Quietly the page is turned

Saturday

I sit at the picnic table on the back porch of my mother's house. It's quiet, foreign without Thunder wiggling up to me with a soggy ball in his mouth. In the yard, two balls and a training dummy, I suppose where he left them. The yard seems unnecessary without him, the pool lonely. The scene is off balance without my father and his dog.

Inside on the coffee table, the brown leather box from the funeral home, an envelope filled with condolence cards, and a notebook. This grouping has been right here for over a year. No odder than his urn sitting on the bar beside the football with J&B on it that she wanted to keep displayed for Superbowl. I lift the lid of the box, pull out the guest book and open it up to the first page of signatures. There are signatures of friends I don't remember seeing that day, signatures of people who used to work with him, signatures of those his life touched, colleagues of mine, so many people. I read each name, drag my finger along the movement of the signatures of a few, slowly along the curls and lines. I turn each page until the the ink is gone.

They were there, I know it because my hand and eye are here now.

I open the notebook, look at the writing that's my own. I remember sitting at one end of the table, my brother sitting at the other. Leadership shifting in an instant. A list of things that must be done. Call the funeral home, call the church. A long list of family and friends and either my brother's or my own initials beside each name, indicating which of us would make that call. A list of decisions we were incapable of making but somehow did. And in the back of the notebook, my obsessive jotting of every call received until it became too much because the phone lines kept ringing and ringing until we were answering questions but I'm not sure we were speaking anymore.

I brought a red rose home with me that night when I went to retrieve some clothes. That rose is on my bookcase still.

Sometime last year I wrote this

I thought my questions would always go to you. I thought the answers would always be in your familiar voice. Does that now have to be untrue? The questions don't hang in mid-air unanswered; they hang unasked. It's up to me, isn't it? You'd say that. I can hear you telling me, Take care of yourself, Alison. You have to take care of yourself. One of the most soothing things I can do when I miss you is to wrap myself in memories of you, bring them up and let them bubble over. In my heart, I go to you. In my heart, your voice answers.

Yesterday

At lunch yesterday I realized that it was the last day of February and I smiled at having made it to an imaginary but very real goal line I placed there. I remember at the end of January, sitting on the edge of the month dreading its inevitable arrival. But really, every day we can choose, and the beginning of February was no different. Some things are not meant to be handled or forced to fit. Be gentle. Be brave. Be quiet. The present isn't as frightening a place as the imagination of it can be.

Last night

I dreamed I was sliding down an enormous silver slide. It wasn't fun, it was terrifying. When I got to the bottom and the slide leveled off, I slowed, and landed on my feet in warm sand. I stood there looking at my pink toenails peeking through the sandy mound, surprised that I hadn't hurt myself. This first year was like that, fearful, falling, steadying, landing. I read somewhere that it is important to have a vision that is not clouded with fear. It's taken a year to address the fear of going through life without him. I'm still working on the vision. There is no model for grief, no best practice for facing the firsts. It's delicate, and it's hard work. But you can land on your feet.