19th

July 31, 2024

Today would have been (I wonder if in some metaphysical way it still is), our 19th wedding anniversary. From my memories, our honeymoon in Italy, we're in the hills of Italy at an ancient winery. Still really getting to know each other and how to be a couple. We are totally enamored with our love and sitting under a fig tree which literally the figs were so ripe they were dropping all around us. Love rich, fertile, and luscious.

Our honeymoon with figs dropping from the trees.

Another image plays in my head: a modern theory on grief, the Tonkin's model. It is often animated so beautifully with layers of colors building around a large dark hole. I know that hole. I physically feel it in my heart. In this model grief doesn’t grow smaller, instead our life experiences grow around it. I can say that’s true and that grief, love changes with time. In some ways I love and miss Jim more now as I live a life without his day to day magic. Love as grief, as eternal.

Time doesn't heal. Life grows around our grief.

Three years ago today, we held the bike ride memorial in the islands, four years ago we held his burial and interned him in the cemetery that holds our parents. Returning to our graves brings tears but also peace.

Jim's memorial in South Hero.

Last night I had dreams of bicycles and our wedding and our families. The night before I dreamt of driving the little red Honda and meeting a stranger.

Newly married in the Honda.

Today, I sent off Jim’s collection of player piano rolls. They are in the collection of a man who reminds me of Jim's endless curiosity and love of music and contraptions. Beautifully he gifted in Jim's name to Vermont Adaptive. Gifting Jim's collections is how I am trying to continue our love and spread his story across the universe.

Jim's rolls. You Made Me Love You.

Life grows around my loss. Time makes reality slip away and it seems that I was once a different person with a very different life. Today is a day filled with missing Jim, my identity as a wife, and our enchanted life. I’m learning to carry that.