Essence

I've been trying to commune with the essence of Gil,  I write as I watch the sunrise hit the western    fog above the blues and white caps of the Pacific.  I've come to a seaside haven called Sea Ranch for a week long  ?exploration? of what is essential to me.
I remember wondering in the early days, as I was learning what lay under the skin of my oh so foreign new love,  what his essence would have been without the culture of Jewish Bronx youngest son of an overpowering judgemental, loving and abusive father.  Gil was one of the most courageous men I've ever known, but it hid under passivity so as not to attract wrath.  Some of his impulsive generosity was to mask his neediness but much of it was his true delight in sharing the largess of the Universe, and his playfulness and profound joy in mastery of his body were all of his deepest self.  Now that that husk is powdered ash in the box by the stereo, I can focus more easily on who he was/is? on that more essential plane.  I would love to meet this most truly Gil in a dream and tell him how I saw him, and loved him and needed, needed, needed him to make me whole.
As I write the sun is creeping up from the blue, over the rocks and into the ever  green.    So    who is the essential me?  As I fuzz my eyes and try to see my deepest self as I have been seeing Gil, it's so much harder.  I've always thought of myself as an introspective, reflective sort, but I think I've been so preoccupied with care taking my tribe these last 40+ years, that I've neglected my inner sky.  That is my task now, this week, this year.  As I practice this eye fuzzing, it's so interesting to see friends and new folk and not get distracted by their packaging, their stories about who they are but just to feel their under the skin pulse.  I have no illusion that I am seeing all, but my nose is tuned to the essential.  
I look forward to the sun hitting my ever green essence.

Exploring

I'm living in the land of "I knew a man called Gil Miller, years ago", yet still mist up when I think about him.  What's up with that? One foot in getting on with life, another not wanting to leave the moisture of the loss.  I've gotten a few more days where I get an appetizer of the solitude in my future, enough to know I'll like it.  My mantra of "yes" is taking me out to a ??somatic/body workshop?? in California the week of my 63rd birthday.  It seems auspicious as I try to find the way into being more "embodied".
The WHO are you, WHY are you, WHAT do you WANT? still plays in the back room of my mind but it seems to need less thinking and more tentative exploring what's possible, tuning into how I feel as I try it.
Grieving is the oddest experience I can recall this lifetime, but perhaps there are many others equally surprising if I can just stay open and risk trying them,