Bereavement

There seems to be a small conspiracy afoot to keep me from being alone right now. My friends keep appearing, bearing azaleas and beer, and so I am not alone to brood, and think about Toby, and keep on going through pictures. My dining room table is covered with all the photo albums; the sink of nostalgia is backed up, I'm underwater. We are the bereaved, I whispered into Theo's dim little pointed head, and wept. Theo is also bereaved, mostly puzzled, and I think a little afraid that he might do something wrong and vanish like Toby. Certainly he is more subdued than he has ever been before. J brought her dogs over tonight to keep him company and Theo reacted more or less the same way I did: we hid behind each others' legs and whimpered.

It isn't just Toby, although it is at the same time, the loss of a friend, confidante, hell, better and more than a husband or boyfriend; he certainly outlasted several. It's also the loss of my twenties and thirties; the time when my children were young, when I was young, when we lived in Maryland and the world was still possible. My kids are grown or more than half grown now and I had to tell them by phone that Toby had died. M is still young, but he is a boy, and in the context of boarding school he was manly on the phone. I know that if he was at home he would have come to me at midnight, crying, wanting again to be reassured. Instead the cadence of his voice on the phone was the cadence of a man, and he wanted to find out if I was okay. But if only I had some reassurance to give him.

But I have none.

Each of these losses - Fred, Toby - chip away at me and there is less and less left to respond. I miss my dog. My dog died, and there's a hole in my soul. My eyes hurt. Everyone has been so sweet, and so nice, and

and my dog died, and there's a hole in my soul.