The After

[theafter-jmcm]

Merry Christmas.

[theafter-jmcm]

It doesn't get any easier. As time passes, you just get more practiced at putting it away.

[theafter-jmcm]

found

[theafter-jmcm]

Christmas, looming large.

[theafter-jmcm]

Beach finds will always make me think of you.

[theafter-jmcm]

ipswich

[theafter-jmcm]

unheard.

I tell you I’m sad, and you say to try and be happy.

I tell you I’m scared of death, and you say you are young and healthy.

I tell you I don’t believe in heaven, and you say it would make me feel better to believe.

I am unheard.

I hear you, trying to make me feel better.

But still, I am unheard.

My common ground has been buried with her.

And it is unfound.

And I am unfounded. [Google tells me this, believe it or not, definition for “unfounded:” un·found·edˌənˈfoundəd/

adjective

having no foundation or basis in fact.“her persistent fear that she had cancer was unfounded”]

The person who knew me best

and heard me best

and listened to me best is gone.

My prayer for her to be spared went unanswered.

I am unheard.

I just need you to listen.

[theafter-jmcm]

at the stream

[theafter-jmcm]

“I felt cold all the time. One day…having wrapped a big black scarf up over my nose, I passed a man who joked, "it’s not that cold, honey.”
I really wanted to punch him. It’s not that cold for you, asshole.
People kept saying to me, “it gets better at a year, doesn’t it?” Or, “I hear it gets better at a year.” It did. It got “better” in that I could for days without thinking too much about the fact that someone I still loved as dearly as I ever did was dead. But to expect grief to heal is to imagine that it is possible to stop loving…so heal isn’t the right word. I love C.S. Lewis’s metaphor: a loss is like an amputation. If the blood doesn’t stop gushing soon after the operation, then you will die. To survive means, by definition, that the blood has stopped. But the amputation is still there.“
-the long goodbye, Meghan O'Rourke

[theafter-jmcm]

still unmoved

[theafter-jmcm]

marquis de lafayette cape may

[theafter-jmcm]

"What the hell. What is she supposed to do, contemplate every moment with saintly beatitude? Exclaim that she loves us, is devastated to be leaving us, cannot bear not to watch Eamon graduate from college, to see our children? Time doesn't obey our commands. You cannot make it holy just because it is disappearing. Other people--friends, colleagues--got used to my mother dying of cancer. But I did not. Each day, sunlight came like a knife to a wound that was not healed." -the long goodbye, Meghan O'Rourke.

[theafter-jmcm]

The outfit worn to her service, repurposed. The purse she planned to give me, treasured. The conference in Salt Lake City, struggled.

[theafter-jmcm]

flowers after the funeral dinner they're still alive on the countertop in sunlight. the rest of the house smells of mellow decay; wilting dark heart of roses on the living room floor, drooping petals in the dining room. I scattered some dead flowers in her garden, lilies with lilies, in hopes they might bloom in the spring

[theafter-jmcm]

Grieving, in Utah.

[theafter-jmcm]

[theafter-jmcm]

Leavin’ on a jet plane.