the end of march

But you speak of Master Gandalf, as if he was in a story that had come to an end.’ ‘Yes, we do,’ said Pippin sadly. ‘The story seems to be going on, but I am afraid Gandalf has fallen out of it.

-JRR Tolkien, The Two Towers

There are electronic components that will never be fitted together. There are video clips that will never be combined into a funny movie. There are phones and iPads patiently sat on chargers, waiting to be picked up. There are email accounts diligently receiving messages from one list or another, some vendor or campaign or notification that has no one to read it now.

Death, even prepared for, leaves a shadow. The clock ticks on, the rest of the world proceeds, but there is a hole shaped like your loved one that you know will be there forever. How big a hole, and how you maneuver around it, and how far you fall into it, is largely a matter of chance and timing. By the time you’re 83, there are (or ought to be) wills and durable powers of attorney and advance healthcare directives and DNR orders and the like, and if you are recently pre-deceased there may even be a spreadsheet and a Google Doc that can be duplicated to start the checklist anew.

Sometimes you have a couple of years to work up to it, and the pre-grieving renders the moment itself almost a relief, that your loved one is at peace. Sometimes you know it can’t be far, that it’s a known risk, and that the loved one is prepared for the moment and not unwilling to go, but it turns out you were unwilling to let them in ways you didn’t realize. And you didn’t leave anything unsaid that needed saying, but you wish you’d maybe had a couple more years of saying it. And you tell yourself it isn’t fair and they deserved better, and both are true, but fair is where you go to see the pigs. The days are slow, the years are swift, and life has a way of chivvying you along when you try to linger too long at any given moment.

We lost Tom on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We lost Marge today. We miss them terribly.

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