One thing I miss about grief is the clarity. The focus it puts on your emotions. The way it illuminates the muddiness of the day to day, lengthening the time it takes for the sun to cross the sky, and perversely, achingly, stretching the night into an endless quiet space (those frozen hours when the rest of the world is asleep and so who are you going to call?) At any moment, if asked how you're feeling, you have the answer. And though you are grappling with everything, (compounded by bullshit like the electric bill and the goddamn subway,) grasping at complicated feelings like you'd pick a Bingo number, what pervades the entire experience is something simple, strangely comforting.
The one-year anniversary of Meg's death was back in September. So now everything I do, if I mark the time, a year ago, well, she was already dead.
Kip never met her. He was the first seriously important person in my life that didn't know me in the context of her. For a time I didn't know who I was. I guess this happens after long marriage that ends in divorce, when your parents die, or your child is lost to history, the ocean, a careening drunk driver, whatever. You aren't sure who you are. You aren't sure if you know how to go it alone. We so often bounce ourselves off another.
I miss her still, every day. But the sadness has lifted. And, mostly, only the charming, laughing love for her remains.
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You leave such a clear impression of who Meg was, as a person, as a friend. You know, Calvin and I will open up your book every now and then to a random page and read to each other. There too I find such a vivid picture of her - very lifelike. I can see why you and she were such close friends.
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