He's gone, but he's still everywhere

[published in the Marin Independent Journal, June 3, 2008]

Peter died in April. We’d known each other for more than thirty years. We were friends, lovers, husband and wife, divorced. Sometimes we hardly spoke, so angry at each other that we needed to feel we were on the opposite ends of the earth. But in spite of that and surprising to us both in the end, the love we had was stronger than our ability not to feel it. It simply was. Like the air. How can the air be missing?

Painful, bittersweet and lasting--the sorrow you feel after the death of someone you loved stretches you. It’s an enrichment in that way. It has something to do with how all-encompassing the missing of that person is. How you look for him everywhere, because you sense him around you. How you see him at the steering wheel in the car behind you as you cross the Golden Gate Bridge or in the warm brown eyes of a mother deer in China Camp. You sense the movement of his hand in the wind at Rodeo Beach, or his breath over the horizon at the end of the day. And you feel yourself expanding because you're reaching in all the corners, farther than you've ever reached before. Wanting to touch what you know is out of reach, but looking for a way to do it anyway. Because you know, you simply know he's everywhere.

It has something to do with the depth of feeling, knowing that in order to survive you need to keep moving forward, to accept the sorrow as you would any imperfection in yourself or in others. Imperfections that you can do nothing about. And in that, you are perfect.

It's an exploration of what love really means. How it floods you with songs and lyrics, photographs of time you shared. Smiles and tears through the minutes and the hours. And the paradox of loving someone so much in spite of all the reasons not to. Loving unconditionally. Which is the revelation.

More than anyone it was Peter who urged me to write, who convinced me I was good at it, and who led me to believe in myself. Peter, wherever you are, find peace in your heart knowing that you'll forever be in mine.