It is Monday again.  As has the rest of the country we have had some intense weather.  Our’s has come in the form of rain.  Some days have been very gray.  It takes work to pull yourself out of the gloom.

People still talk about the weather when there is nothing else to talk about and I am beginning to become a connoisseur of “weather-speak.”   You can divert a lot of questions with weather speak.

The reason is easy, the longer you converse with people the more personal the questions become.

I can slip in some comments about my son and daughter sometimes without anyone asking me directly about my children.  My husband and I have become more comfortable when in a group of people who know us.  We often remember and relate circumstances and events concerning our son now.  It gets a little easier every time.

I can sense, however, when I won’t be able to comment.  I can feel the dread rising.  This person is going to ask me about my children and when I tell them they are going to feel somehow that they should not have asked.  I then feel that I should have softened it for them.  It is a difficult cycle.

So here at times I think, I should say more.  I should tell more about him.  But then I think, am I detracting from those who are still here that mean so much to me?   Do I make them feel that I don’t care as much about them?  Do they think that I think about my son all the time?

He is never far away in my thoughts, but I do have more and more time when it is like when he was living.  I did not think about him all the time then.  The triggers are more expected.  I know a little better what most of them will be, though some still sneak up on me.  And strangely at times, I still want to reach for the phone and call him.

The other night I held a conversation in my head with him.  I let him speak based on things he has said before to me.  He told me not to waste any time.  He told me not to be afraid.  He told me he was proud of me.

He was a man who carefully considered his choices and I think he would have me to do the same.

I am trying to stop dreading the future without him.  It is so easy to allow the negative thoughts to take over.

My new artwork that developed over the past year has been well received.  I have been juried in to the three shows I entered, winning a prize in one so far.   The work has been selling too which is a great boost for the ego, and an incentive to continue painting.

I pour a lot of my emotions into those painting.  They are those places where I have been with him and where I like to picture him still dwelling.  I stopped putting his figure in my paintings.  I can’t decide if I am willing to do that anymore.   Those that have him in it are hard to part with now.

I hear pithy sayings and statements in movies and read them in books and think- yes that it is – and then promptly forget them and begin to search again.  I feel that I am constantly searching and it is never clear what I am searching for.  I search in my art and my reading and in the faces of every young man I meet.

Thankfully I rarely see anyone built like him.   I have yet to meet anyone who sounds like him, not his voice or philosophy.  Perhaps it is strange that I am thankful for that, but I am.

When it gets bad, as it does at times there are things I fall back on.

I knit.

I read.

I do puzzles.

I exercise.

I find a friend and run away to shop or take photographs.

If it affects my sleep I use a self-hypnosis tape to relax.

It takes a lot of work to stop and concentrate long enough to pull myself out of the sorrow at times.  It is then I hear his voice encourage me to do so.  I truly believe he would prefer it.