"8" for reply

Has it really been almost two months?


A deep thank you to those who have asked what is happening, and spurred me to continue writing this.  

The numbness is wearing off.  All the matters of outer change -- financial, legal -- are mostly done.  It is now mine name, solo, on accounts and registrations and letters.  Rich's existence as a person is vanishing. 


Mine, too.  Which is excruciating, but the time is now.


Just about when everyone thinks it's over, you got through grief, you're looking good, what are your plans...


Mourning now starts.  There's no time or energy early on to wrestle with the excruciating pain, and I have no desire to pretend this an illness that can be treated with pills.  Grief is cured by plowing up memory and planting seeds of a new body, a new mind, a new soul, fed by Rich and to be grown with others.


Today is also our 32nd wedding anniversary.


So I torture myself.  I listen for the "nth" time -- a Rich expression -- to his last voice messages from Hospicare, sent while I was sleeping, either late at night or early in the morning.  And continued to sleep through them many times afterward, until I could hear.


Which I'm starting to do, now.  Of the enormous love, that if I had let it inside would have killed me, too.


I love you so much.


Of, even near the end, of his planning.


I would be more comfortable knowing all the bills are paid...this is the end...your life is more important than mine, yours is going forward...


Going forward.  There's no other choice.


Well, not quite.  As I save the message one more time, the disembodied voice intones, "hit '8' to reply.''


And I almost do, several times.


Candace