It’s hard to fathom that Ted has been gone for a year already. I have one of my favorite pictures of him and I together in Yellowstone on the refrigerator and I still find myself saying “dammit Ted” to him in my head every time I open the door.

I’ve gotten into my own routine. I’m still dealing with bills, but they are fewer and fewer and if I read the terms correctly, per Colorado law, all bills must be submitted within a year of medical services rendered. So, barring slow mail, I should be at the tail end of those. I still have accounts I need transferred into my name and struggle to get the paperwork on a few, but that too is tapering off.

I’m still not working and honestly am busy with so many other things, I’m not sure if or when I will return. It is way easier to be open, curious, and observant of what life has in store for you when not working constantly, so if I can keep life rolling without work right now, I will.

I was speaking with a friend this week and when asked how I was feeling lately, the image of a freshwater spring popped into my mind and I was able to relay that I feel like muddied water that has been filtered naturally through the rocks, sand, and soil of the earth and that I was finally coming out cleaner.

I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but Ted’s death had indeed felt like a deluge that had pulled debris from all hillsides and tributaries feeding into my stream of life creating a murky flow of wreckage, rubble, and waste. It is compelling that nearly anything we can dream up in life can correlate to nature. And so it was that time, friends, family, books, poems, experiences and all of those hugs ended up being the natural filters that cleaned the sediment from my lifestream and let me flow more clearly once again.

It is now reached the point where I am remembering mostly only the happy times. The times he surprised me and did the unexpected, the parties, the skiing and camping, the tenderness and the laughs. Yes, there are still memories of him driving me mad, but those seem so trite at this point.

We had worked together for 18 years of our marriage and after that he was always home when I was home, so I had never considered that I would be a year without him, but here I am.

Dammit Ted, I still miss you every day.

I’ll close with yet another poem that I came across one day that relays my feelings oh so well.

Tis a Fearful Thing
by Yehuda HaLevi (1075 – 1141)

‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.

Hug your loved ones and say nice things.

Love,

Sally