It’s been one year, five months and five days since you left—

523 days—

12,576 hours 40 minutes—

I am keenly aware of your physical absence today, my love.

I’m in the city of Newport Beach—the air is cool. The beach out of view. 

Of many options on the Southern California coast, Newport Beach was your favorite spot for pier fishing. Folks gathered at the end of the pier, a family of convenience; a family of pier fishers, who came to know each other by face, if not by name.

You loved the fishing and the catching, but you did not want to cook and eat what you caught, so your habit was to fill other people’s buckets with any fish you caught—those big enough to keep. An unspoken agreement among the small angler community.

Sometimes, when I was with you, one or two sea lions frolicked in the water just off the edge of the pier where they tried to steal your bait and catch. Chocolate brown, tan, or variegated grayish-black, the shiny, wet look of them captures my imagination still. Graceful. Free.

Today, sitting at the long bar in a Newport Starbucks, I am thinking of distance. How far away you feel to me this day.

Often people ask me, “How are you?” The most accurate answer I can offer is, “Every day is different.”

Some days the energy of you feels palpable.

Other days, like today, you feel far away, like trying to hone in on an individual star in a clear, star-filled night sky.

 

I’m no expert, but I think I can offer a simple credo of the way I see it:

Somehow you are always with me.

Somehow, our love lives on.

 

For now, that is enough.

Long Live Love.