Dear Jane,
Soon it will be six months since you died. Tomorrow I will travel to Bannockburn to be with Con and George, Kat and Rogan and Christopher and Barbara. Anthea is travelling with me. On Monday, we will inter your ashes in the family plot in the Cromwell cemetery. Kat and I are planning to build a cairn in your memory.
I know that your memory will be with me. The only times that I have been to Bannockburn before were with you. And before you died,the only times that I was with your family was with you. Those are not the reasons, tho. Over the past two and a bit weeks of my holiday, your memory has been with me. You have been with me, Jane.
You weren’t so with me in the rush to finish the year’s activity and depart but as soon as the pressure retreated, there you were. There you were in the travel to Tyl’s, in the Christmas accounting and at each step of the holiday that I would have been sharing with you, had not that crazy event happened that changed everything. And of course, had we agreed to change the holiday plan that we had for Hautanoa to one for Auckland and environs. Each step of each walk across sand, through bush, on and off ferries, through malls even, was echoed by your silent footsteps beside me. Each surfacing in the water lacked the sight tho not the anticipation of your grin.
Of course you did not read my posts here that I was not ready to let you go, or even contemplate it. You did not notice as I began to get on with my life without you: working, rearranging the house, having fun, being single. You do not notice that you have returned to occupy this non-space near me. Or do you? Jane?
You felt closest when we visited Allan and Madge. Young Allan, Miharu, Hana, Leo and Haluka were there too. You had pride of place, absent at the dining table.
I remember my pledge, at your funeral, that I am going to keep the love you gave me close to my heart, Jane. That I am going to stay happy. Just now, I feel a little sad. I’d like you to be a little more materially with me, my Lovely. I know that you have changed me, though, given me something that I can’t lose. That you are with me as some kind of part of me, a knowing that I have, a strange extension, an expansion of me, gradually coming to fit better. Some how you remain alive, the life that you give me giving you life.
You were here. You left. You are still with me. Wherever I go, you are walking with me, Jane. I know that you always will be.
2 replies on “Walk With Me”
Hello darling
I, too, am missing Jane at Christmas, and the not having her aroundness that should have been. The small steps we were taking towards each other led, after all, nowhere and yet, she made a deep impression on me that lasts still. And aches quietly with you and for you. Your Lovely.
She was here. She left. She is still with you. Wherever you go, she is walking with you, Dan. Know that she always will be.
love always
and always love
Han
Hi Dan,
I found your blog through a reader on mine, and I’m glad I did.
It’s been 4 years since I lost my brothers a month apart, but it is still a re-occuring thread on my blog to the point of being a sidebar category “losing a loved one.” Their deaths were like a fire lit beneath me as far as my writing goes and since then it seems that I have been on study course of it. I’m glad to have found someone else dealing with the subject so openly and honestly. I’m not sure anything in our culture can prepare us for what it really means and how much it changes us. And maybe we have to look to each other. After they died, I felt like I was in a foreign country and was writing from the trenches of grief’s frontline.
Come by if you want to when you get a chance.
PS I also recently lost my dad and am currently still processing that. I feel more in control of my feelings this time and that this loss is more “normal.” Losing my brothers was not and it broke my heart.