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Every person is different so I write this solely from my perspective. I absolutely love it when people share stories, photos, videos, mementos of Bryan, my big brother Todd, my parents, of people who I have loved and lost. This keeps their memory alive to me and shows me that love endures. If you’re wondering if it’s okay to bring them up or if telling a story might hurt me or offend me, please know that rather than retreating from it, I love and embrace it. I got reminded of this over the past few days.

Saturday evening I went to my friends’, Horte and Max, to enjoy visiting, grilled hamburgers, and tasty beverages. While there a few people described their positive experiences and good memories of Bryan with me. My heart was really full. Yes, he was kind and could approach bullies with calm logic and even-tempered questions in defense of others. Oh my heart. Yes. You knew him too, eh? I love it so much.

Yesterday, our good friend Walter sent some photos of Bryan and me from a long time ago, ones I hadn’t seen in ages. There we were at the beginning of our relationship and the love and joy that marked all of our time together are right there, palpable. Oh how wonderful to revisit all of that.

Finally, this morning, I opened a video from my sister. In it my big brother, Todd, is reading a poem he had written. He touches on loss, love, forgiveness, and art and I am filled with awe that I get his words and voice and sage counsel even now.

I appreciate so much the folks who share these things. While I may cry or have my heart lurch with longing and sorrow, it is washed with giant waves of love and gratitude that drown out everything else. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I’m having a really good day. Exceptionally good. I haven’t felt like this in a long time kind of good. You know the expression “the straw that broke the camel’s back”? What is the inverse of that? When a ton of things combine together to make a giant bundle of wonderful, what do we call that? Sundae with the cherry on top? The big rock candy mountain? I don’t know. But so much of the last several days have been filled with good people and good things.

When Bryan was sick, my dear friend, A’ala, a former co-worker at Whitman, an artist, a mother, a weirdo, a spiritual guide, and a guru commissioned a piece of art–a big piece of art, the biggest painting I have done to date. She paid for the art supplies and gave me directions of color and elements that she’d really like but with a lot of latitude to intrepret as I might. She saw the pain in my eyes and my heart and knew I would need something beautiful and joyful to pour myself into. In the early days after Bryan passed, I put the canvas up and got started right away. Then his service, trips, tasks, gardening kind of got in the way of finishing. This past week I put the final touches on this painting. I understand the idea of a starving artist and it’s not because of not selling them, it’s forgetting to eat when in flow. Thank heavens for peanut butter, the wonder paste in emergencies.

I sent A’ala some photos and a video and she paid me the highest compliment I’ve ever received about my art: “I don’t know how you did this but you have captured my ideal soul and my dreams and everything I love and nature and abundance and all that is bright and good and thriving.” How do you breathe after words like that? *whoosh* Wow.

I enjoyed a special breakfast at Bacon&Eggs, got to see my favorite ginger, saw Mary’s mom out at her shop to navigate fabric swatches, and visited my favorite art gallery in town to hug and visit a friend. This evening, my favorite pizza-maker and his wife have invited me for dinner. It’s a good day. It’s possible to be on the wings of joy and sad and longing at the same time. It would be so much easier if we could pick an emotion like a crayon and just use that one until we’re done. But no, emotions and thoughts and memories combine like a symphony or stew–you’re welcome to choose your own metaphor.

I want so much to share all of these things with Bryan. He was enthusiastically supportive of me and always on my team. Here I am with this weird mix of wanting to dance and sing the blues, but instead, I’ll go water my flowers and smile at the bees.

When Bryan and I first started dating, he told me I reminded him of Robert Heinlein’s heroines. I hadn’t read any of those sci-fi novels at the time, but I remember mentioning as much to my dad in those early days. He gave me a deadpan look and then cursed. He had read those books and knew exactly what Bryan meant. It wasn’t until a few years later that I understood having finally read Stranger in a Strange Land and Friday.

Passionate, confident, attractive, smart, loving, comfortable with sex and words and being–these are the hallmarks of a Heinlein heroine. Do I mind the comparison? Nope. Not one bit. Do I suffer from imposter syndrome like everybody? Eeyup. I’m also scared, insecure, occasionally anxious, approval-seeking, people-pleasing, and, to my mother’s never-ending chagrin, I have been known to curse-like-a-sailor-on-a-blue-streak. 😛 It is possible to hold many worlds inside of ourselves at once.

As I’ve been writing this blog for the past six months, I’ve been thinking about writing fiction. I want to build a world with rich characters that generate sympathy and antipathy from the reader. Chatting with friends recently over dinner, I remarked how the most interesting characters in literature are complex (like most things in life, eh?) No on-off switch, no good-bad paradigm, but possessing ambiguities and a multitude of characteristics, shades of gray (not that kind of shades of gray–I don’t want to write that sort of story…yet.)

What is consistent in literature and life is that we feel like the main characters of our own stories. We should. This gives us tremendous potential and considerable responsibility.

Love is a choice. Sure there are emotions and tingly good feelings some of the time. But every word spoken, every interaction, every deed are choices. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13, goes to some length in describing the selflessness and lack of ego in love. The Greeks, ever-enamored with categorizing, have different words for different kinds–agape, eros, philia. Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Music describes love as everything from longing to sex to romantic relationships to friendship. Humans are at their best when motivated by love unpolluted by revenge or ego. And some people are REALLY DIFFICULT to love and we’re supposed to love them too. And some people are really easy to love.

When Bryan and I first started chatting, I discovered he was a little older than I originally thought. He was athletic and youthful so I thought maybe late 30s. Nope. Mid-40s. I remember saying to myself, “Is this a red flag?” And then deciding it wasn’t. Then I found out he had a daughter, a teenage daughter. “Red flag?” Once I met her, it was clear that it wasn’t either. We had a lot of fun the three of us, planting flowers, carving pumpkins, going on trips, cooking, talking/debating, listening to music, playing games.

Over the past few days, Mary’s mom, step-dad, godparents, extended family, family of choice, and friends got to share in celebrating her 30th birthday. The details are hers to share if and when she wants to. What I know of a certainty is that I’m lucky beyond measure to get to be her step-mom. Loving her is an easy choice–one of the easiest I know.

Yesterday was a hard day. Some are just like that. I missed my person on a bone-aching level. I want to be sure that I describe lonesome with appropriate nuance. I have friends. I have family. I have folks who check in and who love me. I don’t feel disconnected to the wider world in any major existential sense. I am really quite lucky and grateful for the people in my life. Truly.

And yet. When the every-day normal was waking up and sharing breakfast, conversation, laughter. Instant messages and emails throughout the day. And then that feeling of exhilaration when he would pull up in front of the house and walk in to hug me. An hour of decompressing from work, discussing our respective days, hearing him say “you are so restful; I love coming home to you.” Then the kitchen dance of dinner prep, bumping into each other accidentally but mostly on purpose. Evenings spent talking, laughing, dreaming, playing cribbage. Every day. Every dang day. And poof. Gone. All of it.

How do I piece together a normal I don’t want? I want him. And he’s not here. I know I have to, but I hate it. And it hurts so much. So I force myself to do the tasks of every day–cats, garden, house, paperwork–while also striving to both seek and create meaning and beauty. But there are times I want to scream or take a hammer to glass or throw things. Gah! Soul-searing ache…