evenstar42 Merry Christmas all :o)
I came across a wonderful word a couple days ago. Saudade is an untranslateable Portuguese word meaning “a yearning so intense for those who are missing, or for vanished times or places, that absence is the most profound presence in one’s life; a state of being, rather than merely a sentiment.” (In Other Words, Christopher J. Moore)
Reading that made me stop and think. I am well acquainted with that “state of being”; I spent months in it after Jay died, after the initial shock and grief had passed and there was just this vast hollow emptiness in my soul where he should have been. I thought about how far I’ve come since then. I knew, of course, that I’d moved on from there – I still get occasional bouts of yearning for might-have-beens, but it’s certainly no longer the defining feature of my life; more interesting and surprising was realising how far I’ve come in just the last year or two, after I would have thought most of the healing was already done.
I thought of the discussion last week when he came up in the course of conversation and my first reaction was to say it’s ok, I’m ok, it doesn’t hurt anymore. I was surprised to find even as I wrote it that it was true. That night I took out my favourite picture of Jay and willed myself to grieve for him, and I couldn’t; no tears, no pain, just a deep, faintly nostalgic affection and an answering grin to the mischievious smile in his eyes. For a little while I was afraid I was forgetting him and that was why it no longer hurt, but I know I’m not. Of course some things are made hazy with time, but I’ll never forget that smile, or the tenderness in his voice when he called me his angel (or his “little rat” when I’d exasperated him :o) ), or the feel of his arms around me.
What I’m learning now is that it’s ok to be ok again. I guess I thought, after slowly putting my life back together, that that was as good as it was going to get, and that it would always be painful even when the sharp edges were dulled; I thought I’d permanently lost some vital spark, that I’d be forever a diminished version of myself. As time goes on, though, I’m discovering that that spark was only temporarily dimmed, not quenched, and I’m regaining more and more of it. Only recently, I’m beginning to recognise again in myself the girl that Jay fell in love with. I’ve grown a great deal since then – the breaking open of your heart allows all sorts of new and terrifying and wonderful things to happen – but that crazy, romantic, passionate girl is still in there somewhere. I think – I believe – that Jay would be proud of the woman I’ve become.
