Damn Pears.

I'm learning that grief touches everything. EVERYTHING. And it can leave you alone for a few minutes and then stab you right in the guy with something very small.

Today was a rough day for me. I didn't get any sleep last night thanks to a certain baby, the big kids went back to school, I had a meeting with our landlord and then needed to go to the bank and the commissary. I knew the commissary was going to be emotionally trying. Frank was a foodie and an excellent cook. He loved coming with me to the commissary.
So after an upsetting phone call in the parking lot of the bank, followed by being even more upset in the bank ( hey, money is not fun if it comes because of something like this, I would burn it all in a pile and live like a pauper if it brought back my husband), drove onpost and held my breath waiting to see Kiowas flying. Today was the first day since the accident that they've been back up, I knew it would be hard.
I get into the commissary and stick my iPod in my ears to block out other people and start in the produce section.
And it hits me.
Don't buy those brussel sprouts. He was the one that could make them decently.
Don't buy the cauliflower, he's the only one that would eat it.

But it's when I got to the pears that I felt the life drain out of me. I stood there holding a freaking danjou pear and just cried.

A few weeks before he died he PERFECTED his pear torte. We bought like 10 lbs of pears from the Olympia Farmer's Market and he kept making these amazing tortes. Each one more awesome than the previous.

I'm wondering how to get on living when everything I see is a reminder that I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want this world without him in it. I know I have these beautiful children but they are a constant agonizing reminder of what we've just lost. Their pain kills me. And my pain envelopes it all. The quiet of this house in the evening is more than I can stand.

And tonight the sound of helicopters all around our little town is taunting me.
He's never coming back. He's never coming back.
And everytime I see a pear, or hear a helicopter or any one of a million tiny things I will remember what I've lost and what life looks like for me now. Lonely. Broken. Desperate for Heaven.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H.Aulden