day 355

When you are grieving someone to whom you have given your whole heart, just about any old stupid pop song has the potential to bring you to your knees. It doesn't even have to be any good. You don't even have to like it. A truly excellent song can do much worse though, breaking your heart in two all over again, though the pain of it may only last for the duration of the song.

The children are all out with friends. I put on Shovels and Rope as loud as my little speaker could sing and set about tackling some of the least palatable Saturday afternoon kitchen chores imaginable: scraping the cooked-on layer of powdered sugar that flew in wild billowing clouds from the stand mixer when I was making the frosting for Bea's birthday cake yesterday off the stovetop, cleaning the layer of sticky honey off the shelf where it spilled (along with the bottoms of all the objects on said shelf).

It fucking sucks to be the only responsible adult in this house.

Anyway. Once upon a time I heard Shovels and Rope (which is, incidentally, a marvelous band) performing on the NPR show that used to be Prairie Home Companion but is now called something else, something forgettable, hosted by a sometimes annoying but mostly just fine impressively musical much younger man than Garrison Keilor, and they sang this song that took my breath away. The new host reacted the way I felt afterwards and I liked him a little better. And I tried to remember it later to tell Mike about it, because I wanted him to hear it too, because we both love this band, and he was sick, and it would comfort and sadden him as it did me, and he would know just how I felt listening to it. Of course later I couldn't remember any of the lyrics to figure out the name of the song and was quickly distracted and that was that. As far as I know he never did hear it.

I listened to it again this afternoon on the kitchen floor. St. Anne's Parade.

And I'm up too damn early in the morning
Watching the world around me come alive
And I need more fingers to count the ones I love
This life might be too good to survive.
...
We've been riding down this highway now for all these years
Breathing in the dust along the way
But it's the kindness of a friend is what's remembered in the end
It's a debt that is a pleasure to repay

And it never feels like we're getting any older
But the memories build up around the eyes
And I need more fingers than I've got on my two hands
This life may be too good to survive. 

I miss hearing a song sung from the perspective of a we and having the other part of my we be alive. Widowhood is as lonely as fuck.

It's March. Ten days and counting. Life keeps happening. The snow arrives, the bits on the sidewalks freeze and melt and freeze again, various children are ill, my clients are strange and wonderful, I make dinner, I cry with a friend, I laugh with a friend, I swear more than usual, I lie awake at night all over again. What will happen when the sun rises the day after March 12th, 2019? What will the world look like when Mike has been dead for one year and a day? Probably a lot like it does on this slushy gray afternoon: big and beautiful and empty.

We will have survived a year of firsts without him; a year of seconds will be lying in wait.