Just When I Thought I Had Nothing More to Say about Loss and All That Grief …

I am … every day …becoming the woman who is learning to love him … without him.

This is an unnerving place to land. Does it mean I am caring less? Loving less? Or does grief shift, morph, grow into something else? Of course, it does. And yet … What has become of that other crazy woman who spent years imagining the sound of a key in the lock, the hum of a tune, and his footstep returning from that long, unannounced journey he took without my permission. He’d gone off yet again in search of that infamous, long-sought-after place on the planet. Unlike every other journey, however, this time, and much to my chagrin, he left me behind. But now, or any minute now, he’d be back. He’d have found a place on the circle he’d drawn following the equator on the globe in my office. Looking for a temperate climate where fruit and flowers grow year-round.

I stop. Pause. Listen. But no, he is not returning. Not in his body.

So, I have become the woman who loves him … without his being here.

This is a challenge for an agnostic with little faith in spirits and better places. And yet, a different kind of faith grows in part thanks to neuroscience. Science says my brain is building (at this late age of 72) new rooms in its house. Synapses and neurons are reconnecting to form new pathways. I am no longer (except in dreams, which is an interesting topic I hope the scientists will get to soon) chasing him down familiar pathways only to find spaces of absence. Instead, I am remapping inner terrain. Learning … I might even venture to say … have learned that he exists in a newly encoded place in my inner landscape. Cognitive science has explained this, but it is my heart that has found spaciousness and a wonderous felt sense of connection. “… love makes the space inside me even more vast, even more beautiful.” ^* He lives in my forever. And much to my amazement, I am the woman who has (almost) become okay with this.

You would have been 77 this year. So, Happy Birthday, my honey. Happy Forever.

*Rosemary Wahtola Trommer