wallpaper

Today, my monthly massage.  


"It probably is none of my business," James says, pressing his hand into the brick wall region of my back.  "But I think you lost even more weight."


And there's none to spare, I know that, and say I appreciate the reminder.  I will eat later.


I'm in my starve-and-collapse cycle of the mourning wave.  I'll come out of it; I have lost count how many times I've already done it.  The pattern is fixed. Rich's death sinks me into a new awareness of the loss, of wonderment that a broken body and soul still breathes, still thinks, still needs food.


So I'm trying to interrupt the pattern, or at least shorten the troughs.


Not only do I now schedule a monthly massage, and a monthly facial, but I now have a year membership at the spa, which includes the massages and a daily day pass.  So I can be in a place of serenity and luxury where I can quietly hurt.  And heal, I hope.


Not everything works.  I get out in nature.  I walk and walk, but the beautiful spring days remind me of the beauty that's gone, and without the presence of the other -- I can't taste it.  Wildflowers and spring buds might as well be wallpaper.


And when other men say can we go out -- I say yes, why not, nice guys, nice places.  But they only remind of what I want but can't have, and then I come home and forget to eat...and on and on the wave goes.


I think I'm learning how.  I believe I'm learning how.  Even if on some days the evidence is thin.


Candace