On Thursday I cleaned out the gutters. As I clambered up the ladder, dodging the string lights and feeling my hand slip on the adjacent corrugated shed roof, I thought of Paul. Of course I thought of him because ordinarily he would have been the one to clean the gutters. But I heard him in my head telling me to be careful and commenting on my fumbles – “you move like a cat.”

Earlier in the week I had been thinking about all the things that Paul did with casual ease. If you have ever biked, rowed, fished or skied with him, you would be familiar with his steady and confident pace. He sometimes stood on the side of caution where others wouldn’t hesitate, but because of his proven skill at reading situations, I trusted his instincts.

I have been in relationships with people that I didn’t trust. Not in the deception or dishonesty kind of way (that too) but in the sense that I wasn’t sure they could keep themselves, or me, or my friends, safe. It is something you can easily take for granted when you find someone whose life skills you don’t question.

I miss him. I miss his beautiful big hands that were capable of steadily tying an intricate fly or building a bike wheel or gently rough-housing with Karl. I miss having him there to tell the stories I can never remember right or to answer random questions about geology, philosophy, snow, or birds. But despite my independence, I also really miss having him there to make me feel safe.

This morning I couldn’t make myself get out of the shower. This made me think back to the times Paul refused to get out of the shower, and he would express his position on the matter by singing a made up song about himself, “Aqua Boy.” Sharing the tune and intellectual rigor of Homer Simpson’s Spider Pig, its lyrics were easily varied.

This memory didn’t make it easier to get out.

I’ve had a lot of memory-jolting experiences lately, having spent a week in San Francisco and a week in Tahoe. Being in San Francisco with the flexibility of my own car made it feel like living there again, swimming at the rowing club and eating burritos for dinner, but of course the city has changed so much since we lived there. Between the Paul memorial and the boat naming events, I bounced around and visited with friends and stopped by my old office, even rallied to make a costume and join a Halloween bar-crawl-run with the SERC runners.

I feel like during the last three weeks, an gradual emotional eclipse has been taking place. I had been looking ahead to the trip and the event, but not appreciating that it would feel like a sad milestone to pass. It doesn’t change my grief, but it made me feel like I can/should start picking up the pieces again. Going to Tahoe also felt like getting something out of my system. I have so many memories of being in Tahoe with Paul – winter and summer, skiing, swimming, and biking around the lake. Scattering his ashes at Squaw Valley felt a little foreign because it’s a place more familiar to him than to me, but it was another step ahead.

Also, as the cliche goes, life keeps happening. During my trip, Katrina, who has been deeply supportive in my grief situation, faced her own tragic loss. I learned of another SERC friend who has been experiencing serious health challenges. As I got back into work in Tahoe (we have a small office there) I was eased back into reality while I processed my sadness and started to make plans for the dreaded upcoming holidays.

Our 10 year anniversary just passed this week. 10 years ago on November 14, it was 85+ degrees in San Francisco when we got married in City Hall. The following day, we had a party at the pavilion in Mission Creek Park, and I insisted on wearing my wool wedding dress even though it was hot and sunny (Paul went casual). It’s strange to say the next 10 years ended on a high note, considering, but in terms of our relationship they did.

Nothing is easier now that I am feeling reality take back over my life; I think it is the opposite. This winter is going to be a challenge, and as the weather gets cold I wish I could stay inside and watch a marathon of terrible holiday movies with Paul.

I cannot believe the beautiful Fall we have been having here in the PNW. Even more than that, I can’t believe Paul isn’t here to revel in his favorite season. I don’t remember colors like this in our 8 years in the PNW, and I certainly don’t remember having an entire week of sunny and crisp weather in October. It would be so much more fun to have him here to enjoy it.

This is the season that I like most for swimming – the water is crystal clear and has deep blue-green tones, the plant life at the bottom is still hanging on, and the colors of the deciduous trees make a satisfying contrast both along the shore and in the water where the fallen leaves wind up. I think Paul liked the Fall because it meant ski season was coming, mountain bike season was getting more fun, and he loved pumpkin pie. Emmet loves this season because green figs drop from the sky and that is the most fun thing in the world, ever.

This September and October has been a time of magical creature sightings for me, and I hope that is a trend that continues. Did you know that seahorses exist? Like, they actually live in the wild and haven’t been designed by humans to place in aquarium tanks to fascinate us? I had my doubts. But on a recent trip to see my college friends out on the East Coast in Manasquan, NJ, I was lucky enough to cross paths with on in its natural habitat! Okay, I made pretty sure my path would cross his. It was heavy flirtation.

I don’t think people come back after dying and visit us as other creatures. Although that would be really nice, and I wish I did. But I have been more in tune lately with the world around me as I spend more time in it alone. Getting up for sunrise and floating around in boundless salt water and seeing colors that I can’t believe, even though I saw them the day before; seeing a creature I didn’t think really existed; watching my dog be a goofball – these are times that I am less hung up on the repeating and body-stabbing memory of watching Paul die and I feel a little more okay. I know he would have been as amazed or as amused by these things as I am.

Last night, I joined a friend and paddled out in the dark on a prone board to find a whale. There have been a few humpbacks hanging out between Tacoma and Vashon for the past week, and Dean thought we would have a good chance of hearing them at night when the water was flat and the wind was nonexistent, and the boats that had been harassing the whales all day had gone.

It was such a multi-sensory treat. It smelled like Fall and wood-burning fires, yet we were out on the salt water. The moon was a little more than half full, the stars were visible, the water was glass. We could hear herons flying over, saw a bat or two, and I even saw a shooting star. Not the flash of one in my peripheral vision that I am used to, but a long and bright one right in front of me, that went out like a match.

In all that quiet, we heard the whales. We think there were two; one sounded like it was up in Colvos passage just West of the Southern end of Vashon. The other one, with a deeper and longer exhale, was much closer to us and just off the end of Point Defiance Park. I felt like I had been transported to another world for that hour and a half, just listening to those sounds and lying flat on top of the sea.

 

I know some of you have been wondering. If you ask me, here’s what I would say: I’m holding it together. I’m doing okay. I’m coping. I miss Paul. I’m keeping busy.

These are fine words. When I have these conversations live, I am distracted from feeling by talking. I am distracted from feeling by working. I am distracted from feeling by Netflix. But if you could access what I am actually feeling when I’m not distracted, it’s a different picture.

There are two modes of sadness that I cycle through. On one hand, I have a deep and painful sense of missing him. I’m reminded of this constantly, just by being in the house, seeing a photo, eating something, recalling a story. I’ve been through this before with the loss of my brother and then my father. From my earlier experiences I understand that time does help soften this emotion, but I have a long way to go before I can feel restful without Paul to share things with.

The bigger and more painful piece, that keeps trampling me when I least expect it, is the imprint on my brain of having watched him die. I was completely unprepared for this. Initially I thought it was just the last days that have been haunting me, but it goes back earlier than that. In an effort to cope with all the miseries Paul was experiencing, I think I channeled a protectively scientific interest in what was happening, and I felt a clinical responsibility to care for him. As a result, I have a thorough mental catalog of every painful physical detail. I can’t think of a word that describes the feeling I get when I review these details (which I do, naturally; I think I am fascinated by how brutal it feels) that doesn’t sound completely melodramatic.

So that’s how I’m doing. I’m not lonely, except for missing Paul. I have moments when I don’t understand how I am supposed to handle this, but they pass. I have animals to take care of, work and hobbies, friends and family to support and enjoy, and plenty of other things to distract me. One day, maybe the line between distraction and being happy will fade.