The other night, Nick and I were flipping channels on the TV, and we stopped on an episode of “South Park.” It was mid-way through the episode, and it was immediately funny, so we ended up watching it to its completion. A little while later, Nick commented on how much I was laughing out loud while watching it. I found myself responding back: “Yeah. It was Don’s favorite show. He had 5 seasons of it on DVD. I haven’t really watched it much since he died. Watching it this time was a little sad, but also instantly reminded me of him and made me feel close to him somehow. It was nice.”
It’s been a little over a decade since Don Shepherd died, and I find that these days, I miss him differently. I will not say that the missing of him is any less intense, because honestly, its not any LESS anything. The missing of Don Shepherd goes on as long and as far as our love does, and over the years, there are some days and moments that I miss him so deeply, I can feel it inside each inhale of air.
So it’s not that I miss him any LESS – not at all. I just miss him differently than in the earlier years of grief. Those early years, the missing of him would come on like an earthquake, and it would land on me like 2,000 pounds of hard rocks, knocking me down until I couldnt breathe. Or other times, it would just sit inside of me, always, just lingering there and making my heart and my eyeballs and my sides physically hurt from the pain of it. The memories of him only amplified that feeling, and reminded me that the life I knew was gone forever. The missing of him was loud and noisy in my head, and in my heart. It was so very hard to carry, and yet I could never put it down. It made me want to shout and scream and punch and get revenge on whoever or whatever took my husband and my life away from me. In those first three or four years of grief, the missing was, at times, all-consuming and extremely overwhelming.
In contrast, the last few years leading up to one decade without Don Shepherd on earth, have had a much different feel to them. The missing of Don is still always there, but sometimes it makes itself more known, while other times it fades into the background for awhile or takes a nap for a bit. These days, its less of a heaviness and more of a tap. It is less harsh, and comes with a softness in its touch. The anger is now more of a sadness, or a “knowing” feeling about the realities of loss. At each moment of life, I am painfully aware of everything that Don is missing. It strikes me as incredibly sad, over and over, that he does not get to feel more joy, laugh at his favorite show, hear more music, feel more love. Maybe he does feel my love as he floats around as energy in the universe – I honestly don’t know. Sometimes I can believe that is true, other times I feel like Im trying too hard to convince myself of that magic.
When he feels near and present, and that feeling is organic and real and not forced in any way, I do my best to just “go with it” and allow myself to swim inside the space that I can momentarily share with him. In those times, he feels like a best friend or a mentor, or like someone to help guide me along and cheer me on through this life. I really like that feeling, so I don’t try to stop it when it comes. And maybe this is partly why the missing of him feels softer, and more quiet now. I dont feel the need to announce it to anyone like I did in those earlier days. I dont have to always post or write about it. Instead, I just sit inside of it and exist within it and find the corners where his soul lives, and hug them tight. There are times when I can exist in both that world and this one, simultaneously. It only lasts for a few minutes, or a small fragment in time, but it is everything.
The wind, a song, the Penske trucks that go by me on the road, the rainbow jokes and photos people send me, Nick and I joking about our “creepy paranormal threesome”, picturing his big hearty laugh and his shoulders shaking while watching “South Park”, drinking a root beer or eating chicken parmesan or lasagna in honor of him, enjoying a tennis match or a Yankees game, strumming his guitars or my ukulele that I suck at playing, every pet and every second spent with our kitty cats. In all of these small and larger things, I miss him and I feel him close, all at once. I feel great sadness that he is not here, and enormous thankfulness that he WAS here. I long to sit with him and have a conversation, and yet I am always and forever talking to him in some small way.
Our relationship these days feels more like a special secret connection that only he and I understand.
Sometimes, every now and then, if I get real quiet, and I breathe and wait with the kind of patience that Don had, and I listen to the silence of the earth and the air and the sky – sometimes, he is there, clear as day, and we sit together, and we weave into the rhythms, and we feel time stand still –
we are there together, smiling with our eyes and our bursting hearts, and we remember.