It's been a while. An infinite and yet finite amount of time. I'm not sure what this place to think has become. It's like a graveyard of words. When it's so fresh and new you go and sit on the still-soft ground and sob and hug the earth, the memory, your heart, your hurt, your words, until your sorrow seems to seep like rain into the dirt and your words are jagged like the clumps of dirt, freshly dug. As the ground grows hard with time and you rebuild your composure like fresh fragile grass, you cry less. Your words like the dirt grow harder but more articulate as you understand the place you're in now. Then the stone arrives with her date and you can stop counting the time that's passed because the date will never change. The grass color is just barely noticably different. Your tears no longer soften the hard ground, the headstone won't give against them anyway. The words are smooth and never change; they will always be the same date, the same memories. They are hard now, those words, like the headstone in a graveyard.
Gabbie doesn't have a gravestone. She has a marker in my garden with her name and date. She has a stone at my mom's church. She has a large stone beneath a tree in a garden in the city. They are permanent like her death. She has me. I carry her words around within me. I carry her around within me.
I do not know what to do with this place. This graveyard of words. I come still and read my words. I come still and read about this heartache. I come because I need to remind myself sometimes of what is important. I'm not sure why. The important things in life find ways to remind me of their importance all the time. I don't really need to seek out reminders.
It's been 5 years, 3 weeks, 6 months and 1 day since she has passed. The date stays the same and still sometimes I count how long it's been, how much life has changed. I can still see the grass is a different color, the ground hasn't really totally settled. It never will. I think I planted different grass. My tears do not soften the earth where she is not. They soften my heart where she is.
I had considered not returning. But, like a graveyard I think I would still come. I'd come to sit, to read the words, to see the date again. I'd come and watch the changing of the seasons of grief. Maybe now, instead of never returning as I had first thought when I stopped by here today, I return to put out new flowers and tend the grass, clean the stone and look around at all the ghosts.
Thanksgiving is upon us. I am thankful for so much. I am thankful for all the things that are important.
