July 22, 2015

July 22, 2015, 6:09 a.m.  
Wowza.
These were the last moments of George's life, exactly one year ago.  In less than 3 hours, he would collapse on 8th Street and never get back up.  His heart decided that day that it had given and opened and loved as much as it could in this lifetime, and it was time to move on.  But George continues to love, even if his heart is not beating.  His energetic heart is stronger and more present than ever, in his spirit and in the thoughts and actions of everyone who loved him.  

George had a lot of fans.  Everyone loved George.  There is a lot of love left in his legacy.

I have been fearing this day for a long time.  I have been pondering what to do, how to spend these "last moments", who to spend them with, where to go.  I am sitting at my kitchen table, our kitchen table; I am in my pajamas.  I am taking it minute by minute, as these things have gone since the moment I learned of his death.  There is no place to be.  There is nothing to do.  There is only me, and my thoughts, and my heart.  And my love for George.  I have everything I need wherever I am, whatever I do.  None of that decoration matters.

George died this day last year.  
​Around this time, he was sleeping.  Soon he would awaken and shower and put on his jeans, then his blue button down shirt, and look so handsome standing at the side of the bed.  Then he would tell me I was sexy as I stretched and perched on all fours to relieve the baby pressure on my back.  Then he would kiss me goodbye and say, "I love you so much."  As he always did.  Then he would kiss my belly goodbye.  Then he would leave through the garage, and I would never see him again.

Oh, I wish I could hear the garage door open and know that it was George coming or going.
Oh, I wish I could believe he was still alive.  
But then again, I don't.  

It's too hard to have glimpses in my mind of -- "Oh, George is still here, right?  Because he is so near to me in my mind and heart!"  -- only to realize a second later that no, of course, George is still dead.  My heart breaks a little more all over again.  So I don't wish to believe he is alive.  I wish to know he is dead.  I wish to accept this and be thankful for all the reasons I miss him.  I miss him because I love him so dearly.  I would not trade this love for the world.

I wonder why the 1-year mark is so significant, why we spend weeks and months anxiously anticipating the day.  It's just a day like any other day that George is not here.  It doesn't hurt any more or any less.  It is a new day.  It is a different day.  It did not rain last night.  It is not Groundhog Day.  George is not going to die again today.  George died once, and he never has to do it again.  And I don't have to keep my mind hostage thinking about it like there is something I can do at 9:03 a.m. today that is going to change anything to bring him back.  It is a different time altogether.  Nothing in the world is quite the same as it was one year ago.  

We put all of this emphasis on these anniversaries, but we are only imprisoning ourselves with the idea of time, and that it means more than another step into the future.  It is just a way of guiding us forward, moving us constantly and steadily into the next phase of our life, the next adventure, the next opportunity, the next glimmer of hope.  We try to look back when we have lost things we didn't want to lose.  We grasp at them, grasp at the memories, our own distorted realities of what we imagine happened in a previous life.  We mourn them and we torture ourselves with longing, and we think somehow this makes our grief more meaningful.  It does not.

My grief is no more today than yesterday, last week, last month.  No more today than tomorrow.  In fact, my grief is more polished today than ever before, distilled down to its essence, broken into its components and understood for all of its qualities.  Six months ago, I knew there was grief, but I could not sit quietly with it, I could not tell you how it made me feel.  My work over the past 3 months has been rewarded with a new relationship, that of me to myself, to my pain and grief, to the parts of me that I didn't want to uncover or accept.  It is this new relationship that will power me forward into my new life.

And, I am... almost... ready.  

There was a life I wanted with George.  There was a life that I thought belonged to me.  One year ago, that dream dissolved.  My expectation of it did not.  I have been holding onto the dream of the dream, the desire for something that will never be mine.  The desire for something that was never mine to begin with.  And, as comforting as it is to hold onto the things we love and attach to and identify ourselves with, there is a time to Let Go.  To continue to perpetuate this attachment is to deny myself the gift of living fully.  It is to keep my being in the past, to keep George in the past, and to keep a distance from everyone around me who is here to share in the gifts of a new world.  Choosing to let go is not to say I let go of George, but I let go of the life we hoped to have together, the presence of his body, and our relationship as I knew it.  We have a new relationship now.

And choosing to let go does not mean that I do not grieve.  I can continue to grieve through while exploring this new landscape of living life without George.  "Living" being the key word, which is very different from "Surviving".

I survive by breathing.
I live by leading.
I am a different person than I was one year ago.  I am in many ways a more complete and more wholly formed human.  I have a space in my heart where human George lived.  That space is now free to dream and explore and embark on new adventures.  This is the magic and the power of the human experience and our inherent strength and resilience.  We have the choice -- we always have the choice -- to charge into the future, choose the unknown, embrace the delicacy of life, and be Free.  
​<3