The book I am currently reading, Dark Hallow by John Connolly, has a line in it about the past hanging in the air waiting to be illuminated by the sharp rays of memory.
This apartment, the places we went together, what’s left of my life, are all suddenly filled with dust motes of the past. And while shining the sharp ray of memory on some of them brings warm thoughts to my mind, most of the time the motes seem to be just out of my reach, as if to mock me and say, “This is what you had and can never have again. My instincts have been to do things this week that are not part of the routine Michele and I shared. This is helping some, but I am all the time turning my head and seeing in the corners of my life all the things we shared, laughed about, and treasured.
I know that a day of reckoning is coming. While I’ve expressed some grief over Michele’s death, I haven’t really touched the high-voltage core of it yet. In a week or three I’ll have moved through the initial shock of this event, and then I’ll be fully committed to the undertoad. Only my friendships and connections to things outside of my life will sustain me then.