All the things I didn't know

I don't know why the sadness of this widowhood strikes me some days and not others.    It is never quite when other people say I will find things get hard, not the big celebrations like Christmas or anniversaries that are hard generally.  It is the days between where I am just doing my normal stuff where something stirs a reminder of something and I am awash in missing him.

The approach of fall brings some of that to me.  He was always so eager for fall.  Just the smell of it, the smell that arises from the old grass starting to return to earth, of leaves piled up, of the crisp morning air.  These marked the turn of the season for him and came to mark it for me too. 

This weekend wasn't tears and sadness.  It was wonderful in so many ways and yet it was tinged in sadness.  Sadness seems to hang on and cling like burrs on the side of my socks.

I went to get the mail yesterday and found a parcel card in among the piles of useless things.  I hadn't ordered anything so it took a while to recall what it was.  

A little house warming package from a dear friend.  I will talk more about it later this week.  And then I cried.

My heart felt so full, so completely overwhelmed with the warmth of her caring and her sweetness. It was a hug from far away.

I sat down and had a cup of tea in my one classic tea cup, good sensible black tea, the kind that my friend would like, the comforting kind that one reads of in British books, where it is served with milk and biscuits.  

I put on an episode of Miss Marple and I read my book a bit, sipped my tea and petted these lovely soft wonderful skeins and let the warmth and comfort of my friend wash over me.

The sadness doesn't go away. It sits quietly there in the center of everything, colouring the sweetness and comfort of friends and complete joy with its own tones and shades.   It isn't particularly dark. It isn't particularly bad.  It just is.  I did not know that they could walk so closely hand in hand that you don't remember where the joy starts and the sadness ends, that these things don't have edges, that they blend so to make the whole. 

Some days I seem to focus on the tones and shades of the sadness and some days I focus on the warmth and comfort of friends. And sometimes I do both.

These are all the things I did not know.  But I am learning.

   

Please don't worry about this sadness.  It's so nice to be able to understand it and have a place to put it.  It's a relief to know that it belongs.