One Month Ago...

One month ago today I lost my husband, my best friend, my travel partner. Originally I had a feeling of being untethered, floating in space, like Sandra Bullock in that movie. There have been times in my life when I felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole or like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid jumping off that cliff. (Hell, the fall'll kill ya!)

I don't want to hurry into anything, people say "be kind to yourself" - I'm trying. Trying to develop little habits without him. Seemingly unimportant little things, like having a cup of tea in the afternoon and listening to classical music. Like turning on the bedside lamp in the morning and making the bed, getting dressed. I was always up before him and would quietly get up, pull on my robe and leave him sleeping. Sometimes never got back to making the bed. OK, most of the time.

We never had rituals, he and I, nothing we did every day or on certain days, like when I was growing up, each day of the week had a certain meal - Sunday "gravy" with meat sauce and pasta (Macaroni, we called it), Friday fish. Like that. Never wanted to do that, be regimented. Follow what our parents had done. No, we were going to blaze our own trail. Raising kids with our own set of rules - making it up as we went along then realizing later that our parents did a pretty good job with us, but it was too late! But our kids turned out great, two wonderful adults we are so proud of. I am proud of. He was.

So now one month after his death I'm still feeling lost. The tears come freely, especially when I talk about him, talk about the loss, about how he died. And it's so hard to get my head around the fact that he is simply gone. Gone from my life, from the earth. We are not religious, I am not, he was not. But we believed that our energy does not die, that it goes out into the universe and becomes part of it.

So now when I wake in the morning, after the bed is made I stand by it, or sit on his side and close my eyes and imagine his energy surrounding me, sparkles of light caressing me and I am comforted by it. That feeling that he is with me, all around me and I feel safe, loved by him still and always as I love him.