My sadness

My sadness about “losing” Tom is not what you think.

First of all, I did not lose him. I know where he is. Some of him is in the orchard under the Fuji tree we planted 25 years ago. Some of him is in a wooden bird house/ urn on top of the piano he loved to play and was much better at than he thought. But most of him is…how to describe this without seeming more mystical than I really am?…most of him is just HERE, in the crisp air of the morning, in the warm air in the afternoon, in the garden watching me weed, above the meadow where he straddled the riding mower he had to repair every season, earbuds in, listening to some impossibly dense science-y book, traversing the rocky, rolling terrain. The Lawn Ranger.

Also, here’s something that those of you who don’t know me well (which, in truth, would be everyone reading this other than maybe three people) will find hard to believe or will consider me delusional or distressingly stoic: I am not lonely. Yes, the person I lived with so long that I can hardly remember when we didn’t live together, is not corporeally present. (How’s that for wordsmithing?) But I have always loved being alone, from childhood on. I have always gravitated toward solitary pursuits: writing, reading, hiking, biking, gardening. Thinking.

But as I greet each morning by walking out to the garden, as I examine the fruit trees for signs of this year’s harvest, as I walk around the house and admire the blooming rhodies, as I water the plants around the deck, I think: Damn, you are missing this, Tom. This is the good part. This is the result of all our hard work. We put in a quarter of a century—a quarter of a fucking century—working to make this shaggy five-acre plot of second- and third-growth Doug fir and white oak (with the usual tangle of vine maple and invasive blackberry) into something quite special. Not “park-like,” not overly groomed or meticulously landscaped, but home. Ours. And I am sad because, unlike me, you are not reaping the benefits.

But then, up there, out there, everywhere, maybe you are.

This one’s for you, T.