Of course you don’t know what to say-you had me relegated somewhere in the back of your mind where no voice could penetrate your grief and I am sorry for your sadness.

My trying to get through has been recent and I think it has something to do with the holidays; not so much Thanksgiving or Christmas but New Years. You know how Bette loved to celebrate the coming of the New Year.

(Why I’ll never understand-another year closer I say)

And you will say no more. My anger forbids it.

I thought I’d be heard way before now but your Grief certainly kept me in my place.

Do you have any idea how many of your tears kept my rage at bay. And you have garnered a heap of resentment.

How the hell could you just walk out of that room carrying her handprint and a lock of her hair without something breaking in your wake if not your heart and dropping dead right there.

On your way home you had a good stretch of the Connecticut River to kiss and you kept on driving.

And don’t give me the Girls, Enya and Tammy; Pat and Stephen would have seen to their good care in a new home.

And now your home where I see but that is all; you crumble. The Girls don’t recognize you being as you are; face swollen and awash in tears.

And then later you look out the window and nothing has changed.

And then love, caring and condolences are there and certainly not the time for me to be hanging around suggesting something foolish.

I have felt the gravity of your silence, stillness and sadness but I refuse to be pulled in.

I don’t see a way out but you evidently do or you wouldn’t be here.

That’s harsh I know. Get used to it.

And then all you wrote about in the Journal without me interjecting this or that like: you sure you won’t have a beer and bourbon-maybe one too many, give up the coffee for Christ’s sake-you’ve given up everything else, when you sit there and eventually come around to considering going out what the hell is that about-you will only drive so far then stop and Grief will have at you, the unfair part is you having left her to be on her own and that injustice is swallowing you whole, and in my world the definition of survivor is coward. Nothing will ever be the same.