Turning a corner...

 I got brave and checked out a new beach on Sunday.  It had been recommended to me last Autumn, but it seems that every Sunday (my regular beach walk day) it was either too windy or wet, and I didn't know the area well, so I didn't know what I was getting into.  There is smart and stupid and I prefer to err on the side of safe when walking alone.  Sunday was sunny and really pretty. 
Adventure Ho!

 After all the plodding, pondering, planning, and praying I've been in a pretty good place.  Who I am is who I am, and I've been working on letting me like me where I am right now.  I think I'm in a pretty good place with that.  I am combing through all the things I have to see what I can let go of again. When I moved here I packed anything that felt important and now nearly a year later, it's time to let go of things I don't really need anymore - I'm sure I'll have a few more rounds of that as I go.

 I feel like I am starting to crest a ridge of this grief.  I remember going through this when my dad passed.  That certain things would fill my eyes with salted water unbidden, for him it was Panera, Lunds Grocery, driving past HCMC, or seeing something that I wanted to tell him about, like a movie he'd have enjoyed, a book, or something that would have piqued his interest. I'm starting that again.

 On Wednesday, it will be 11 months.  I notice the tears are like Summer rain showers, the ones that come from the tiniest cloud, pour rain for a moment and then are gone before you can even take cover.  Little things, like commenting that a child carries the same expression he did, squeeze my heart, crumple my face, and start me leaking.  I miss him in the ways of the every day familiar.  Yet, I'm making food he didn't like and enjoying it because I can, I don't have to hide the milk when I need some for a recipe because he'll drink it all, I never have to check on how much XYZ is left, because I am the only one who uses things here and my memory is pretty good.

 Sometimes this is really hard, because I spent 15+ years learning his stuff, and now I have to unlearn.  Yet, the mark of my person lingers.  Not a bad thing, just what it is.  I know you've gone though loss - divorce, loss of a friend, lover, parent, grandparent, spouse, child... the possibilities are endless, it's the thing of life that we all end in death.  Yet there is beauty here.

 Not in me alone, but D is remembered and lives on.  Your person lives on in you.  Part of loving is missing the beautiful, elegant, difficult and frustrating things about them.  Those things that no one in the world knows about that person because of your unique interface and time together.  Those things that are, in all practicality lost because those are unique to you two.  Those things float up from the depths of ourselves and remind us of our love, remind us of our loss, just remind us.

So, I am here.  It's a good place.  I am healthy and safe enough to remember, to miss, to cry, to go on.  I am strong, resilient, I am mostly happy and sometimes in pain.  I might not know who I will be tomorrow, but I know who I am today, and I like me, I like that a lot. 

I really am in a pretty good place.