Catching me off guard, some of the mystical quality I’ve been living in for the past sixteen months is lifting.  It’s dreadful – like eyes adjusting to the sun after living in solitary confinement for months.   You get used to the dark.  The sunlight’s excruciating.

There is the tiniest taste of continuity between this life and that one- the one before.  There is anger and the immense desire for time travel and negotiations of all sorts are revisited.  There is the sense that all I’ve been doing here is rambling in the hopes that it would grant me some kind of authority which in truth I don’t possess.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m actively facing the future now…that I am looking for a place to live, thinking about how I’ll support us, and hearing my daughter sit coloring in the other room and say to herself aloud, “I don’t remember my appa because he died.”

The idea that something redemptive could come from my grieving process seems foolish all of the sudden.  Hope falls flat.  You are dead, not away or traveling.  This is it.  I sit here, wearing your socks and your t-shirt…asking your photo to tell me what happened on that day- “What happened Dan?”  Shouldn’t I, your wife, at least know how and why you died?  I don’t want to write anymore or think about a future without you tonight.  I don’t want to read any more books or take any more notes.  I am exhausted.  I am not sure I can take another step forward, so I think I will rest here for a while.