I'm doing 31 things
Haven’t been on 43T in a long, long time. I want to somehow update this… though I now understand that this transformation is never “done” in the sense of completed, and hence I can’t click “I’ve done this”... I have, sort of, done this.
At about year 6, I became recognizable to myself internally. Yes, of course it was a different self than the one I had been before he died, but still, there was a familiarity to it. To me. To my reflexive thoughts and style of thinking: I was no longer faking being an essentially happy, optimistic soul. For example, fall used to be my favorite time of year, but when he left this world at the end of November in 2000, the first red leaf brought me into that cycle of sorrow again, the heaviness and loss. 2006 was the first autumn I found that I again was happy in the fall, and this past fall, 2007, also.
Do I still miss him? Of course. Will I always? Presumably. But, who would he be now? He died when he was 44… He’d be 52 later this month. I can’t imagine! I think he would have been more and more wondrous to me as he aged, but, who knows? It’s all speculative.
This morning when the period right after he died, which was so brutal, crossed my mind (first time in a long time). I was just coming out of my morning meditation (not exactly that, but closest shorthand way to get across) and I found the tears flowing. Deep sadness, but not grief, not that uncontrollable violence of oure unadulterated feeling. It was more – I guess ‘thoughtful’ would be the right word.
“Transforming into… what comes next” I wrote. I believe I am in the “next” though the transforming still and always occurs (and would have anyway, just perhaps less markedly, had he not died and died so suddenly).
This past year brought the completion of a long, long creative work project, something I’d just started a few months before his death. It took so much longer, and certainly changed in style and tone, because of his death. BUT IT IS DONE. Finished, out, “published”, well-received.
And I’ve realized that I have not started / sold another project, a new one, from proposal through completion, since before he died. And that’s been a longer gap between sales, 7 years, than ever before in my whole creative and professional life. This is astounding, and also explains in part why my finances have been so constrained. (And a big hearty “Duh” right here.)
But I am happily working on a new proposal and feeling good about it.
Perhaps this, not just the passage of time and the continued living with his loss, is also making me feel the intense grief part is “done”. Have to use quotes because I know it will surface occasionally forever. But it’s a long, long time between the grief fits these days.
I never, never would have thought this possible.
I marvel at the resilience of the human heart.
