10/25/19 -
Dear Penny:
I would love to say that retracing steps I took with you during our life together made me feel closer to you. Sadly, the experience at this point in my grieving simply puts front and center to the fact that I am taking those steps alone. Today I sit on the patio of Bill's beach house at Morro Bay, just returned from a walk on the beach on a beautiful Saturday morning. The air is cool, the sand was warm, the memories were everywhere. Among my first memories of you is our trip down here just months after we met. It was a night out in San Luis, fueled by several drinks, and I was hurt that you were flirting with Bill's friends (so "early relationship" of me!). Dial ahead two years, and just months after Patrick was born we sat on the sofa with Deidre and Alan, answering their questions about how life changes after having a baby. Their daughter, Kathryn, followed just a few years later. Then there was the time we stopped here on our way to Disneyland with the boys and their two friends. We rented wet suits for the kids to boogie board, and they slept in the giant motorhome we had rented for the trip, while we were cozy in the cottage. And then our last trip here, in 2014, where we took a group picture on the beach, right where I was walking this morning. Forty-two years of memories. The beach house has barely changed, the ice plant garden is as lush as ever, the sand and ocean just yards away are eternal, and 42 years of memories wash over me like the waves. Each one sucks the breath from my lungs like a punch to the chest. Will it ever get better? Will I ever be able to start new memories that aren't immediately drowned by the wave of old ones. I don't want to run away from them, as I treasure them as the last bits of you I have left. But every moment of "that was us" is promptly confronted with "this is only me". I will be searching for the essence of you for the rest of my life.
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