January 8th

Gil died 9 months ago; it feels like 9 years.  I have traveled so much new territory, so many miles, I can barely remember so long ago.
But also,
It was a year ago that we started down the slippery slope, and it feels like yesterday. Gil spent the weekend with the Kavanaughs while Adam and I journeyed to Ohio to visit David.  When we got back I sensed that something was wrong, he was weak, confused, my alarms went off. When we went to the hospital, his platelets were out of wack, and his myeloma was soaring.
In hindsight, his myeloma had mutated sometime in late December and was becoming an out of control, burn the house down kind of fire.  I remember that all so familiarly; it was the world I lived in, and it changed so abruptly 9 months ago.
I am reassured when I still tear up easily with this and that memory.  I have not become cold and callused but I am shifting Universes.  I was living in a world of Doctors and numbers, intuitions and crises.  I did my garden and turkeys as though it were still my life, but increasingly over the years, I was not present, to myself or anyone else.  Oh I had insights, and awareness of this and that but to the deeper current of my life, I was not tuned in.
I feel like I'm waking up now, like a person after a train wreak, who lost an arm or leg, who realizes that they are still alive, and that the rest of their life will be radically different.  The Universe has been swatting me upside the head, with crisis after crisis.  All at first looked like potential disaster, all were, with some $ and effort, manageable.  What have I to fear of flooded basements or dead vehicles? The current of my life is pulling me.  Where, I have no idea, but I'm learning how to move a little within it.   And trust.      I feel the reality, Death IS.  And equally, while I'm still alive,   BE ALIVE.