On the Second Anniversary of His Death

Just as I was beginning to feel that life alone was “normal” and I could get on with it, today I felt the sting of Adrian’s death as sharp as ever.

This Friday will be the second anniversary of his dying.And like it felt two years ago, I cannot imagine the reality of it.

That’s how it felt then—impossible.Unbearable.Unfathomable.

Yet I take my next breath.

How can that be?

To live with sadness—yes, I can do that.But to live with joy?

Adrian’s presence is all too absent from my life.

I feel like I am plodding through deep muck—with no interest in the destination.

My daily activities seem pitiful, arrogant, deranged.

Yet I went into the studio and painted this morning.That’s what I know how to do.And all I can do, I guess, is what I know how to do.

I will practice the piano.

I will make myself a sandwich for lunch.

I will eat the lunch.

One thing everyone in my family is good at is eating our way through disasters.Nothing makes us lose our appetites.

I suppose that eating lunch is a sign that I do choose life.I am not going to throw myself onto my husband’s funeral pyre.

I am in no mood today for the trivial.I don’t want to participate in trivia any more.

But I will, of course.I am human.I will partake of the trivial, the mindlessness, and the banal.

I will do what I have to in order to get through the day.