One Year

Today it’s been one year.

It’s been both the longest and shortest year of my life. I’ve tried to make it through her loss in part by writing these things that I post, and this is the 80th iteration if you can believe that. Eighty little missives that I’ve written to both try to keep her alive and to keep me alive, all metaphorically of course.

One year ago Bryce began calling me at 6am but I didn’t see it then because my phone is silenced until 8am each morning. But when I finally looked at my phone that morning there were over a dozen missed calls from him and a single voice message that said, “Grandpa, please call, it’s happened again.”

By that time it was too late. Despite the best efforts of the EMTs and the emergency room attendants, Adrianna died at 7am, and with her a large part of my world.

I decided I wanted to be awake this time, to sit and contemplate where we all are now and what transpired, so I set a silent alarm on my watch for 6am this morning and quietly got up so as to not disturb Cindy. I went and sat on the stairs that are the center point of our open floor plan first floor and quieted my mind, tried to let peace flow over me.

The sun didn’t officially rise until about 20 minutes later, but of course in the dawn the house was still filled with that scattered indirect light that illuminated with a soft and gentle warmth that didn’t intrude on my thoughts. I tried to keep those thoughts to a minimum in any event.

We have a dusk-to-dawn automatic light outside our back door that lights up the patio, and it struggles with the transition from light to dark at both dawn and dusk. It flickers, turning on and off in succession as it tries to guess its proper state.

From my vantagepoint on the stairs I could see the light illuminated when I first sat down at 6, but around 6:40 it started to flicker on and off. Quickly at first like eight-notes, off and on, like a ship at sea trying to signal the shore. Then the flickering slowed to quarter notes, then pulses became less consistent, the rhythm of the flickers becoming more erratic.

It was then that I saw the flickering light for what it really was: a heartbeat. The light had started strong, then began to flicker, becoming more erratic and slower until finally, around 7, it extinguished completely.

The light had gone out.

Cindy gave me a gift this morning: a personalized wind chime that I’ve just hung from our patio pergola. It’s beautiful and makes beautiful music and is a perfect salve for today. I look forward to its song in the coming years and will imagine it’s my daughter speaking to me. I think I’m allowed that.

There’s so much I could say today, so much that still needs to be released from my brain, so many more feelings and thoughts and memories and anecdotes to share. So much more regret and sorrow, but also so much more joy, but for now, as my last official discourse and commentary for Year One, I’ll leave it at that.

Except for this:

Thank you to everyone who has helped me through this year, I think it would have been so much worse without you. Thanks to all that reached out directly, but I know that’s hard to do and if you didn’t, I understand (I’d have had a hard time doing so, too, if the shoe was on the other foot, which I hope it never is.) Just knowing these are being read, and that people who didn’t know Adrianna at all or well perhaps know her a bit better helps me so, so much.  I want to name everyone I can, but fear I will accidently leave out a name, so I’ll take the lead of smart award show winners who don’t even try.

Thank you.