Fourteen months later, I still feel the absence of my person in real time. When the kids wake up ahead of schedule and my daughter is asking me to hold her, but I have to get my other son ready for his school day. When my baby asks to ‘Ea, ea?” pointing toward the kitchen, but there is laundry to put away first. When a friend sends an invite for a fun-filled afternoon at the park, but all I can see is three hours of wrangling kids in a parental net of safety on my own. On my own. On my own.
Always on my own.
Not to mention the quieter moments when another person would be so welcomed. Friday night after the kids have fallen asleep, and a house feels like a home, and there’s no task to complete. Sunday morning as the kids walk into their Sunday School class and I enter the sanctuary, ready to raise a voice of praise. Wednesday afternoons at Mom’s kitchen counter, when the kids fill the basement with sounds of playing and Mom bustles about getting dinner ready.
I think my heart changed its rhythm after he died and left me here to raise his babies. I think my heart changed its beat to match the words, “I miss you I miss you I miss you.” I can do some days and face new mornings, but there is that beating underneath.
I miss you I miss you I miss you.
Albany has plagued me these last few days. The memories of that first night, after I found him in the ER, unconscious to the beeps and bustle and crazy around him. When I asked the on-call neurosurgeon, “If this was your person, what would you do?” and he told me, “Call his brothers. Tell them to come.” The next days, as he slipped into and out of unconsciousness, his words slurring as he struggled to identify the people around him. I want to go back to, yes, even those days, when I only knew the possibility of losing him.
And then the small curtained space they transferred him to, after the external ventricular drain began to work, a windowless corner where time kept buffering, like a cheap wi-fi signal. I would go back here in an instant. Where we watched seasons of Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond, and I brought him lukewarm oatmeal and off-brand chocolate milk. We’d take naps at odd hours because daylight no longer had any significance. I played Arcade Fire and Wilco through a small bluetooth speaker, trying to drown out the beeps and whirs that reminded us we were not home.
I am sorry I ever left that room.
I didn’t know it would be this empty without him here. (It is.) I didn’t know six feet could feel so deep. (It does.) The days keep going and the babies get bigger. The grass on his plot grows tall, and his stone weathers first one then another and now three seasons. People forget his absence for the most part, and I wonder if I’m expected to as well. But there it is again, beside me in bed as I fall asleep. Next to me at the kitchen table as I try to figure out the bills. In the passenger seat as I drive to work.
I miss you I miss you I miss you.
My heart keeps beating, but to this new rhythm.
a scribble of jo 