Grief

I needed to get out of my house today, and it is so hot and you can't enjoy being outside but I did need to do some shopping. Eating is hard these days, I have not much of an appetite and I keep trying to at least get the right amount of protein and veggies and such. I will admit for the last day or two I've lived off Kashi cereal and popcorn. SO it was time to shop.

MY mother had to go to town too so we went together.


She had to make a stop at the bank. I wait in the car. They are remodeling her bank and there are workers all around. I see a young man probably about Jonathan's age with his work belt on and hot and sweaty from this heat. This is the kind of work Jonathan did, what he must have looked like on job sites.


And then we had to make a stop at a person's house she knows to drop off something. I sat in the car. Looking around there is a sandbox with a number of little trucks and tractors -memories of my own two little boys and how our yard looked when they were little flooded my mind.


I looked around and saw a boat that was painted camouflage, Jonathan often wore camouflage pants, or cut offs. And as a little boy he hunted with his grandfather and we have tons of pictures with him in camouflage.


I look away. I spot a picnic table. Back in the fall of 2006, during one of the times he was getting therapy, he and I had went out to the river here and sat for hours on a picnic table and talked and talked, that was the first time he and his wife separated.


I go to the grocery store and notice things I'd buy for him that I knew he loved when he was living with me last spring.


I come around an aisle and there is my mother talking to someone that is hugging her neck and my mother is crying. I turn and go the other way.


I guess this part will get better, but it sure is hard right now. It's not that I don't want to think about him but there's no relief in that thought, that one thought that pops in your head when you see these things, "He is gone forever". My mind knows it for sure. But my heart is hanging on for dear life, and it hurts with every beat. Pure, raw grief.