February

For as long as I can remember, the month of February has been a challenge for me to power through. The excitement of a new year has subsided, the resolutions I may have made have been shelved, and a pile of tax forms sit in a folder on the dining room table begging for attention. Add to that it is one day after another of gray and cold and dismal.

All the days of last year are so foggy to me. Was last February worse than January or was the whole first year one miserable day after another? Did I come home from work, climb into bed to warm up, and then fall sound asleep? Did I wake up confused by the dark and think I had to get dinner ready before Mark got home only to remember he wasn’t coming home? Did I suddenly start crying on a routine drive home from the grocery store?

On a daily basis I am stunned by the harshness of grief. How it slams into you without any warning, how ambivalent it is if you’ve had an okay day and think maybe things are getting better, how little it matters that you’ve had a few days in the Florida sun and think light might be yours to have again. Grief is the boss that can never be pleased no matter how hard you work.

Most nights before I go to sleep, I stare at my favorite photo of Mark, the one we laminated with a Carl Sagan quote on the back that was handed out at his funeral. I trace his face with my finger and stare at the man I loved my whole adult life, so alive in front of that fountain in Portugal. Ten months after that photo was taken he would be dead, I would be heartbroken, our kids would be devastated, and everything in my life would change.

On the bad nights I stare at that photo, trace Mark’s face with my finger and ask the husband who smiles back at me, “Did I love you enough?” There is no purpose to this and he isn’t here to answer, but doesn’t somebody who knows they are loved stay? Don’t they fix the broken parts and keep on living? Like most of my life since last September it is another question without an answer to add to the list.

Mark was an avid bird watcher and always made sure our feeders were full, especially in the winter. I was with him so many times when he loaded bags of bird feed into our cart. Now I can’t remember what he bought so I stand in the aisle at the hardware store and stare at all the choices and then give up. Bird seed doesn’t seem like an especially hard thing to figure out and yet it is.

One morning last week the alarm went off and I laid in bed trying to muster the energy to get up. I hadn’t slept well the night before, and the truth is I’d prefer to stay in bed most days. Thankfully I have a job to go to and sleeping daylight away isn’t an option. As I laid there in silent negotiations with the clock for a few more minutes, I heard the chirping of a single bird outside the window.

Spring is coming, I thought, and wasn’t it my husband who taught me that if you want to wake up to the sounds of life after a long season of darkness you have to keep the feeders full?