“He’ll always be with you”

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It’s three months to the day that you died. When I awoke this morning, I’d not registered the date but this un-looked for anniversary must be the reason why I’ve been crying so much today.

“He’ll always be with you” is a phrase that has been said to me on many occasions over the past three months. I have, at times, found it intensely irritating because, clearly, you are not with me. On today, of all days, it’s particularly clear that you are not here any longer. I do know, however, that things have changed and are changing.

As time has gone by, it’s true, as people told me it would be, that the tears have become less frequent. It’s also true that I’ve gradually been able to function in a more normal fashion. I’ve been busy and I’ve even found myself finding my enthusiasm for certain projects again. But confusing and conflicting thoughts occupy me constantly.

Being busy, and occupied in enjoyable pursuits is good, but it also generates feelings of guilt. Guilt that I am able to function without you. Guilt that you’ve not been at the forefront of my thoughts all the time.

At other times I find myself being overwhelmed by my loss. I miss you all the time, of course, but sometimes it is so overwhelming that the tears not only flow freely but with an almost unbearable intensity. When this happens, I have to give in to it. There’s no point in fighting it. Often, it’s triggered by having caught sight of a photo of you. The one accompanying this blog is so typical of you. That impish grin and silly pose is you to a “t”. I do wonder when I’ll be able to look at photos of you and remember the happy occasions on which they were taken. At present I have, for the most part, to avoid looking at them because they always upset me so much.

Is this all part of that phrase “he’ll always be with you”, I wonder? There are often times when I’m engaged in something completely absorbing and even then I have this underlying sense of loss. For instance, the weekend I got back from my first visit to Scheggino without you, I went immediately into three days of rehearsals, one of which was an exhausting three session day. Even then, for a good hour and a half or so as I was fully engaged in the rehearsal process, I felt myself close to tears. The same thing happened last weekend during an actual performance. I was watching my students perform the production that I’d spent the last semester working on with them. Even as I enjoyed the production and their achievement I had an overriding sense of sadness and of tearfulness.

So is this feeling of your being in my head somewhere what that phrase “he’ll always be with you” actually means? Is it, in fact, you being with me?

When you died it felt as though a real physical part of me had been ripped from me. We used to laugh over how often it was that we would say the same thing at exactly the same time. Often we didn’t even need to put things into words but we knew exactly what we were both thinking. We used to comment that, after living together and sharing our lives for so long, it was natural that we should think as one. I think that’s probably why the pain of losing you was so physical, so violent. That oneness was, and is, no-longer there.

“He’ll always be with you.” It’s odd that your absence should be the sensation that generates the feeling of your presence. It makes no sense, and yet it makes total sense.