It’s the 25th of the month, eight months since he left.

Things have started coming together in big and small ways; I’m grateful to notice that and appreciate how hard I’ve worked hard to cultivate the good and how important relationships have been in enduring.

But not a minute goes by that I’m not missing him.

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss…Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.” (Joan Didion)

The grief persists and so do I.