I am here. Every morning my feet hit the floor and I am on to the daily task of living.  However, throughout the day, I find myself, more than once bowing down to the altar of where I am- this offering of grief and growing is sometimes plentiful, sometimes scarce, all the same, I lay down these offerings and leave them there-right there at the statue of grief and at the icon of growing. I have discovered many days are painfully slow, scathing and raw. Marks are left where once there was joy, compassion and a willingness to forgive.  As far as offerings at this particular temple go,the rarest of all stones are not always gilded in gold and silver.  Never polished. Nope.  Not at all.

The offerings found at this temple must be etched and carved, minute by minute to find what really remains.  I have discovered what is of value and what can be left. Sometimes, on some days what I first thought could be left behind, turned out to be the most valuable in moving me forward.

I did not expect this.

A few weeks back, after I uncurled myself from the sobbing heap of despair on the kitchen floor, I grabbed the key to the barn, that blue box of burden and shame- and with a force I can only describe as other worldly, I walked to the door, unlocked the lock and flung open the door.  It was the first time I could go near the barn without a wave of nausea. Without being frozen with fear.  Yet, there I was surrounded by the chaos of what my husband called creativity-and as I have come to understand, was also a shrine.

His own temple of doom.

His place of what could be, the innards of his amazingly brilliant mind, the odds and ends of potential, lost dreams, moments of clarity and glimpses into what consumed him.

I sat there for three hours.  I cried until I had nothing left to cry.I fixed my eyes on every corner, every wall, looking to see if I could see what my beloved saw in the few minutes before he took his life.  I wondered where he wrote the note, that God forsaken note and why there? Why?  There.

I cried for all the reasons these past months have meant to me, to my daughter.  I screamed for the loss, for the answers that will never come, for what I will never know and never be able to explain to my daughter. I kicked at things, these things that contained stories upon stories that never had and now never will, a happy ending. I threw things. I broke things. I let the silence sit right down beside me.

And then.  And then.

I said a prayer.  I stopped crying. I laid down an offering.I turned over a stone and I walked out of the barn.  Alive. I left that barn alive.

Slowly snippets of clarity came to me in the most unexpected ways.  I saw. I felt. I knew. I see moments of clarity where I could not.  And since that day, I have been able to be in the barn and go through countless items of my husbands past.Items he never intended for anyone to see.  It felt odd to pry.  It felt uneasy to better understand.  I found hidden places and combed through parts of his history he kept very well hidden- at least the items that were not taken out of the barn for reasons I still can not understand.  I found what fed his thirst to drown out the pain.

On that dreadful day, my husband’s truck was driven off our property.  I never got to see anything in his truck.  Never got to see his phone.  Did he try to call someone?  Did he try to call me and my daughter as we walked the beach?  Did he reach out to anyone? Did he try to pause for just a minute? Was it all just too late?

I have yet to actually read the note he left.  I know now what it said, but have yet to hold it in my hands. To feel what was there-to look at his familiar writing.

I now understand why he collected the letters and cards that meant most to him, put them in a box and hid them in my closet.  I now know more of the puzzle pieces. I now know more about the wounded little boy who was always catching up to the man.  I now know, more than anything what mattered most to him and what he made real, as real as he was able. I do not love him any less. I understand more the love I had for him and how that sustained him as did the birth of our daughter.  I know now.  I know now, that was not enough, as much as it was all things. It was just not enough.

That knowledge breaks me in pieces on many days.

Understand this:  These nuggets of knowledge do not make my grief any less painful.  It only makes my present more enlightened.

And if you think any of this sacrifice, his sacrifice, makes my anger any more manageable you are wrong.

Dead wrong.

Yes. I meant to say that.

I do not wish this on anyone.  And yet, as life tends to do, I have run into people who pray and have prayed at this altar of grief and growing  for their own set of circumstances.  I find myself craving their language and sharing what they know to be true.

Yes. Please. Tell me!  Tell me what you know. Tell me how to shake the stench of death from every thing I thought to be true.  Take away this constant buzz of dread from my ears that has lingered since I let out that horrific scream that took me to the ground and tore out a piece of my heart.

TELL ME.  Show me. Let me know the waves of this thing, this offering -this stone,at the feet of this temple will glean one day soon.

TELL ME. This buzzing reminder of indefinite change in my ears will stop and I can hear again without being assaulted by sounds of all kinds.

Tell me this skin of wilted wings will molt into something lighter.

I lay me down.  Here. In the living.