Chapter Fourteen - The Fog of Sadness

1/12/20 - Yesterday was the five-month anniversary of Penny's death.  It could have been years ago, or it could have happened only last week.  My frame of reference for time has become completely disabled, despite the avalanche of events that have transpired since that early morning in August: the memorials, relocating my office, the Celebration of her life, Penny's birthday, Danny and Jen's wedding, the birth of little Harry, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year...and now, the long, quiet stretch to think, to reflect, to remember, and to reconstruct the plan of my life.  I have now identified the hallmarks of my long-term grief: I will continue to search for her trail of breadcrumbs in every nook and cranny of the life we shared.  I will carry on with projects she began, and strive to achieve her standards in so many things I do.  I will persist in trying to solve the medical mystery of her death.  On the other hand, I have also found that I am fully functional and reasonably content in the routine parts of my life.  My clients are taken care of, my Rotary duties are well-fulfilled, my finances are current, and I regularly interact with my family and friends.  But over all of these lingers a perpetual fog of deep sadness, sometimes intense, often a light haze. Tears are always just a tipping point away, even for stimuli not related to Penny.  On Saturday, I attended a funeral mass for a longtime friend attorney.  Unexpectedly, I found myself overwhelmed with sadness far beyond my affection for the deceased.  Penny had specifically asked that there be no religious service after her death, but my mind made the direct association between her and God in all of the prayers, scripture readings and songs.  I was silently praying that, if there is a God and if there is an afterlife, that Penny has been welcomed there, and, like my departed friend Vince, will be waiting to greet me when my time has come.  But my overwhelming realization, now that life has settled down somewhat into a pace similar to the months before the cancer, is how profoundly different it is in every way, how I am touched every moment by memories, how uncertain is my vision looking forward into a future that once seemed so clear and bright, but is now seen through the fog of sadness.