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In March, it will be two years since my best friend and husband died. I feel the same when I’m talking to him. So I do it all the time. I know he hears me and he’s with me. Even our skeptical daughter is having mystical moments. I’m carrying on with the life we’ve always had together. Only now I get to organize the garage my way. And he’s still pranking me to make me laugh.

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I love this Kris. We should definitely keep talking to them and keeping communication open ❤

I don't get pranked nearly as much as I used to and I wish he would step it up a little lol. But I do notice beauty so much more than I used to. Everywhere I see beauty, there he is.

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Lovely. This reminded me of the Japanese word, Kintsukuroi ~ more beautiful for having been broken.

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If you read through all the comments you're the third person who mentioned it after reading this post. I had no idea so many people knew of the Japanese art of Kintsugi. It's kind of neat everyone thought of the same thing!

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no way! That's so interesting! I love the idea that something broken can still be beautiful.

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Just ask him to step it up or give you a sign that is so big, it leaves you with no doubt. That's when the fun starts. Works every time.

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I will try that. One time I asked him to send me a lone coyote on the hillside behind my condo. In the middle of the night I was woken up by an entire coyote party lol. Their yapping sounded like a bunch of hyenas 😁

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Good one, Curtis!

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When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.

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Mom, it's interesting you mentioned this because Jan, another reader just commented and mentioned the exact same thing. Kintsugi.

Beautiful analogy.

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I was just about to look up the name of this art form. Thanks for doing it for me. If I ever get back to Japan, I want to learn from a master, how to do it. It's so symbolic of life itself in all its brokeness and our inherent worth, which is something Curtis understood as a similarity between himself and me. 💞

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I used to be very musical and exuberant. Since the loss I'm dealing with those things, and many others, about me that I felt defined me have seemingly vanished. In the same vain as the author there's a part of me that feels like I don't deserve to enjoy myself or fully participate in life. That this state I'm in is a kind of purgatory for my "sins" as it were. This is all self imposed of course and I realize that. For some reason though, it doesn't pull me out of those feelings. And acting on them by being a hermit and not participating in life. And moving further and further from where I can remember what that felt like. To live without the baggage of this colossal loss that I feel like defines who I am now, or seem to be.

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Shrams, I totally understand this feeling. I often have days still, when I don't feel like I deserve to be laughing or smiling. Especially over things my son and I used to enjoy together. It feels like those times should be locked away in a vault, never to be enjoyed again.

But other days I do allow myself to realize that if I don't allow myself joy, nobody else is going to do it for me. If I live another 40 years, they will be long and painful ones without some type of happiness.

I feel you. 100%.

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Wow, does this hit home. When my husband died so suddenly, I felt like was somehow projected into an alien world where all my assumptions about where I fit in and what my life was about no longer applied. I never realized I'd been living in a bubble of security until it blew up. So, yes, that changed me. But, nearly 20 years on and at the risk of sounding like I'm sugar coating a terrible experience, I think I might just possibly be a bit of a better person. There's the Japanese art form that gets mentioned all the time in this context — I forget what it's called — in which broken pottery is repaired with gold so the cracks show but are revealed as something to treasure.

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You summed it up perfectly in your first couple of sentences. I feel that all the time. It's like I fit in but only on the outskirts, never a full and proper fit.

I've heard of that Japanese art form before. I googled and it's called Kintsugi. What a beautiful comparison of what we were and what we have become.

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I think that sense of being mismatched or out of place means the healing process is still underway. I can't speak to anyone else's loss, but I know for me that one day, without my noticing it, I felt normal. Different from before, but normal.

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