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It's been a while.

My life has gone in various directions, I started a new blog a few years ago and have been writing quite a bit. Today I wrote this, about today.

It has been a busy ten years.

I have completed the novelization of Emma's last year, you can view it here. I had hoped it would be therapeutic, I'm not sure if it was. Who says "I think I'll spend a few weeks intimately examining the details of the most miserable time of my life"? Me.

It is drawn from this blog and my memories, my mom is my first editor, Lieve is helping with the cover. It runs about 19000 words and early reviews have been very positive, but they've been from friends. I hope to have it published, my idea is to fund this website and make donations to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network with the proceeds, SO...please read it but when it is published please purchase a copy. Or seven.

I received a box from my mother yesterday, thought it was her edits, but instead it was my baby book. Fascinating, I haven't changed that much. One teacher commented "Blake doesn't walk, he dances". 

 I'm realizing that very shortly my memories of "what I was doing a year ago" will not include Emma.

 Memorial Day weekend 2010 was a big memory factory, more than I realized at the time, but then I guess that's typically the case with times that turn out to be memorable. It was the point immediately before the fall, when as dismal as things appeared we still held hope of finishing the year together.

 This year was the memories that will help balance last year. Lieve and I went to the opera with friends Friday night, Iolanthe. Okay, the last time I was at the Academy of Music it was with Emma, for Faust, so that evening was bouncing around with the faeries on stage, but it was still a step forward. We spent the night in Philly (at a hotel, a small reminder that I don't really belong there anymore). Before the opera we had dinner in old city, taking the bus to the Academy was enough to make me want to avoid that part of town. Remembering the visits to the different clinics, the imaging center where the last PET was done, the corner where we...

 I suppose it should come as no surprise that the month has been filled with reminders. 

 I've been invited to attend a memorial service, for those who "spent their last moments" at Jefferson Hospital, hosted by Pastoral services. They asked that I bring  momento to help create a "memory table". I'm not sure how or if I wish to participate. I was feeling like this had passed and now I'm smothered in it.

 Next week Lieve and I visit both Nolan and Devon, I need to focus on my family.

 Last Friday, 1 April 2011, would have been our twelfth wedding anniversary. What can I say?

 In the eleven and a half years that Emma and I were able to share our lives, we felt everything. We were our happiest, our saddest, our healthiest, our sickest. We loved, we fought, we held each other through the darkest of nights. We both threatened to walk away, and neither of us ever did.

 I would never forget her. I never forget people anyway, so that sounds a little meaningless. I would love to be able to give it more meaning, the reality of her absence seems so unreal. As if she's in another room, and I'm failing to tend to her. I still feel that I haven't done enough, that there's something more.

 At times like this I find myself begging her to come back. I suppose that indicates that I'm not fully connected to reality. I haven't maintained a place for her, I have in that way been selfish, looking to my own needs, trying to fill the space she left. What do I say about that? Her presence is that empty space, it can never be filled. I...

 I'm still moving boxes out of storage, both literally and figurativly.

 Yesterday I received a collar for Autumn, black with rhinestones, which I had ordered. Emma had always wanted to get it, she said she would have gotten a diamond collar when she hit the lottery. A strange and bittersweet kind of thing, keeping her desires, doing as she wished. 

 I unpacked and distributed about 15 cardboard boxes from our storage space. Funny how I still say "Our". A lot of Emma's clothing, lingerie and peignoirs that she had saved. Things we had put away, photographs, cards, and my old life. That's what boxes are for, to store the things you no longer need, but still think you may want some day. I found clothes that I had forgotten about, things Emma hadn't liked, from my life before her. 

 I remembered that Emma wasn't my beginning. That I did have a life before her, and that I can have a life after. 

 I had felt that it was best to get as much done with the boxes as possible in one day, the cat collar had put me in a funky mood, as long as I was there...

Yes, I did notice that I didn't make an entry in this blog for over a month. That doesn't mean that Emma is no longer around, she just stays in the background most of the time. As I realized that February was passing and there was nothing relevant to Emma to write about, I actually made a conscious effort not to post some puff entry.

 Last Sunday Lieve and I were taking a little nap, little, I didn't take my glasses off as she fell asleep on my chest, the way Emma used to. I dozed off anyway, it was raining and our bed was very cozy. I was thinking about how much Emma had loved the rain, it seemed to make her heart beat a little faster, even as it made her want to retreat to a cozy warm place.

 Lesson one, don't fall asleep with warm thoughts of your dead wife.

 I'm not sure where dream and reality intersected, I know I was asleep for a moment at least. I became aware, not quite awake yet, of the rain, of the head on my chest and the body next to me. You know where this...

 There was a Mass dedicated to Emma today, she had asked for no services but had allowed that a mass could be held at least six months after her passing. Today also happens to be five months since my first date with Lieve.

 Emma's cousin Lorraine made the arrangements, it was at Annunciation Church. Lorraine, Emma's Aunt Anna and cousin John, myself and Lieve were there, as well as several members of Lorraine's family.

 I hadn't been to a Catholic Mass in quite some time,  I had forgotten how the sermon has nothing to do with the Biblical verses that are read, so today in Emma's honor we heard an anti abortion sermon, fitting only in that one of the reasons that she didn't attend a church was because of the politicizing of the church's religious views. 

 As I sat there, I remembered what she did like about Mass. The beauty of the church, the music, the sense of family. I thought of the last time we had been to Annunciation, for Rose's funeral. How she had preferred Saint Nicholas, her childhood parrish. Mostly I thought about Emma. I haven't done that very much lately, just think about...