Two Days Afterwards

Two days after the first anniversary of your death, I sit drinking a glass of wine on the balcony reading a book called "Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos."  It is raining.  The sound of the cars going fast on the wet pavement is a comfort.

"Dip colored chalk into water and draw...find a puddle of water in the sidewalk and scribble in it.  When chalk is wet, it has a different texture and makes thicker and softer looking lines."  


I feel like wet chalk on pavement.  Two days after, I am trying to get my bearings.  To gather myself up and understand what happens next.

I wish "I am drowning" wasn't the first metaphor to always pop into my mind when I think about how I feel.  Maybe that's why I try so hard to come up with new ones, better ones,
more appropriate ones.

Today Audrey made up a new game called "cemetery," where she sprinkled things on the floor reminiscent of how she sprinkled rose petals on your grave with me Wednesday.  She told me her cemetery is a really happy one, but still, I told her "Let's not play that game."

Later while she played in her "kitchen," she brought me a piece of small paper, which turned out to be a post-it, saying, "Look, a wow wa!" (translation: flower).  And it was, a small green post it with a flower drawn on it in black marker.  Dan had put little drawings and phrases on folded up paper in her plastic Easter eggs for her to find two Easters ago.  I swear we've looked through all the eggs by now- but she found it in one of the plastic eggs in an empty egg carton in her "store."  I turn away from the boiling raviolis and cry.  You are still sending me flowers, huh.  OK.

Your bus, #158, goes by, but doesn't stop.  I wish I was in a desert or a forest so I could scream loudly, but instead, I say quietly, "Come home...you can come home now."  I want to go inside now, but I'm immobilized.  The world is dark and made darker by the wet rain.