It’s been a long day. I worked, came home, took the dog out, prepping dinner and the dishes of the past few nights are sitting in the sink reminding me that no one else will help me. It’s a regular reminder as I try to find a balance to this new unwanted bachelor life. It’s November already and Clayton has been gone for almost 6 months. I’m not doing better, I’m just getting better at acting. I just don’t know I my new abilities are going to be strong enough to get me through the next most difficult tasks before me….My 40th birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas and starting a New Year alone. I’m already unbelievably overwhelmed and I feel like the loss is starting all over again. The intensity might even be stronger than when he passed. There is no immediate shock and adrenaline like there was in April. Again I feel myself back to the beginning of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno
“When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
For I had lost the path that dos not stray”
Much like Dante, this season is a dark forest and before me stands a lion, a leopard and a she-wolf. My birthday. The holidays. The birth of a new year. They block my way to the great mountain and there will be Hell before there is Heaven. I knew the path would not be easy. In Dante’s struggle to move forward he was visited by a shade. This shade was sent by Dante’s deceased love Beatrice to bring words to Dante and aid his path.
I started cleaning those dishes wishing I could rinse the loneliness down the drain with the leftovers. My phone lit up with a message.
“Ugh. Now what?”
I opened the message send from a ghost of past, a friend of Tin’s. He had gone to a medium to connect with his mother that passed but had a message for me. Tin had come through clearly with knowledge that only Tin would know. Tin acknowledged the ones that cared for him. Tell them he is ok. Talk about a dog he loves. The phone shade didn’t know we had a dog. Tin adored Roan.
These woods are so dark but there is a faint familiar voice telling me to keep searching for the way. There’s more than one way to climb a mountain…
