This year, this year that is gone

This year that I lost my father.
This year that I had a new great-nephew come
into this world. This year that my brother
had his first child, my newest niece.
This year that my son told me I was going
to be a grandmother.
This year that my daughter
completed one year of her master's.
This year that my youngest started driving.
This year that has passed now since my father

died.

Yes, he died. He is dead. He is no longer
at his house or driving his car to the store
or working in his garden. He is dead
now, a year.

So many good things have happened since his
passing. So many holidays and birthdays. So many
tears and so many things to laugh about. So many events
he would have enjoyed. So many times he would have
worried.

Yet, there is now this sense of loss that I can't explain.

*

I had a dream on the 21st, the day after
the year anniversary of Dad's death. I cut my foot.
On a broken ball jar. I don't remember it hurting
or seeming so bad, but then my friend P came and doctored
my foot. Later, my friend S came and doctored some more.
Both agreed I was going to be fine though the cut went
through tissue and tendon and fat and nearly bone.

*

In this year that has passed, I have thought about
my friends--old and new--and wondered where they
were in those long, lonely hours. I realize they can't
know the particular hour or minute that the worst
of the hurting happens. Even knowing that, I have
been angry or frustrated or disappointed thinking
anyone who loves me very much must certainly know
the level of despair.

*

I sat today, for a long time, on my porch. I watched
the traffic go by. I listened to the birds singing. I looked
out at one of my neglected flower beds. I looked at the grass
that will outlive me. I watched the girl across
the street, in her itsy-bitsy bikini, make a place
to lie out in the sun. I heard voices from the rooftops.
I saw boys and girls, men and women, pass by on the sidewalk
out front.

I tried to start reading Joan Didion's The Year Of Magical Thinking.
I skimmed through Rachael Ray's 30 minute meals. I read the preface
to Running With Scissors. I read a few poem from The Trouble
with Poetry (Collins). I looked at the cushion on the porch
swing and took note of its occupants: me, Joan Didion's book, a lighter,
a pack of cigarettes, a paper towel, the landline phone, and the cell
phone. And I waited and waited and waited for something to happen.


When all the while, something was happening. Life was happening.
Everywhere all around me and inside of me.