A little more frequency Kenneth?

It's wild when suddenly, out of the blue, you are stopped in your tracks by the intense and unmistakeable ache of missing someone.

It's not exactly something that gets talked about either. It should, but it seems like our culture does not condone public mourning. Other cultures shriek and moan and tear out their hair and wear black for months to commemorate the passing of a person you love. Here, you cry, you have a funeral, and life is supposed to just go on. People are just left lonely in their own mournful bubble.

My grandfather has been gone for almost a year now. Really, almost eleven months, and it feels like I just saw him yesterday. It hasn't hit me that he doesn't exist anymore. April 7, 2010 was the last day he took a breath on this Earth and now he is no longer.

Sometimes I still expect to see him in all of the places that I used to see him. I expect to drive by his sawmill and see him out there sawing out a load of bird's eye maple for someone, or a load of white oak flooring. Then, I drive by and remember that the sawmill is gone and that he wouldn't be able to use it, even if it were still there.

I was struck by a memory today as I was driving on old Route 25, which I am sure has some other name now. I remembered thinking I was so grown up one day, shortly after I got my license because I picked up a Cookies'N'Creme Crunch Bar and a Sprite and I took them to him. He had a sweet tooth like no other and he was so surprised and happy to see me when I pulled up and got out of the car. It was a simple memory of something that happened twelve or so years ago, but it hit me like a hurricane.

Apologies

“So sorry for your loss.”

A phrase that echoes from innumerable mouths

and I just wish I could reply…

“He is not ‘lost’,” I want to say,

though we do not know

exactly

where he is.

He is gone.

Never again to walk along garden rows

finding four leaf clovers and mayflowers.

Never again to savor a chocolate

at Christmastime.

Never again to wash dirty hands

with Lava soap

or hold my hand in his.

His hat hangs on the chair –

unworn

as I ache for another glimpse of him

in my dreams.