One Year Later

I didn’t expect it to hurt this much. 

I’ve worried about this weekend, of course. It began one year ago today when the doctor called instead of Risa. When instead of a good report about how they planned to bring you down off that mountain, we were told that the fight was over, and we needed to come say good-bye. That was the 17^th. Today’s date. Tomorrow is one year since Katy and I drove up the mountain and saw you suffering. While Lee stayed with us for hours on his phone, listening, we all gave you what you needed. Release. Saturday will be one year since you left us, and our suffering began in earnest.

I wanted to go to Florida to visit your grave this weekend, but the logistics were too much for me right now. Another road trip to Florida for another sad reason was overwhelming, and flying isn’t even on the table. This was one of those decisions I made that has also left me in pain. I knew when you died that you needed to be with your ancestors in that tiny Florida cemetery. But I live two thousand miles away where you and I raised a family together. And built our marriage. Dreamed our dreams. And lost our future.

So, I can’t sit on that bench your sister added to the family plot, talk to you in private under those massive southern oak trees, and weep over all that was stolen from us beside your grave. I never knew something like that would be important to me. I didn’t grow up with funerals and cemeteries and such. But I never thought I’d lose you, either.

Today I loaded up my truck and drove to Albuquerque, day one of a two-day trip to meet up with Lynette in Amarillo. “We’ll get you through this,” she told me a few months ago when we decided to spend the coming week together in Texas. I looked at the map and tried to figure out a route that would avoid our last hometown of Heber on top of our beloved Mogollon Rim, but there was no other path that I felt comfortable driving alone.

I’ve been as angry with the mountains for taking you from me as I’ve been at God for doing the same. I told Katy when we drove down following your last day in the hospital that I would never forgive the mountains for the part they played in my losing you. I’ve been back to them a few times, trying to reconcile with the sanctuary where you and I often fled for respite from frantic city life. I know it’s not really their fault. But I don’t know who to blame for this horrible tragedy, and since the mountains called us and off we went, pointing the finger at all those pines that have the nerve to stay standing seems logical. Sort of.

Yesterday morning I woke up thinking about your grave. About your name etched in granite when it should still be written on our mailbox. We couldn’t have your memorial for five months after your passing. Covid postponed everything last year. I wasn’t even there when they interred your ashes. That figures. Just like I was prevented from being there to comfort you while you spent four weeks fighting for your life in a lonely ICU four hours away from me.

It wasn’t supposed to end that way, Baby. Sometimes that’s the biggest hurt of all. Death loves to get the upper hand.

I realized yesterday as I lay in the dark, thinking, that driving back through Heber this weekend is another way I can honor you on this first horrible anniversary. Your ashes are buried in your home state, but your life didn’t end there. It ended here, in our mountains. So, I drove through there today. I wept through there today. Tonight my steps are re-traced as I stay in the same hotel where I stopped last summer on my way to pick up Lynette in Amarillo before we drove together to Florida.

I don’t know how long this deep hurt will last, but I am determined to go through this pain because there are no shortcuts around it, just as there were no shortcuts around Heber. The only way I can reach the hope I need so I can face the rest of my life without you by my side is to experience this honoring, transformative thing called ‘grief.’

“It hurts so much because you loved so much,” my counselor reminds me often. Then so be it. I will hurt and grieve for as long as it takes. I will feel the feels. Miss you like I’d miss my own heart. Long for what we cannot have. Treasure the moments when I still feel you near. And cry out to God in the dark.

One year later. Still loving you, Baby. I always will.