Notice, Breathe, Release
I took to wearing my wedding band and engagement ring shortly after the breakup, on my right hand so as not to appear unavailable to any potential suitors (which is hilarious to me now). It was a tight squeeze — could fingers gain weight ?- but I squeezed it on anyway and hoped it was just water retention.
And it was comforting to see on my finger, even the wrong hand, even though it made me think about my dead husband. I love this wedding set. It was the second attempt my husband made to put a ring on it, the first proposal accompanied by an ugly gold pawnshop disaster that predicted the cancellation of the wedding just four months later. This one, a modest silver set with diamond chips so small they don’t even have ratings or numbers or letters associated them is nevertheless lovely and sparkly and special.
But it squeezed my finger hard enough to leave marks, and when I removed it after a month there was a rash all around my finger. I briefly considered having it resized or reset before putting it away, barely hidden behind the carved wooden box of my husband’s ashes.
I find myself thinking about my late husband, as is always the case in February, the month he and a tree had angry words in 2013, a conversation from which he did not exit alive. Yesterday I woke up and had a pure ten-minute period of time where I missed him, without reserve and with no negative thoughts qualifying it (as in, “I miss how spontaneous he was…yes, but, he was also ruinously bad with money.”).
For ten full minutes I just missed him. His joy. The way we laughed. How much he loved me. How much fun he was was. How many inside jokes we had and how he was always ready to say “yes.”
Even as I write this I feel like I have to acknowledge all of the bad things, and I am not sure why. Why it’s hard for me to just purely enjoy the beauty and love that we shared without pointing out that I am aware of the bad things. But the fact that I noticed this tendency and am letting it go is just a continuation of the wintering process.
Notice, breathe, release.
Maybe it’s the fact that I have managed to string together two nights of rock-solid sleep (nine+ hours both nights), or maybe it’s the sunny days in the forecast, but there is noticeable clearing in me, a clarifying feeling that is making me hopeful without expectation. It is my habit to feel something like this and leap ahead, but in the past couple days I have lingered in it without dwelling, letting peace wash over me just as completely as I have allowed grief and sadness to drown me in the past.
And the groundhog has not seen his shadow, and the snowdrops are hopeful bursting from the ground, and the moon is a sliver in the sky, moving the tides in everyone. Acceptance without expectation; detachment with love.
Things are changing for me, and I am surely here for it.
