It's been a long time since I've posted anything.... Today is Valentine's Day, which promises to be harder than most. I have made a plan to meet with some members of the bereavement group that I attended in the fall for dinner, so we won't be alone and moping this evening.
Time passes, but in this first year since her death I am able to think each day "last year at this time, Angela was..." -- and on this day, February 14, in 2010, we went to the University of Chicago Folk Festival and she participated, vigorously, in the folk dancing that she had loved since her youth. The kids were all gone for the weekend, and we came home after the folk dancing and had fondue and wine and chocolate covered strawberries. It was a beautiful day and the memories are still warm and fresh. Three months later she was in the hospital.
I am painfully aware that in a few months I will no longer be able to say "last year at this time, Angela was..." A colleague said to me: you won't get over this, but you will get used to it. I feel like I am slowly getting used to it. But it doesn't happen easily, not at all.
Yesterday I did my taxes -- still filing "married filing jointly," one last time, "as surviving spouse." Just another reminder. Yet the night before I had a beautiful dream in which Angela was making us dinner and we kissed... something of a Valentine weekend reminder, perhaps.
So, things move on and I do my best. I am working at 75% efficiency and have to do 150% of what I am used to. But slowly things are changing. That is the way of it and there is not much more to say, or there is so much more to say that I could write all day.
Sometime soon I might post the bit of writing of Angela's that inspired the name of this very intermittent blog.
