It’s a rainy morning on our coast. The clouds are hanging low over the mountains, the bay is still and grey and the whole huge park is soaking up the rain. E and I spent the morning snuggled on her bed reading books and now she has gone off with my aunt to visit the library and have adventures among the puddles.
I have a pot of tea brewing. The apartment is clean and quiet, peaceful and light with its views of the ocean, park and mountains. I will spend the afternoon writing and then make soup and grilled cheese for the adventurers come back for supper.
I think: I should be happy. I am so lucky. And I am. And I am not.
I miss her. That is all: I just miss her. And so the peacefulness is not quite as peaceful and in the grey of the bay I feel a new emptiness, and though I look for her in the mists that slip down the mountains and sneak through the treetops, I know she is not there.
Gone, gone, gone. Repeat refrain. Gone, gone, gone. Repeat refrain.
I sip my tea, and get back to work, and she is gone, but her absence sits with me, an emptiness that aches, a palpable void, and all I can do, I think, is to learn to sit with it, too. So we sit together, she and I, two ghosts on a grey day in a quiet apartment; we sit together.
March is for daffodils... 
Oh, just beautiful. Horribly true. Heartbreakingly accurate.
It is sunny here. Far far east from you. Sunny and breezy.
The summer is making one last hooray as it winds down.
Where are our children? I have to stop myself from checking under rocks and stones, as if they’re some how hidden like a key.
Love to you on your gloomy day. Perfectly incomplete.
Checking under rocks. Yes. There is a piece of wood in a garden near by that E always turns over, checking for bugs, and once I caught myself thinking that maybe one day she’d turn it over and there would be her Baby Sister, waiting to be found. There is another garden down the street that is just incredibly beautiful and sometimes I try to convince myself that I feel A there, hiding amongst the marigolds, roses, snapdragons and hollyhocks, or flitting between the sweet peas, one of the many pale yellow butterflies that we always see there. But, for someone who engaged in great deal of magical thinking at a younger age, I just can’t seem to manage it, these days. Love to you too…I hope your day went easy on you.
Gone, gone, gone. Yes. They are. For good and forever and never to return. It aches, doesn’t it? All the time the ache is there, the longing, the wishing. Love to you, friend. Wishing your apartment was instead filled with cooing and crying and snuggling and nursing.
I find a clean house or clean apartment difficult when there should be diapers and various baby stuff laying around. I still have all of Nathaniel’s stuff in my basement, but not neatly. I basically tossed everything in a corner and threw baby blankets to cover it all. And his stuff still sits, ghostly.
Your apartment sounds beautiful, though. Your city is one of my favorites in this entire world, for the bay, for the mountain, for the scenery. So much to show E. Too much to miss showing A.
I hope your afternoon writing was productive and satisfying. My morning with my paints went better than I expected.
I hope you have a good weekend ahead ❤
I sip my tea, and get back to work, and she is gone, but her absence sits with me, an emptiness that aches, a palpable void, and all I can do, I think, is to learn to sit with it, too. So we sit together, she and I, two ghosts on a grey day in a quiet apartment; we sit together.
*****
Stunning, evocative – and heartbreaking.
Palpable, yes,
Cathy in Missouri
J, that was beautiful. Heartbreakingly beautiful.
“I miss her. That is all: I just miss her.” I just miss him too.
Missing your sweet Anja with you my friend. xx
Sitting with it – the absence, the sorrow, the reality – is easier said than done. But you are doing it. You are learning and integrating and surviving.
Missing Anja and her inquisitive 7 1/2-month old self.
I love that final line – two ghosts sitting together. I often feel like that, a ghost accompanied by another ghost. And I’m never too sure if I’m trying to wish her back to his life or wish myself on to the next. Sigh.
For another one who is lucky and should be happy. And who is. And who isn’t.
Missing my own gone baby girl right alongside you, missing yours.
And reassuring to know that I am not the only one with a compulsion to look under rocks. In the early days, when I heard small animals rustling in the bushes, I used to catch my breath. As some insane part of my brain thought it might be her. Oh my, perhaps I’m just utterly bat shit crazy. I just don’t know anymore.
“I am so lucky. And I am. And I am not.”
I feel like this summarizes our life right now.
We sometimes call it happy with an asterisk.