Tonight I realized something.  As I write, it’s the day that marks 3 years since Grant died, July 2019.  On this day, I have just come back from my daily walk in a neighborhood that still feels foreign to me, even though I’ve lived here 2 years . 

It was the first thing I did, find a walking path that I could make mine.  Therapy through walking was my first need.  Each time I walk this path I look at the houses.  I don’t know most of the people who live in them, but I wonder about them. 

Who are they?  Why are they here?  What is their life like? I keep walking.  I’ve passed these homes everyday for 2 years and I still don’t know.  Where I live is not where I feel at home.  I hardly know anyone. I don’t go out of my way to socialize or make friends. 

I’m in a home that I poured my heart and soul into. It was to create a sanctuary that would hold me safely for all the time that I’m in it.  Each time I walk, I go alone. I don’t like to share this space, not yet.  I hope one day I will.  I pass people; some I know, most I don’t. 

I say hello and wave.  Most of them are with someone; a friend, a spouse, a child. There are usually two of them.  I notice these kinds of things.  I smile and say hello. They smile back and say hello as we pass, and that’s that.  

I remember the neighborhood I lived in where Grant and I built our life, the one I moved from to be here.  I knew many people there.  It was home while it was home.  I knew who lived in each house I passed as I walked my path there.  

I knew some of what their life was like, and why and how they got there.  When Grant died,  I couldn’t live there anymore.  I had to leave. This is what I asked myself tonight… Why would I leave a place I know and move to a completely new place where I know no one? 

I realized why… Because I didn’t want to look at my neighbors; the ones who knew me, and see in their eyes, the knowing.  I didn’t want to look at them and know they knew what happened. They knew my life before.  Neither of us knew what would happen next.  

I just couldn’t face a face I knew, and keep myself together.   I had to get away to be alone. To be alone in what I didn’t know instead of alone in what I did know.  They just didn’t go together.  I was too scared or felt unable to try.  

So here I am… walking alone again.  Filling my soul with thoughts and trying so hard to touch my own heart.  I don’t know how to do that while not being alone.  I try.  I try to connect and be with others. There’s a certain amount of time I can do it. 

Then I reach back for what I know and it doesn’t include anyone around me.  I do all the things and then I long for the quiet of finding what’s new in my heart. I look to see where I’m at. I feel in this space, to see if when I smile it matches what’s inside of me. 

It gets closer than before, but it doesn’t match yet.  I want so deeply to show the truth.  So I do at times.  It's so hard and so scary and so different; that it’s a thing that happens most or easiest, alone.  It’s hard.  I don’t like it, and I love it too. 

I moved to a neighborhood where no one knows me so I could find me without being distracted by anyone who knew what I thought I was before. What I thought I was, it never really was fully me. 

In the time it’s taken me to find the closer version of what is really who I am; I keep going back to who I was and where I am now. I’m so far from that original idea of myself.  I hope that one day, I’ll recognize myself again.  

Until then, I’ll keep smiling like the smile that I have is real.  It is as real as it can be.  This smile helps me each time I use it. It helps me to know that even though the smile is real, it still hurts to smile as well as feels good to try.  

I’ll keep walking because it heals my heart to move. It heals me to feel that I’m not running away, but confidently moving toward something. I’m moving to what is beautiful beyond my description.  

I’ll keep saying hi and remembering when I didn’t walk alone. I think of those many, many walks Grant and I took hand in hand. I know that I’m ok.  I know that there is something beautiful I’m finding in this loss.  And the walks I take alone,  massage my heart.