feet on the ground

More than three years since I've blogged.  Three years in which my feet have carried me all over the world while my head has been, just, I don't know, somewhere else.  Maybe I'm being hard on myself, but it feels like I've spent a long time with my head up my own ass.  I have had time to think and meditate, to love and miss, to despise, fear, mourn, and yes, at moments, to feel out-of-this-world joy. But until now, I've not been able to write about any of it, and some of the time I took for all that brooding feels very selfish in hindsight.  Maybe I'm able to, now, write about some of it and break out of my own head space.  I have to make a start and then we'll see.

This has definitely been the strangest and most change-ful three years of my life.  There have been amazing adventures, alone and with my loved ones.  I saw Turkey and Israel. I walked the Via Dolorosa and prayed at the Western Wall.  I drank wine in Spain and Pisco in Peru, endless beers in tiny bars in Hell's Kitchen and SoHo, and in NoLita...well, nevermind.  Things happen.  I've run in grand old parks in Madrid and my beloved Central Park. I've run through the Andes and the San de Cristo's in Colorado, and so so many miles through the woods of my hilly home turf. (Running has saved me.  It's no less dramatic than that. It has been a lifeline of normal in a world that felt mad at times.) My son got married to his long-time love.  Wow.  And my stepson gave me a grandson.  Again, tears and joy, on that day and every day since he was born.  And so much laughter.

Then came the bad and ugly and terrible--who would we be without the tragedies of our lives?  Maybe happier but less appreciative of our happiness.  That statement doesn't make anything better, even if it's true.  I hardly remember who I was before Lee died because his death colors the way I see things in my life.  I don't mean that in a doom and gloom way, not that it makes everything gray.  But it has changed my lens.  I think it is that I try to "see" for both myself and Lee. "Try" isn't even the right word.  It feels necessary. Everything has two aspects: how I see it and how I think Lee would see it.  Quite often the way he saw things would just piss me the hell off, but that was Lee, and I still need that "Lee-ness" to exist in the world, whether or not I agreed with him. I think I will always need it to exist because of the tragedy of his death at 59 when there was so much left to live for.

On any given moment of any day, I can transport myself back to that moment.  That very most horrible moment.  And not just that moment but every minute and hour of the many months leading up to that moment.  Often I am transported completely unbidden.  It happens and I am strangled and blind-sided with the pain of it.  Occasionally, I go back to that moment on purpose because I need to for some reason I can't explain.  I need to remember every one of those minutes as much as I need to try to picture and feel and remember the good ones, because there are too many hours and days and months when we stumbled through life together NOT appreciating, not seeing, not feeling, and those are just gone.  Dear god, how much time we waste not noticing.  If nothing else, I have learned this.  If I learn nothing else in all of my life, I have learned this.  I know Lee and I would agree, though, on the lens through which we see our grandson.  When I beam at that wonderful small human, I beam for both of us. For him, especially, I want to try to keep alive all the possible "Lee-ness" I can.

And that is all I can write about for now.  My feet feel (mostly) back on the ground.  I am surviving and starting to feel life come back into my extremities instead of being balled up in a knot in my stomach.  There are adventures coming.