It just keeps raining

The rain on the new windows.

I keep thinking about my grief in terms of what will be the worst time. Randy’s birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the anniversary of his death? As though when I get to the worst day everything will be easier after that.

Now as I’m coming up to that anniversary I feel like every day is a rerun of those last months of his life. By this time last year I had retired and was with him all day every day. But he was in a lot of pain and he spent the first part of each day dozing on the sofa.

We had planned to take some little day trips, but by the time he was awake enough to dress he would say it was too late to start and we should wait until a day when we could start earlier. But he could never start earlier.

And it rained a lot in those last months. One of the things we wanted to do was drive down to the town we grew up in just to see what changes there had been and to tell each other stories about the places we hung around. But he didn’t want me to have to drive in the rain.

So he wanted to wait for a day when the sun was out and we could start early. But that day never came, and soon he couldn’t even go for a walk.

And now the rainy season is back and it’s an El Niño year and I feel like I’m drowning in sad. Even when it’s sunny I’m dreading the rain and feeling the time inexorably moving toward the day Randy died.