Year 5: Sometimes

 

Year 5: Sometimes

Sometimes in Dreamland, you’re remarkably alive:

I hear your faint voice saying: ‘I sure picked the right woman to raise my sons.’

I see you sitting beside me, for a blink, and it’s suddenly OK that I’m only using one of the two tickets available per family for Max’s graduation from Elementary School.

I feel your familiar laughter with mine when my silliness takes over a moment in time.

I know you reminisce with me in the sweet memory of our first spoken words to one-another – so fitting for our relationship - at a candy machine in a break room at work.

Sometimes, in life still, I hurt:

I surrender to not always knowing what to do as a single parent.

I wake and know my coffee routine, for now, is solo.

I complete forms again and again and see my option, ‘Widow’, in clear black and white, waiting for its checkmark.

Mostly, I am happy:

I see our sons glowing and growing.

I feel love all around me in life - and in Dreamland

I am living and loving and embracing as much of this beautiful life as I can.

Always, I am grateful:

For our time together on this earth.

For the incredible memories, both good and not.

For the souls we brought into this world together.

For the laughter. Oh, the laughter.

For eternal love.

Thank you, Patrick, for loving me and for the privilege of being your wife. For almost 24 years. I loved you to your last breath. I do love you, still. Always.

Year 4: Rolling

Year 4: Rolling

The day you left, my pedaling days were over.

You’d never be here again:

              to pick me up if I’d wandered too far,

              to push me or let me draft when I tired,

              to fix my flat or chain,

              to Bike to Work Day with me,

              to meet me for coffee off the path,

              to travel to the secret lake.

Thinking about the bike paths without you was so painful. So, the paths would have to go on without me, too. I retired that day your bike gained wings and took you. I could never again. Oh, the heartache!

Then, without warning - a Dream. You were there. We would ride together. Oh, the lightness of fun!

So - A new bike:

to get me as far as I want to go,

to take me to the secret lake and beyond,

to get and sip my coffee,

to visit the trees and birds and river,

to meander and paint and read and daydream,

Yes, MY kind of riding.

I am no longer afraid. The pain is no longer my enemy. In fact, the pain has transformed. I have transformed. I am a different woman – but more like myself than ever before. Oh, the irony!

On the path and in life - you are with me in memory and heart and dream. You are cheering me on. Still there for me. Still smiling. Oh, the dimples!

I’m not rolling forward because I didn’t have a choice;

I’m rolling forward because I have exactly that.

And I choose life. I choose to roll. I am free.

“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.”
- Sophocles