I found your Christmas stocking. It rests on our coffee table mocking me, comforting Carla who sits on it throughout the day. Cats believe anything remaining in a space it should not be is theirs for the taking. Blankets, post-it’s, purses, stockings. Your Christmas stocking has a “J” on it. I bought us new stockings the second holiday we had together. I thought we deserved something nice, our own traditions. You put a lavender essential oil and a lavender face mist in my stocking. I got you a new orange pen and a small notebook from Lucca. You felt so thoughtful to me. What do I do with this stocking? When I pulled it out of the box of holiday decor, I pondered if I knew anyone whose name started with a “J” who might want it but could not think of anyone. I imagined driving to Goodwill and dropping it off, but that does not seem right. Randy suggested donating it to a free little library for someone else to have but giving it away at all feels wrong. I can put it in the box I purchased but have yet to organize for all of your things. Something is stopping me from sorting my memories of you. So here I am, nine days later, wondering what to do with the parts of you I do not feel ready to lose or let go of. Grief defined.

I am in a space of saying “yes” to social gatherings although still have little mental bandwidth to make the gatherings happen on my own. I spent the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend reconnecting with a friend and meeting his wife for the first time so our combined three Boston Terriers could play together. It was lovely and hilarious. Dottie humped their dogs despite my discouragement and it was so nice to remember the presence of this person I cared about so long ago. After departing, I wondered what it would be like to come across a herd of Boston Terriers in the wild and determined it would be comically noisy and frenetic. Can you imagine hiking in the wilderness and coming across a gaggle of these tuxedoed creatures? Afterwards, I attended a friend’s child’s fourth birthday. I had a nice time and left at that point where I could keep drinking or drive myself home.

Both social interactions back-to-back awoke the Part of me that is lonely since you died. Most everyone I met was my age or around it. All of them were partnered and/or married. Several had children. We were not ready for kids and now I face a life where I may never have them. I do not want to be a single parent and am comfortable with this decision when I revisit the position I am in. But still. I sobbed when I got my first period after you died and realized no part of you would be living in my life anymore. I was devastated. Being around people my age is a stark reminder things did not happen the way I hoped they would. That you died.

Part of me feels like I massively failed at this thing everyone else seems to figure out. I can say the things one says to remind themselves their worst fears are not reality, and I do say those things. I did not plan for this. This is not my fault. I cannot predict the future and some of these fears may not happen. Saying these things does not temper this Part’s fear that I will always feel lonely. What if I am too broken to have the things I still want for myself? Gulp. There is no comfort to assuage this fear. It is primal, rooted, and obstinate. The next person who comes into my life has to be able to help me hold the large amount of heartbreak I experienced in my life. And there is just so so so much of it. It feels impossible to expect this kind of person to exist when I can barely contain the devastation myself. I am looking at your stocking as I write this. It is laughing at me.

When I got home from this child’s birthday party, I decided to watch Train Dreams. I am reaching for more grief content. I crave camaraderie in what I am experiencing, a validation that I am lonely in a profound way and other people know this feeling. If other people know this feeling, then I am seeable. I exist.

I read a review that described Train Dreams as a movie you do not watch, but drink in. I could not agree more. The film exquisitely captures the simple and extraordinary experience of living when faced with profound loss. What does it mean to live when ths much devastation exists in you all at once? Watching Train Dreams felt like watching what I feel like when I explain to my dad that I touched Time when you died. Because I feel like I touched Time when you died. I do not have another way to explain what it feels like to lose you. I feel like the trauma of losing you is not so much in the integration of a world with you in it (before) to a world without you in it (after). Although this is clearly a massive piece of it. The trauma of losing you is somewhere in the murk of having a new and profound understanding of how tenuous all of this living-stuff really is. I feel like I gained an overpowering knowledge of all the universe’s truths.  I have an image of Father Time touching my forehead and giving me a data transfer of everything there is to know about everything. Train Dreams showed me this feeling, the feeling of touching Time in a way I can barely articulate in writing. I worry I sound delusional to people as I try to describe it, but then I remember anyone who thinks I am delusional has not experienced this kind of loss. This kind of loss is delusional.

Reading about Robin Lovesong’s near death experience in her memoir Loving Bravely is the closest I have come to understanding this new knowledge articulated with words. But I did not die and come back to life the way she did. You died and you did not come back. Sometimes I wonder at what exact point did I received this knowledge. When did Time touch Me? I suspect it happened when I used my entire body to move you from your side to your back and began pressing into your chest at a count the first responder talked me through while on the phone. “I need you to slow down and go to my beat, Natalie” the first responder directed. I followed their instruction. I touched you when you were dead, attempting to bring you back for more than 8 minutes before the paramedics came. I touched what it means to be living when you were not. My life will never be the same. If that is not Touching Time, what is?

After my last session today, I checked something on Facebook and the memory I posted on the one-month anniversary of you dying popped up. I forgot today marks thirteen months since I found you on our floor. I feel relieved and devastated to have forgotten. I am no longer counting down and tracking this timeline which means I am making progress in healing. But, what does it mean that I am not? On r/Widows, what I read is correct: the second year is harder than the first. So far, the second year is full of realizations contextualizing the meaning of your loss. I opened the box of Christmas ornaments and realized it had been two years since I had seen them. Last year I was living with my mother and stepdad in the haze of having lost you, counting the hours and days as they passed, looking for any milestone to anchor me to Earth. I was in my mother’s Christmas, a familiar place during an unfamiliar time. Time passes more quickly now than it did one year ago. I have had a year to fine-tune my skills. And, including healing, I am more skilled at looking for the signs that you lived at all. Your stocking is on my table because I do not want to forget. Because, alongside the fear that my life will always be lonely, is a fear that I will forget what it feels like to love and be loved by you. What happens to the things I put in your box? Touching time, indeed.

Note to self: Touching Time will be the title of whatever memoir this blog becomes.