going, going gone

I feel ok today. Maybe better than ok. I feel inspired, I feel capable. I am able to carry the grief and I see several exciting things on the horizon. It is hard to say this because it feels like a betrayal to the grief, like I am turning my back on the fact that my partner is dead. I feel the compulsion to acknowledge it, in case anyone finds this to mean I am done grieving or I don’t still feel all those complicated things. The grief is still there. But today the sun is shining. I made myself breakfast for the first time in I dont even know how long. I am surrounded by a community that loves me and who I love. I feel the spark of inspiration, the drive to create, teach, connect, learn, and experience fully. After so long being in such a dark space this feeling is overwhelming and intoxicating. 

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Derek was shockingly present right after he died. He came to me immediately, only a few hours later. He didn’t say anything but he was there. Checking on me I think, saying hi in his new form. Let me be more clear. When I was driving his car away from the scene of the accident one second I was driving and in my own head and the next second, I could feel him, not his physical body but that feeling that I felt when I hugged him and laid my head on his chest, when we would dance, when we would talk, when we got physical with each other. That beautiful soul resonance, the warm feeling, the soft open acceptance of knowing him, the baby blue of his spirit that I could not feel on the beach after he died that was suddenly, shockingly, undeniably there with me in the car. Driving on the freeway. 

Immediately after his death I could hear his voice in my head, constant chatter. Not saying anything but buzzing. That was gone after the first 48 hours. Others told me about hearing messages from him and I was jealous of their connection. It took me almost a full week to recognize that the inexplicable dancing the orange and blue swirling, the flow of dancing I could feel just outside my vision was him. This was not seeing or feeling like we usually experience it, but I dont know how to describe it better than that. It was the way he moved, the way he would slowly close in while flirting, the way he would dance, the fluid grace of his biking. That was with me for a time but it was gone about two weeks after he died. 

There was a moth. When I returned to my apartment a few days after his death this large orange moth had gotten into my apartment. Again inexplicable, the windows were shut. I opened them. Just as I was already working on letting his soul come and go as it needed to, I told the moth “thank you for your visit and you have no obligation to stay. I hear you, I see you, I won't hold you here.” But it stayed for a week exactly. I kept leaving my apartment and I would come back and assume it had gone but it would fly out of the shower curtains when I went into the bathroom. It would sit by me when I began writing about Derek. It slept on the window seal. Then a week after he died it was gone. 

There have been dreams. Two dreams that I believe he was here for. Where we met in the middle. Halfway between where he is and where I am to have some moments together. These dreams were hard and easy. We were together effortlessly like we were in life in the dreams, it was a relief to see him there but I knew he was gone when I was dreaming, and that pain I carry with me in waking life does not leave when I am dreaming. 

It has been six months. I have talked to him more times than I know, I have been journaling about my experience, writing my memories of him, drawing and painting the moth, his face, the hand I couldn’t pull out of the rushing rapids. For all these months I have been holding him so tightly in my heart, I have hardly had a moment where I wasn’t breathing out acceptance and love to try to send to him. Trying to become a conduit of my love for him. Learning everything I can from our time together. I have been wearing his ashes constantly, wearing his clothes, rereading texts, and rewatching old videos. 

For the first three months, I could feel him holding me. I would lie down in the bed we shared and I could feel him in my arms, feel his chest against my face. Not as strong as the few times I really felt him come to me. But like part of him was holding onto me too. Even if most of him was somewhere else. But that stopped over time

He came to me again a week ago. I woke up 5 hours before my alarm was supposed to go off and he was there. Holding me, almost as strong as that first day in the car. He was there, just laying with me. He told me I was strong, that the strength I have shown during this grieving process, that he saw me, he knows, he’s proud of me. He stayed with me, patient, and peaceful for hours. Until I had to pull away to go to work. He left as I began to pull away. I think he may have been saying goodbye, maybe not forever I think I will feel him again but that this period of the grief is over. I no longer feel like I have to be a lighthouse for him. A beacon of love. I will always have him in my heart and carry him but maybe I no longer have to hold on so tightly and maybe my heart can rest. It is exhausted from singing my love for him out into the cosmos for so long. I am finally ready to begin investing in the corporeal life I find myself in. I am weary but I am inspired. I can stop looking for him a little bit, enough so that I can be here now. The sun is out even though it is winter in the PNW. I made the best breakfast for myself that I have made in a long time. I am inspired and creative and engaged

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