new moon

Day 14

Although the wind

blows terribly here,

the moonlight also leaks

between the roof planks

of this ruined house.

--Izumi Shikibu (Japan, 974?-1034?)

I can't find Rich's grave. Three are in a row, muddy mounds heaped high, all fresh within the past two weeks.

How will we find each other next time around, Rich asked, not too long ago.

We found each other this time, I said. We will again.

He shook his head, doubtful.

Oh, E.T., you have no sense of direction, he said.

I cry. I'm not a dog, I can't sniff him out, sight is all I have and blurriness doesn't help my navigation. But Rich is the only one extending outward from the evergreens; the burial coordinator made this decision because, in this orientation, I will be able to rest shoulder-to-shoulder with him, as always, my right leaning into his left.

As if our bodies will be together. As if they were ever apart. I don't know which is true, but right now I want his flesh, not his energy.

Someone left a bouquet on his grave, wrapped with an ecologically-minded straw string. I leave my apple core, and take another loop around Greensprings, meeting a mountain biker, then four hikers. From their expressions, I'm guessing they're here because it's a nature preserve. I'm here because it's a cemetery.

On the way home, I stop at the Verizon office to terminate Rich's cell phone. Dying is easier. But there's no energy in me for hot anger, only a lukewarm pissed off that is gone by the time I'm back at the house.

And I listen on my phone, for the fifth or sixth time, to his last messages to me from Hospice.

Why did I never hear them before, even though I said I did, of course I did?

They began with hope, in the first days, and ended with tears, with Rich crying it's over, it's over, I can't hold on any longer, oh, I love you so much, so much...

Now I'm opening my heart to the love. All the way, now that this heart is ruined.

How else can the moonlight get inside?

Candace