Grieving

Just about exactly one year ago, I sold what I thought was almost everything we had in a garage sale, and packed the rest into a moving truck, which turned out to be quite a bit, after all. I left Seattle, which had been our family's home for 8 years, pretty much without a backward glance. I mean, occasionally I'll miss the really great BLT you can get at the sandwich shop by our very first apartment, but mostly I've jumped wholeheartedly and joyfully into the deep end of the pool of our new life.

I'm kind of a weeper, but I really dont think I've shed a single tear over our old life.

There is so much good about our life in Portland, we are only 4 hours a way by car (so we've been able to visit Seattle a couple of times), we've been so taken up with things here (new jobs! new school!), and perhaps most importantly our really good friends moved here too soon after we arrived, so that we dont feel lonely.

This morning, though, I woke up from a dream in which I was dancing in a glade of woods with some other people.
We sang beautiful, melancholy songs and danced in a circle, with candles carefully balanced on our heads.
Garrison Keillor was there (In my waking life, dont get me STARTED on THAT guy - as R says "Such a good storyteller, such a toxic human being..."). Anyway, he was there and offering therapy to people -- but in 2 chairs facing away from each other and I thought how typical that was of him, to try to connect but in such a limited and false way.
And then I saw that CC, a dear friend and certainly E's best and most beloved caregiver, was leaving the woods and I began to cry like my heart would break.
"Tell me you wont go!" I cried.
"Honey, I have to go," she said so gently and firmly, just like she would in real life.
And then she turned and kept walking.

And then I woke up with tears in my throat, really aware now that one year has passed, of all the threads of connection and community that are broken now, that even email and phone calls and Facebook and a few visits a year cannot keep woven together.

And for the first time, 363 days later, I am crying.