2016-02-15 - 9:17 p.m.

Red Letter Day

The first thing that happened after I woke up for the twelfth time to a gut punch named "Mike is dead" was, I went outside to walk the dog, barefooted, and tore off the top of my left big toe on a protruding tree root. Outstanding!

The next thing that happened, between the bloody toe (which I just barely noted, I might add...seems a dead love of your life reduces the absorption of other pains. Interesting!) and the crushing, ever present, consuming, distracting, relentless grief, was work pile-up, made more difficult by a pounding rain and thunderstorm that made my internet (work lifeline) go out and kept me from getting things done in a timely manner. Then, as my clients began to inquire "wheres my stuff?" all at once, I got a call informing me that I had failed to make a payment and was a full 17 days past due. I had gotten distracted by "dead husband", see, and forgot to make the note. I thought he had already made it, you understand, but he had missed it because, ya know, dead and all.

So I open our bank account online to do an online bill pay. In order to get into our account, I need a special 6 digit number texted to the phone on record, which happens to be my husband's phone. So I plug in the number, and go to his phone to retrieve the code. I go to his texts and see a text to my dead husband from my 20 year old, college-aged son.

An accidental text, apparently.

An accidental text that revealed that my son is up to absolutely no good whatsoever.

Mommy isn't proud. Mommy is roundly disappointed. Again. And Again. And again.

Red letter day, y'all. Spectacular.

After this miserable revelation, I went to my hub's grave to sit and talk to him. I know his soul isn't there - HE isn't there...but I miss him so terribly that just knowing I'm mere feet from his silver temples, goatee, big hands- all that's left of his physical body, dead or not, is comforting to me. So I talked to my sister by phone while sitting there next to him, trying to figure out what in the world to do about my thick-skulled son...and then I hung up and I talked to my Mike.

I told him he was right about my son. He had been, after all. He TOLD me, over and over, that the boy was up to precisely what the text he luckily only sent to a DEAD Mike, revealed: my son is a pothead. There it is. That's the big secret I didn't want to say. And yes, though the boy's father is a complete lose-festival, I blame myself. I'm a responsibility-taker. I digress.

I told hub about that misery, and then told him that I missed him so, so much, for the nine thousandth time...and then I cried some more. While I lay, over his grave, I started moving the dirt around. It rained today and the orange dirt was dry enough yet to sit on, but moist enough to shape...and....so I started doing that. Leaning over him as I would lean across his chest and talk to him when he was alive, I sculpted his face. I used the plugs of grass that had been churned into the dirt that covered his grave, as his goatee...I replicated the curve of his brow, and his closed eyes, and his Roman nose. I even found a little pebble in the sand to put as the little mole by his nose, just underneath his left eye. And then, I cupped his head, just as I did when he was living, and talked to him while looking into that dirt face, a replica of the one I loved so much, sculpted on top of my husband's grave, probably 3 feet directly above his actual face. And it COMFORTED me. And if that's not crazy, I don't know what is.

It made me feel better. And it's gonna upset the hell out of anyone else who sees it. I hope it's not his dad.

I'm going to go talk to my mud hub again tomorrow, as I do most every day...only now there's a face. This is a small town. People are going to think I'm off my nut. Let them.

I AM.

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