orion's belt.
How quickly time flies, doesn’t it? Once you miss a day of writing, it’s easy to miss two, and then three. From there…well. I really can’t believe it has been more than two weeks since I’ve written here last. I would love to say it’s a good thing, that maybe because the weather has been gorgeous for over a week, time has gone by quickly and I just have felt less compelled to sit down and write.
Honestly, though, it’s not like when the weather’s ugly and I’m feeling down I’m always super-motivated to write, either. The truth is simple: laziness has gotten the best of me. Writing is not the path of least resistance, so when that’s the path you choose to walk for a while, well, things go silent. Here I am, though. Not dead, FYI.
As I said, the weather has been really great lately. Finally a bit of the winter chill, coupled with clear skies and the sun’s warmth during the daytime. This morning, it made me a bit emotional. Although it was so beautiful, it reminded me of our first winter. At that time, we lived down south, where winters are warmer. You came into my life late in October, so our first real season together was one of those warm southern winters. Looking back on that time, I remember a lot of brisk, sunny mornings. And this morning felt like that.
Then, tonight. I went for an evening walk under those clear skies. I counted the weeks since you’ve passed. Twenty-one. That number is getting unwieldy, and I’ll admit, I feel some melancholy about it now being December. That the calendar will soon tick over to 2025, and I can just say it happened “last year.” Although it still feels really weird to realize that you were still here “this year,” too, in a way that I can’t fully articulate. As I’ve said countless times, it feels like both yesterday and a million years ago.
I walked down the same path that I walked the evening you left this world. That night, I walked because I really didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t stand to just sit in the house that felt so empty. I just kind of ended up there, and I remember feeling a certain hopelessness with each footfall. I hated the glow of the LED streetlights that had been recently installed, they were much too bright and made it hard to look up at the sky to see any stars. It was something to focus my thoughts on, anything but the despair. Those stupid lights.
That night, a neighbor I was friendly with passed by. “Hey, H—,” he called out. I’ll admit I hadn’t noticed him, I wasn’t really in the state of mind to be noticing anyone at that time.
“Isn’t it so nice, to have this kind of place where we can just walk?” he asked, gesturing to the path we were on. I feigned a smile and tried to match his level of enthusiasm for a moment. I got what he meant, but the comment struck me as a bit random, and at the moment I suppose I felt anything but “nice,” though I was trying to be as positive as possible. After brief pleasantries, we carried on in opposite directions.
Tonight, I reflected on what was different and what remained unchanged in the 21 weeks since. There were certainly fewer people out in general, and I didn’t run into anyone I knew or engage in any conversation. The LED lights are still annoying, but now I realize how well they captured my breath condensing in the cold air. I like that. I exhaled a few times, a bit heavier on purpose, the way one does after realizing their breath is visible for the first time.
The hopelessness is still there. It is not the same, of course. Less a feeling of shock, but more a feeling of absence. I still don’t know, in a way that I wondered about on that first night, how I will really go on. Yet, twenty-one weeks have elapsed, and I’m still here. Somehow. And in that, maybe there’s hope, that we all find a way, whether we understand it or not.
In between the stupid bright LED lights, I kept my eyes pointed toward the sky. The city’s glow drowns out most of the stars. I reflected on how much better the night sky was at home, one of the non-human things I miss the most from that place. But I’m grateful for the handful of stars that are visible tonight. For a view of the sky from within a densely-populated city, it’s not bad. I focus on Orion’s Belt.
I remembered one time walking home with you along the same path. I saw a bright shooting star. A perfect, textbook example, what a child would draw if you asked them to demonstrate what a shooting star looks like. A definite rarity, and to see one of those here it really has to be a big one. I thought at the time, if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have had that opportunity to see it at all. The things we take for granted, though. The shooting star I had in my life all along.
I wish this story had some incredible ending, like on tonight’s walk I saw a shooting star again or something like that, and knew it was a sign from you. No such luck, but that’s alright. I don’t know if you’re out there among the stars now, but I’ll keep looking regardless.