yesterday marked a year since my cranky little rosetaina went from being a living and breathing part of my life that i missed every moment i wasn't with her to an idea and a memory that i miss every moment i am not with her. more time has passed since she died than i spent with her while she was alive. i have spent more time with the bird sketches and trinkets i have created and gathered to remember her by than i did with this precious creature herself. yet even as she becomes less and less a physical reality and more and more a collection of memories, images, and sensations in my mind and my body the bigger the space in my heart for her seems to feel. she grows into a bigger and bigger part of my life, part of who i am becoming...even as our moments together become a smaller and smaller percentage of the live i have lived. she died without knowing any words, but she speaks into every part of my life. she never learned to walk, but she always seems to go with me. i understand her death ended her suffering but it started a pain in me that i am still at a loss to understand. a year later i can look back and see how much my life has changed for the better because of knowing her, even because of losing her...but in the moment, any given moment she comes to mind and heart, i find myself with a hole there that no amount of purpose or understanding will ever sufficiently fill. last night i realized i have tried to fill it with a lot of that, and a lot of other things too. someone very wise told me the day she died that hurt and sorrow carve out space in our hearts for greater love.
i believed her.
while i packed that hole in the year since with reasons and everything else i could find, i waited for that love to grow in.
it didn't.
and if anything it felt like the love i already had was leaking out through the space and for all the clutter i was stuffing into my heart, it was emptier than ever. but that beautiful spirit who braved it with me as i first waded through the new waters of this ocean of loss wasn't wrong. she just didn't tell me the whole truth. she couldn't have then. i wouldn't have been able to hear. but as i walked the spaces of my heart last night, examining on this anniversary how my life has continually remodeled them i found it for myself. the sorrow created the space, and love is definitely the only thing that can fill it - because it is the only thing that makes me miss her this way, that makes me glad i knew her, and glad she threw up down my shirt so many times, and glad she preferred my chest to any pillow, and happy to do everything with one arm because she was in the other, and that makes those few months seem like a lifetime. a really big crazy abandoned humiliating supernatural love is the only thing that fits the shape of her in my heart. but it was me who supposed to fill that new space with that greater love. and since she left that space the girl who wasn't afraid of anything and who had happily devoted her life to loving has been afraid of that kind of love. not only did that require me to go against my very nature, it invited the destruction and confusion that always accompanies fear.
no wonder i have been such a disaster this year.
yesterday was the anniversary of her death and the day that would have been her 3rd birthday is just days away. i can't think of a better way to celebrate her life than to do something with all this revelation.
so now, like almost always...the answer to all my problems comes down to rejecting fear and embracing love.
i guess i'd better get right on it.