One year.

Today is the anniversary of my husband's death. It still all seems unreal, and sometimes when I look at the two dates across the difference, it's like a tesseract and I am back at the moment, feeling the same awful feelings. Then other times, that year stretches beyond times, and I find myself looking across a grand canyon of emotions. I look to the past, and everything is a confused mash of love and anger, of devotion and deception, of hope unabashed and pain unimaginable.

Despite all, Richard, I miss you. I feel like Linda Loman who, at the end of Death of a Salesman says she feels as though Willie is "just off on another trip." Before, though far apart geographically, we had the connection of daily phone calls and emails. If only I'd known how truly far the distance was.

Now the emptiness is real as I consider all the future "missing hims" I'll have: He won't see me receive my MFA next month, an accomplishment he had suggested and encouraged. He won't be here to walk with me down the aisle when our younger son marries next year. He won't hold the eventual grandbabies or coach their Little League games. We won't grow old together, as planned.

Plans change, anger abates, and love remains beyond disappointments and lies. Perhaps that was the only thing that was real, afterall--the love.

I hope you are at peace, Rich.