The Spectrum

Today started out fine enough. The kids were in a great mood, Dave made me a delish breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast with peanut butter, and I got held up in a hair of traffic. But it was fine because my commute is from Ventura to Santa Barbara and back, and the weather was unbelievable and the air was clear and it was sunny and it's February. So, like I said, it started out fine enough.

This isn't a photo from my drive today, but it's as close as I could get. Give me a break already.

Then, I decided to go for a run on my lunch break. It's one of my New Year's Resolutions. To run on my lunch break. So I went for a run on my lunch break. I headed out and took a turn and ran by the high school, and then...

...when I lived with my friend Jason in La Habra, one of my favorite runs took my by a high school...

...I started to cry. Not big heaving sobs or anything, but real tears and genuine sadness and missing my friend. And then it kind of passed.

And then Pandora played "I'll Remember" by Madonna, and I had to take another moment to myself. I took a little longer to recover.

I kept saying last year, "I just want to get to the one year mark." I felt like getting past the first year of the grief of losing a friend would be that great milestone, and then I sort of figured I wouldn't be sad anymore. That I wouldn't cry anymore.

But that's not how grief works. Sometimes, right when you're doing something you love, it comes all at once and washes over you like a tsunami, and it brings you to your knees, and the kicker is, is that after the moment passes, nothing changes. The anguish and sadness of it being the way it is lingers, like wet jeans on cold skin. And things will never be completely right with the world again for me, because this is a wrong that can't be righted.

Then, I picked up my kids, and the promise of new little lives brings an upwelling of happiness. Hot sleepy breath on my neck.

Tiny hands. Limp, tired legs.

Every possibility in the world sits and waits,

waits,

waits,

for their eyes to open tomorrow morning.