year one/one year

I was unpacking the grocery bags.  While removing the lemon juice, I looked at the clock.  5:24 p.m.  Rich died at 5:25, one year ago.  What does one year mean?  


My body knew.  I howled as the razors ripped through, now deeper than before.  The entire scene re-played, of his last breath, his sweet smell, of his body on the undertaker's gurney, the last time I would see his face.  And my mind, never one to be shy, whispered yet again you didn't do what you should have, you screwed up, what were you thinking...not much, not in the Chordoma years.  Because thinking meant considering the impossible.


How much alike, I now realize, is love and pain.  The first year I knew Rich, I believed I loved him.  But that was only the beginning, a laughably thin layer; if the full power of love exploded in us, all at once, I don't think we could survive.  Only as we learned to let love infuse all of our days, together and apart, did I grasp its power.


The same for pain.  To absorb it all at once is impossible.  Last year was a warm-up.  Not that this year and the next will be "harder," but I expect it will go deeper, slicing into places I can't yet go as I gradually release its power upon me and allow it to fade away -- into love, I hope.


Each night at dinner, Rich and I would light candles, hold hands, and say, another day, love, another day.


So -- another year, love, another year.


Candace