Driving East

I drive slowly away from the shadow of our dream, my love. You are sitting quietly next to me in the passenger seat, your box wrapped tightly in the shirt that you wore when we explored the East Coast for the first time. Flashes of that time cross my mind as I bite my lip and head East. I attempt to hold onto these images instead of the one that is my reality. Instead of your beautiful smile and hand on my knee, I ride with your ashes by my side and your shirt wrapped tightly around the box. 

My body is still, my eyes are straight ahead, and my heart still aches with an ache that most don’t know, as of yet.

My mind is racing from the past to the present and hesitantly towards the future. I am moving away from our Portland home, my love. It’s time. I can feel you so close to me that my heart races with anticipation that perhaps you will appear, ever so close yet just out of reach, but perhaps you will appear this one time if I just hold onto the memories a little longer.

Death is a funny thing, my love. Oh how I long to talk to you about the crazy ups and downs, the way that this world is spinning so fast and out of control while I grasp for the reins to try to slow it down a bit.  I think if you were here we could make sense of it together, talk about the secrets of the world, and then figure out that we really don’t know anything but that it’s ok because we have love. Pure, unmessy, unconditional, time stopping, love. But, I can’t talk to you yet, my love. So I rely on the ten thousand words we shared before you were gone.

So, I drive. I drive quietly with a hope for the road ahead of me. When I met you I dropped everything and followed you. We walked up countless mountains together; always with you in the lead and me smiling as I watched your legs lead me uphill. We talked about these hikes, these tangible examples of how I would follow you anywhere, forever.  Our respect for one another growing every second as we figured out that the only true thing in this world is the love that God gave us to share with the utmost respect. Nothing more.

As the miles pass I think about the love that we shared, this rare kind of love that not everyone is open to having because they are scared of the unknown. As the sun rises and falls with every passing day, I will remember this love. I will hold onto this truth and remind myself that this was not a dream, because, my love, sometimes it feels like a dream.

I reach the Hood River Bridge and I feel like I am home. I feel your strength and I know that you are happy to be back to where it all started for us. I think about that time and I smile. You are here, my love, you will always be here. As I continue my journey back where we started, I will carry you with me, my love, and I will continue what you started. Living life to the fullest and changing the world, ever so slightly, with my eagerness to see it all.

Moving Forward

I feel acutely aware that I am a completely different person than I was before my husband passed away. At times I feel like I can move mountains with my steady faith and powerful voice. Other times I feel as though I am tiny and weak, waiting for someone to tell me what to do next, to help me find my way in a world that, to me, seems bleak and exhausting.

I have found that the secret is living between these two realities, the powerful moments and the weak moments, embracing both feelings for what they are, the same reality in a different form.

I have come to know that my strength is my weakness asleep.

With this journey one aspect that has continuously felt off is the amount of stuff I am surrounded with. As I said, I feel I am acutely aware that I am a completely different person than I was when Curt was here. Now, when I think about life and the things that surround me, I also think about my husband’s body being ashes in a box sitting quietly next to my bed. I think about the fact that it simply doesn’t matter what we have or don’t have in material possessions and has everything to do with what we have or don’t have in our souls. I am acutely aware that I see the world through a different lens.

As I reflect on these truths, I walk around the house that my beautiful husband and I created together with quiet wonder. The sweet memories of laughing and crying, tenderness and strength, overwhelm my senses and make me lose my breath. I can touch the smooth surface of the counters he built with his strong hands and the rough surface of the beautiful chimney that he slowly and painstakingly chipped dry wall off of so we could enjoy the original beauty of our 1903 home. I can see where we slept on the floor the night we got the keys and didn’t want to leave our new dream. The tangible signs of our love are everywhere; this both comforts me and exhausts me.

This week I am beginning to go through it all and consolidate so I can move out of our home. As I begin this step, I feel overwhelmed with the idea that I have to look at a piece of our history and make a decision. How do I begin, and, if I know that this stuff doesn’t really matter, then why am I having such a hard time letting go of it? A close friend said something that has helped me with this, he said… It’s just stuff, stuff isn’t real, but the feelings you feel when you see it, are very real… That was it. I feel so unattached to stuff yet feel desperate when I think of no longer seeing Curt’s shirts or his tools. That is it, the stuff is absolutely not real yet the feelings that I get when I touch them are more real than I can describe in my earthly terms.

As I touch this stuff that surrounds me for perhaps the last time, my weakness surrounds me and I grasp for its opposite as I begin the journey onward.

Over a year ago I lost my whole world on the river. My home, my lover, my best friend, my everything. Through this loss, through this journey of anguish, I have also found something beautiful. I have found a woman that can do anything because the one thing she didn’t think she could do, she has already done. A woman who now understands more than she ever could have imagined she could, or ever would, know. I have found truth in a world that is spinning out of control. As I walk into this next chapter, I do so with beautiful memories etched deep into my heart. I walk forward with my husbands heart in my own and will slowly let go of the rest.