Every so often it hurts again. Like it did in the beginning. The beginning back when the doctors first told me he was going to die. The beginning when I had to put him in daycare while I worked. The beginning when I had to put him in a nursing home. The beginning when he couldn’t walk anymore or see or follow even the simplest conversation. The day I came to visit and they had moved him to the dining area where the other people who couldn’t feed themselves sat. The day I couldn’t understand what he was saying anymore even though I knew what he was saying because it was the same thing he’d been saying over and over. “When can I come home?”

There were never any endings because it didn’t end, it just morphed into something worse. Something that stirred up the pain all over again. And death, you would think, stops that. Because it’s over, finally. There can be no more beginnings.

But that isn’t true either. I graduated and got my masters. Our daughter turned four. A seventh wedding anniversary came and went very quietly because no one remembered it but me. School started. The Steelers won their season opener. And then it’s Halloween. His birthday. Thanksgiving. My birthday. Christmas. Another New Year’s Eve without a kiss. The first anniversary of his death.

It’s not over and even beyond that I wonder if it will ever be over because every new experience or date that gains significance will be reason to remember that he isn’t here. In such a short time he came to fill nearly every corner of my life, knew me so intimately that by reason I should have been frightened, and loved me more than I deserved. And the worst part at nearly eight months out is that I know no one I can share this pain with.

Life and people have moved on and have dragged some of me with it and them but there is a part of me that hasn’t cried enough, that longs for a shoulder to soak and arms to be enfolded in. People I counted on to be there for me, haven’t been and people I have relied on thus far are signaling that my time is up and I must “get over it” now.

I read endlessly about the grieving process. C.S. Lewis, Kubler-Ross, Kate Boydell. Looking for some sign that I am doing this right and more importantly that I can start my life over soon. I am nearly desperate for some small measure of the joy I once had. Some bright spot removed from motherhood and work which has begun to mimic a hamster wheel more and more. Some place where I can just be me for a moment again. Not mom. Not teacher. Not colleague or employee. Not daughter or sister or aunt. Not widow.

Am I mourning him or me? I wonder sometimes. He at least is free to go on to whatever or wherever is next but I am still trapped in this life that I created to sustain him while he died. I don’t know who to reach out to for help and I do need help. Something stops me from opening up and confiding in the people around me. Maybe because it is too soon?

Someone told me recently that I need to sit still for a while and let the answers come to me. Stillness invites grief in. There are tears left, incredibly enough, but I am so tired of crying that though my lungs ache and I can’t muster up the strength to do more than just sit and let the tears well up and blind me and snuffle. The back of my throat hurts. My sinuses throb. My cheekbones feel bruised by stress. I can barely eat. Not because I am not hungry but because nearly everything makes my stomach hurt. I wonder, not overly concerned mind you just wondering, how long a person can live off wheat crackers and pop tarts and the occasional bowl of Cream of Wheat.

Tomorrow there is an assembly for the kids about Rachal’s Challenge. She was killed at Columbine. An hour of grief for edification purposes. My co-workers assure me that it “won’t be that bad”, but I will stay home and let someone else do my job for a day. I don’t need a lesson in empathy. I am raw with it. And I need to sit still. And maybe cry a little more.