would probably be the last time we went to the beach until next summer.

Eventually, we bid the ocean goodbye and made our way back home. The rest of the weekend, we talked about and worked on creative projects. I edited my book. Jesse worked on a homemade musical instrument. Sunday afternoon, we walked around the mall and came up with story ideas, inventing a little relay-like game. I’d come up with an idea, and then Jesse would come up with one, and then we’d start over again. It was fun. It was silly. And we had a long list of characters and conflicts when we were done.

Now another week is under way. Jesse and I got up early this morning so we’d have time to work on our projects, and we both had a productive Monday. I hope this is a sign the week will be a good one, though I hope it’s at least a little less tiring than the one before it…