Although we have definitely been tending to lots of living around here, I have not felt drawn to post about it for quite some time. But there is much to tell, and Steve and the love he nurtured is ever present. There are griefs to be described and joys to be narrated. There are questions to live and many, many more words of Steve's to hear in response.
I remember gathering with Frank in our living room for the 'reading of the will.' Among other things, Steve left Margaret most of his journals, and he left his ipod to me. Margaret often holes herself upstairs with computer at hand to transcribe his hand written words onto word documents for us. I can only imagine her summer joy when her Christmas present idea came to her.
Margaret spent some time on Highland Avenue, taking pictures. Really good pictures. She then laid them out among the 'Walks on Highland' essays and had them made into books. One Advent day I came home and Marge seemed particularly 'smug.' Smug and satisfied with that sense that she had most likely nailed the 'most meaningful gift for all of us for Christmas this year' contest....if there was such a contest. Her Christmas delivery had arrived and Mary, Margaret and I sat on my bed for the unveiling.
Although I was familiar with most of the essays, the last entry was one that had never made it from the journal to Steve's computer collections. Fresh words. New tears. Words written years ago and saved for this particular year's Advent waiting. Old words to be read along with recent images of our beloved Highland.
There is no comfort like his words. I do not think we are idealizing Steve or making him a saint or anything. He was pretty frank about his foibles. And we had at least a few days of 'normal married life.' But he is alive in all of those sermon notes, journal entries and unexpected underlines in loved books. He is alive in notes he wrote in the frontpiece of books he gave to us. His poetry is especially living, we can hear as much in the words he did not say as the ones he did. He is present in the authors he read and returned to. And he is present in the songs he sang and listened to.
So, I am returning to this blog. I like the idea of writing and posting each Sabbath. Many parts of our grief are sequestered and particular. But there is a communal and corporate side, a common side of our grief. And this blog is the reflection of that sad but hopeful space that the absence of his body has made in our days.
I find it fascinating that Steve harbored his inner landscape for most of his years. He rarely inserted himself and was reticent to tell his secrets. It was his exile and then sickness that propelled him to a more expansive, vulnerable openness. Wanting to 'blog' and tell people about what was going on was a new reality for him. He relished in his ability at the end to tell us what he was feeling, sometimes accompanied by an onslaught of tears or a giddy happiness.
I, on the other hand, have had little trouble living 'inside out'.... hanging my inner world out to see like daily laundry. I am finding that his death and my grief may just do the work of turning me back inside inside and outside out. So, if the blog entries become fewer and farther between, you will know that it is not because I am forgetting, but because the things i am remembering seem to flower best with an audience of One.