memories

We made a trip to Andy's parent's place this weekend.  They have a lovely yard (and pool!) where we pitched a tent and visited with everyone outside.  Time with grandparents and aunt and uncle and cousins was so needed, by everyone.  I watched almost as though from the outside.  My place in this home, with this family, is different now.  Not because they make it so, they welcome us with fullness and love as always, but because I am so aware of Andy's missing. For almost 20 years I knew this home, this family through the lens of Andy.  This was his childhood home, his neighborhood, his brothers, his aunts and uncles and parents and cousins.  I was always enfolded in their love, but he was the guide, he was the glue, he was the connection.  For years and years we celebrated seasons and occasions in this home.  Christmas, Thanksgiving, Summer Cousin's Party, birthday's and my own baby shower and post wedding celebration.  And now when I am there without him, those memories come rushing back.  I can see him on the edge of the pool encouraging our children to dive a little deeper, I can see him walking around the yard with his dad giving advice on the apple trees and raspberries.  I can see him parked with his brothers and some beers under the shade umbrella, laughing and laughing and laughing.

It's painful and it's beautiful.  These children of his now dive deep on their own, they laugh with their cousins like he did with his brothers.  They love, love, love their grandparents.  They want nothing more than to continue making these memories.  And so we do.

photo by Carin Leonard Gorrill

Like usual I straped on my shoes went running a couple of times while we were there. To clear my mind or find my center or to gather my courage.   My feet carried me always to the old cemetary down the road.  Andy and I had explored this place so many times.  It is fascinating.  The gravestones range from the late 1800's to a freshly dug site yet to receive its stone.  I remember walking here with Andy as we read stone after stone of lost family member.  Children and young husbands and wives lost in the 1918 flu pandemic.  Family names that go back 100 years or more.  Recent stones that are still carefully tended with flowers.  I remember feeling like I didn't want to think too much about all the suffering recorded here on this hill.  I was terrified of that black hole of grief that comes with that kind of loss, I knew that I wouldn't be able to weather suffering like that, were it to happen to me.

So this weekend as I wandered the cemetary alone I remembered that feeling of fear and I reflected on how unpredictable life is and I saw how our loss is so blended in this place with the loss of others.  Here a gravestone of a young person leaving too soon whose parents and family must still be out there greiving that loss.  Here a record of parents buried long after their children.  Here the name of the husband (birth and death dates) incribed next to the name of the wife (birth date only).  I felt the company of so many whose great suffering echos through the world.  I felt the burden of moving forward without him.  I felt the strength of knowing loss and surviving it a little each day.  

My feet carried me back to this family.  These people who loved Andy from the minute he took his first breath to the exhale of his last... and on. These people who love me and his children because we are him.  These people who can still find meaning and joy in life.  These people who raised the man that loved us most.

My feet carried me back and there was Poppy "flushing Elsa down the toilet".  I knew that in this moment things were good.