It's difficult for me to grasp that the 10-month anniversary of Tal's death is under a week away. While I am getting through each day, most of the time with energy and gratitude, there are times of terrible sorrow that simply wring the life out of me.

I awoke one day recently after a night of amorphous dreams with the word "sustain" on my mind. It was a strong enough recollection through the morning that I looked the word up. To strengthen or support physically or mentally. I could count that vague memory as happenstance, and maybe it is. It could just as easily, however, be a hint as to a quality I can nurture as I continue on.

​People who support worthy causes are put in a sustainer ​category. Notes are sustained in music. Oh, or there's the clear, long tone of a tuning fork. Food, clothing, shelter are considered essential for sustaining life. Sustain is a hopeful word.

​Sad as I am, I am sustained, and I know it. Through photographs of trips Tal and I made, which I am fashioning into albums. Through encounters with family and friends. Through unexpected delights of memory.

​Later this week my mother and I are driving to Virginia for a baby shower. My nephew and his wife are expecting their first child. As I began giving attention to travel plans, to what to take with me, to how to get two giant boxes wrapped and transported, I experienced just such an unexpected delight.

​These two photographs were made in the spring of 1991. (The processor's stamp on the back of each reads APR 91​.) They are of my then new husband, Tal, and our equally new nephew, Andrew. 
​

It's that cute baby who's about to become a father. And, that lovely man is the one whose death I grieve. Remembering that spring day 26 years ago -- not to mention the relief of being able to locate the photographs when I wanted and needed to see them -- is something that sustains me today, holding me steady, providing support. They are a clear note sounding through this day.

I attended a lovely Independence Day gathering earlier this week five houses down the street. While all of the guests were from our neighborhood, there were several people there I've not had a conversation with lately. It was a lovely to catch up.

​More than one person asked me how I'm faring. I expected that. It wasn't a case of nosiness. There was no judgement intended. I don't think so, anyway. I answered, talking about a weekend away in early June, plans to attend a family baby shower later this month. And, I learned about vacations, adventures with grandchildren, book recommendations. Plus, the food was outstanding! I'm so glad I went.

​Since then, the oft-repeated question has come back to mind, though. How am I faring?

​I'm OK. This bereavement isn't for the faint of heart, that's for certain. I'm realizing that the sadness I am feeling is always going to be with me. Life with Tal was finer than either of us realized, and I miss the way things used to be.

​In some ways the sadness is stronger than it was right after Tal's death. What has changed is the acute nature of the pain. It no longer has that exquisite, piercing, breath-taking quality it did early on. Now, it's a steady presence, heavier at times than others.

​I am also realizing that I have choices -- of all sorts. What, and when, to eat, whether to keep the house, if to push for gainful employment, where I might like to travel, how to observe the next round of holidays. It makes my head spin.

Other choices are more subtle. And, likely more important. I can pick up the camera. I can get up early -- write, walk, weed. I can schedule outings. I can be the initiator of conversations with friends rather than waiting to be called.

I can choose whether to let the sadness dictate how I feel and what I do. In fact, that might be my most important conclusion so far. With a deliberate and deep breath I can choose to lay it aside, if for only an hour or just a few minutes, whatever I can manage. The sadness doesn't have to be all there is.

​So, now what?

Who am I going to be? How am I going to act? What am I doing to do?

I get to choose.

The calendar I use -- yes, a paper calendar still -- numbers the days. In the upper right hand corner of each block I see both the number of the current day as well as the number of days left in the year.

Over the weekend those two numbers came close to matching each other. Saturday was #182 with 183 days to go; yesterday was #183 with 182 to go. Too bad 2017 has an odd number of days ... Somewhere, though, between Saturday and Sunday there must have been a moment of absolute in-between, where the year hung in a split second of balance.

​Why does that interest me so? A half empty vs half full thing, maybe? Thinking back, I have always -- like when on a trip -- reassured myself that there was still time left, an "it's not over yet" outlook. I do enjoy the thought of closer to the beginning than to the end.

On the other hand, there are activities that inspire in me a bit of gladness that the conclusion is nearer than the beginning. I'm thinking house cleaning. On those occasions I sometimes hear in my head the line Tal used to offer: "Well, it's not as long (or as far) as it has been," a favorite on an overly optomistic day's driving.

​Today is the first Monday in the second half of the year. There's plenty of year left. What I think I realize, as I consider the passage of time and our calendar milestone, is that more important than where we are on the beginning-to-end continuum is my attitude, my outlook. There's a lot more in the balance than the number of days so far and the number left.

​We may have reached the peak and are beginning the descent. There's nothing to do about that. What's happened so far has lessons to teach. And, it might be all downhill from here. But, what lies before is nevertheless a beginning. What could be better than that?

I know it sounds silly, but it didn't take long once Tal died that I began needing him to appear in some way. To make himself known. For comfort. More importantly, for reassurance. As much as we both understood what was coming for him and for us as the ALS progressed and as ready as we strived to be, his being gone was sudden and final and devastating.  And so, I longed ... longed for something. Where are you?, I would wonder. Are you still somewhere?

​Tal's favorite bird was the red tail hawk.  Early in our relationship I learned that watching the roadside and trees along a route was part of travel for Tal. He began pointing out hawks. I became good at spotting them.

​So, you know what I'm going to say, I presume.  One week to the day of Tal's death, I was headed to the mailbox. A commotion in the oak tree at the head of the drive and suddenly a Cooper's hawk followed closely by an irritated mocking bird erupted into view.  The mocking bird went off; the hawk lingered, circling over my head, ascending slowly until it caught an air current and sailed, its wings still and outstretched, until it was out of my sight. Oh, thank you.

​That was only the first sighting.  More days than not they appear, hawks most of them small, none of them red tails, swooping across my path, emitting a signature scream in the distance and staying put until my walk takes me near enough for me to spot it, a pair doing a tag team progression up the second fairway, perch to perch, making eye contact as I pass by.  Each and every one of them, of course, is spoken to and thanked and called Tal.

​Scientific? Not in the least. Theologically sound? Not likely. A balm to my battered spirit? Like none other.

​Hope I see you tomorrow, dearest.

Today is a special day. And, it's all because of the cute little three-year-old in the photograph.  She was born today in 1963, the fourth and last baby in my childhood family. My youngest sister.

I remember a lot about her impending arrival. How scandalized older relatives were at my mother's riding a bicycle during the pregnancy. Our mother's parents bringing a rocking chair for the new baby's room. I don't remember, however, the first time I ever saw her or the first time I held her. Isn't that odd? I was ten at the time and I'm the oldest, so perhaps I had become pretty good at integrating new little people into the household. But, still ...

My memories, though, became richer. In some ways she turned into my baby. I learned how to change and to feed her, when to put her down for a nap and when to recognize that she just wasn't ready to sleep. She brought my awkward self a pleasure I'd not expected. (She still does.) The addition of her made our family that much better.  (She still does that, too.)  Integrating her into the fabric of life in that household was easy.

To integrate: to put together parts or elements and combine them into a whole. We do it all the time, one way or another.  Susannah Conway, blogger, author, photographer, wrote this about the loss of someone she loved:

Oh, my, is that what I am doing?

With the birth of my beautiful little sister, my family integrated a new presence into its life.  With the death of my husband, with Tal's death, I am integrating his absence into my life.  It's helpful to me as this day comes to a close to think about my sister's arrival and the loss I have been carrying since September 17th, to think about them together. 

​Both entail reestablishing a sense of wholeness.

​It will come.

We hadn't been married more than a few years when Tal made an observation that unsettled me with its truth. "As long as we happen to know each other in this life, we'll never really know each other." Initially, I felt a little terrible, as though he were saying I'd not been paying very good attention (which, most likely, I'd not been). Over the years we returned to that idea again and again. I came to appreciate it, even embrace it.

We did know one another pretty well before we were parted by death. We had made telling our stories and conveying our thoughts a priority over the years of our marriage. But, those "infinite distances" continued to exist, and maybe even to grow, as Tal's illness progressed.

Truth be known, we were each of us locked in our own worlds. I was increasingly tired and scared. Tal was more and more quiet, part of that being a feature of the disease, but only part. He couldn't know the depth of my anticipatory grief. I could not possibly know the landscape of his inner world as ALS stole away, one by one, his physical abilities. He did not talk about what it felt like to be preparing for death.

​There was so much we simply couldn't know of the inner workings of each other's hearts. But, we were together nearly 24-hours a day. His care was my task and my joy. He never failed to say thank you. Side-by-side we faced the days and the nights, the questions and the answers we didn't want to acknowledge. Side-by-said we lived our long goodbye.

​In the end, though, we did what we had to do. Each of us. Alone.

​I shall always love Tal LeGrand, even -- maybe especially -- all that remains unknown.   

Today, two weeks ago, Tal greeted his last morning. The last one in 90 years, minus a mere 12 days. We had known each other some 28 years, four months. We had been married 26 years, 30 days. Mornings, my mornings, will never be the same. The keeping count somehow helps.
 
​Morning by morning I get up and greet not only the new light but an empty house. I walk the daily 10,000 steps, go through my exercise routine, make myself eat, tend the paperwork lapping at my little shore, convince myself to run essential errands. Morning by morning the world goes on. Morning by morning a bit of myself does, too -- goes on. But, I have to admit wondering what the point is. Since an absolutely essential part of my life is gone.

​But, morning by morning something invites me to be grateful for Tal, for the life we shared, for the grief his absence is visiting on me. I am strangely glad for the profound physical sadness that very nearly, and repeatedly, knocks me off my feet. The discomfort is meaningful. Remembering is dear.

​Morning by morning.  Morning by morning I am sad. 

The day is drawing to a close. The house is quiet. In the distance I can hear the undulating wail of a firetruck's siren, the distinct attendant rumble giving it away. Not a cruiser. Not an ambulance. A firetruck.

Closer, in our next door neighbor's backyard, the burbling of the water feature offers a contrasting note, constant and calm, soothing. It's time to make an attempt at asking what could be a lifetime's question: what do I intend? For tonight, for right now, though, it's a less heavy endeavor, lots less cosmic.  What are my intentions as I embark on this class? As I continue to develop this practice of journaling, what do I hope?

This current bout of regular writing has been going on for several years.  It was on December 18th in 2009 that I began working through Julia Cameron's book, "The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity." The required Morning Pages, three-page stream-of-consciousness writing, morphed into (almost) Daily Pages.  The discipline involved helps steady me. I use the journal as a way to chronicle by days, keeping up with the who, what, when, why of my life. In other words, it's mostly about the accomplishment, about what I manage to get done. In more other words, I'm justifying my existence, or trying to anyway. That sounds mean. It may be an overly harsh assessment. Perhaps here a the advent of something new it needs to be. I think, I know a jump start is in order. I can continue to keep track of daily life. I want to, need to -- for reasons I'll get into and explore as the days pass. But, ...

​What I intend and what I hope for is more honesty, more noticing, more curiosity, more depth, more REAL. There is something in me that wants to break out, to become unbound. I want to be less careful (do not equate that with fool hearty), less fearful, less constricted (and constricting), less likely to settle, to play it safe. As I write each day, then, I want to be more honest, to put down what I really think and want and hope and dream. I want to get myself to the point that I am clear about my own preferences, so I don't always have to hedge my bets. I don't want to make by first concern that I might make a mistake. And, oh, please, I want not to even let cross my mind what somebody else is going to think!

​A pretty tall order, huh? A girl can dream. And, a determined girl ... well, just watch. 

Yesterday began week three of the renovation project in our house.  So far the water lines have been replaced. That, to our surprise, was the easy part. Four days and it was done. 

We're now in the door-widening and roll-in shower phase, and it's turning out to be slightly more involved than we'd anticipated.  Demolition was a breeze.  It helped that we, with the house sans water, were staying in a hotel at the time. I admit that.

Nothing has gone particularly wrong, mind you.  It's just messy.  And, once one snafu happens everything gets pushed a few hours, or half a day, or an entire day, or two days (or more?) down the line.  

So, the project didn't finish up last Friday.  The painter cannot come until the door frames are built.  The door frames have to wait on the flooring folks.  The bathrooms won't have lights until the painter has painted. The shower won't have glass until everyone else clears out.

Tal and I continue camping upstairs.The only downstairs room I am even remotely taking care of, out of necessity, is the kitchen. Everything else is, well, askew. Sort of like this crooked photograph of the terrace pavers out back. Our ordered existence is unordered. 

The man who installed those pavers insists, random as it looks, there's a pattern.  I suppose, random as it seems at the moment to Tal and me, there's a logical schedule being followed in our house. Progress, however noisy, dusty and haphazard-seeming, is being made.

All this commotion is beginning to make Tal a little fretful, though.  The guest room is comfortable, but he wants to sleep in his bed. And, he really wants not to have to climb that flight of stairs once or twice a day. I am a little tired of washing the same three outfits for each of us -- not to mention wearing those same three outfits. 

But, we are holding up. We're not obsessing. We're not sorry we undertook the work. This time of inconvenience is not the end of the world. 

Fact is, we are having all this done so that home will be more convenient and safe.  The trade-off is being askew for a time.

The morning walk continues, today marking the beginning of week five. I've established a routine of sorts:

The hilly roads of Golden Hills one day, the worn and uneven cart paths on the golf course the next. Alternate pairs of shoes day-by-day. Most importantly, I always I tuck the cell phone in my pocket and leave a phone within reach of Tal as he finishes his night's sleep: a mere three button presses and he would have me on the phone with him were he to need me.  

The phone hasn't rung, but it is turning out to be useful. For recording stunning scenes like this one, a view that set the tone for the entire day. Nothing -- not any glitch in the construction schedule, not a list of things to do that would take way more than one day, not an argumentative solicitation caller.  While I remain a devoted DSLR user along with the array of lenses at my disposal, it's a walk intended for exercise and to clear my head. Things are heavy without a heavy camera, too.

It was a good day from beginning to end. It's almost finished. The sky in the west lovely, but not as dramatic as at the start of the day. What, I wonder, will I witness tomorrow morning?