Tomorrow

Tomorrow, I leave home with mixed feelings. I am not excited, yet I am looking forward to being alone with time to contemplate the events of the last month. Years ago, when Rusty had to be put down, Mom said she had not had a good cry. She was waiting for Dad to go on a trip at the end of the month. Then she could grieve alone. I wondered how she could store the emotion away, as if it was a coat put into a closet and at the first chill drifting in the air it is brought out to wrap a warmth around the soul. I never did know if she did have a good cry, but I remember that Dad did not leave.

I have done the same thing. I have not burst into a long hard cry of grief. I certainly have caught myself aching for mom’s presence, missing her, feeling sad and lonely. My eyes have shed their share of tears, I have felt the ache fill the back of my throat and I have choked on a heart so tender that just one more thought would make it stop. But I have not sobbed. (all out wailing sobs of grief only last 1 to 2 minutes). I want to, but I want to be alone. I want to be at the ocean, the place of the beginning. The place of the end. The place of eternity, as I know it on earth.

Tomorrow…

If it had been a different month, there were things I would have told Mom. These are not things I would have told you. It would have been of interest to her, not you. I would have told her that the old barn on Rt9 is being relocated to Duchess County, being restored instead of demolished. I would have told her that the patio and back porch on the Grey’s house was being redone. Oh, by the way, I found grapes near the old barn and Dr. Gabay’s wife offered some rhubarb for a pie. I would have shown her a Colorado quarter and put it in the cup on the top of the cherry cabinet where she saved every new state quarter.

I lost my watch, an $1800 Tag. It doesn’t seem to bother me.