Spicy Dragons & Dinosaurs

I am feeling an incredible gentleness of being today.

Part of that is because of the re-newed experience of disciplined reading, part due to a lunch date with two friends, part due to the weather which is just warm enough to sit outside in shirt sleeves, part to the double espresso that finished off lunch, part to knowing that after therapy Julia and I have the evening alone. Julia will be getting off the bus soon, then I take her to clinic where her therapy involves playing with other kids.

There was a sort of anniversary yesterday -- last night really for me. It was the evening of the first PTO meeting last year, which I presided over as president for the first time and thus, had so much to tell David about, that he told me that his doctor recommended it was time for a heart transplant. He had found out earlier that day, and keeping the prognosis to himself for the rest of the day was not easy. He let me have the meeting free of that worry, and waited for me to gush on about it, before we talked about the transplant.

I remember the metaphoric punch in the stomach. Metaphors can hurt sometimes. The disbelief. It was just three years since he started medication, and check ups seemed to be going well. Yes, medications had been changed, some balances were hard to get right, and David was beginning to be tired all the time. Still, a transplant. It was the extreme remedy that might happen years and years from then. Even from now. But then, the remedy was all the hope that we had between living and dying. We talked a long time, cried, and talked again. We were going to push through and make it. We were going to survive this challenge. We were strong.

And we were. We did. We tried very hard.

It was a year ago.

That is hard to believe.

So short a time. So very long ago. Minutes. Centuries.

I can tell you just where he sat on the couch, where his arms were, where his hands were.

I can be back there. I can be here.

I wrap my arms around the whole year. I hold us for the moment. I am full. So very sad. So proud that we could do what we did and love each other every day of it.

And I am sad today in a new way. It is not the extreme grief of weeks ago, it is not shock. It is a gentle holding of a moment. It is an ache for the loss, for the love, for the beauty of that time. Like dough, soft and yeasty, before it is left to rise.