7 weeks

7 weeks

There is some significance to the 49th day. The 7th Thursday since my beloved walked in, walked out, walked no more. Thursdays hurt. Thursdays last several days each. Sixth Thursday since we buried him.

Something that I remembered vividly (and I was unwillingly re-living over and over Tuesday), though it wasn't so charged for him: one morning in, oh, it had to be May of 1993, we were both getting dressed, and I saw a hematite ring on his dresser. I commented on it, something like, oh how pretty. He walked over, picked it up, and stared into my eyes. No words, just the intensity that he had when he looked at me. That he always had. He put the ring on one of my fingers and kissed me.

I considered myself married from then. He'd felt so sooner, but I hadn't really known it until that morning--I think I was afraid to know it. Just as I was afraid to know the "code 99, cardiac cat lab, code 99" was the last desperate try to save my husband's life. I knew. But I didn't know if I could stand to know. So I didn't really know.

What is it I fear? I feared true joy then; I managed to face down that one (oh, how brave!). Now, I think what I fear is being able to go on. The pain, I'm comfortable with, after a fashion. Pain is one of those things that it is easy to convince one's self that one deserves, somehow. And I know that I will have pain, lots of it, for a long time, so when I'm not actually suffering very much, I know it's not going to last. So I wonder, hm, is it going to start hurting unbearably again...now? how about now? or...now?

Going on without him is not something I ever wanted to do. I kick and scream a tantrum of grief. He was wiser than I, more certain. The clarity he brought to everything was where he lived, the habit of his astonishing mind, and he brought it to me, too.

Breathe.

Breathe again.

The days are still endless. I can not believe that Halloween was Tuesday, of *this* week--surely a different week? Or that *this* morning was when I walked two and a half miles (I checked, later) to the auto body shop to collect the good-as-new minivan--that has to have been days ago, right? No. It was a nice walk, mostly downhill, and the exercise is good for my body, at least. I cried, of course. I have taken to putting off my morning shower to try and catch myself in a state when I won't cry and thus won't jinx the day. This is not very successful.

Time to change the subject.

I do spend time doing and thinking other things. I have signed up to do National Novel Writing Month again, and both my daughters have, too. They've made significantly more progress than their mom. Fantastic kids. We've at last wrestled the MIT SPLASH website into submission long enough to register for the weekend's workshops, which the girls are hugely excited about. They're also over the moon about the MFA's special exhibit of Paris couture, which I am, too.

I'm still knitting the same damn sock. I'm mildly amazed that there's any progress on it at all. My evening routine used to include knitting, but I'm still wandering around a lot, trying to figure out what to do with myself other than watch tv and have another glass of wine. Truly, I'm so absent-minded that I'd surely be frogging most of what I knit, anyway.

The comments are heartening, you guys. Thank you. Time to go shoo someone into a bathtub.

*over the moon and sick as a parrot are the two possible states for an English footballer. Being binary and all.