I had another post in mind for today...

What I did not plan on was chronicling this feeling of impending sadness. Caryl and I will go to work together only four more times, then the weekend, then Sunday afternoon/evening, and the dog and I will watch her ride away with my mom and Jim.

In a premature declaration of healing a few weeks back, I proclaimed to Caryl "I really am over him!" The thought had hit me like the solution to a particularly difficult equation with more than one variable. I. am. over. him. And I didn't feel smug or superior; I didn't feel bitter. I simply felt free. Caryl looked at me earnestly and said "No. Not yet. You still love him."

Now, I am old enough and sophisticated enough to understand the distinction between still loving someone and being over him. I know they are not mutually exclusive, but I also know what my sister was getting at, with even greater clarity now, than I did at the time.

On Saturday night I came across a picture that was fairly indicative of the best of his silly side, but one that I had not previously seen. I was poking around the Internet...on a whim, I did a more tailored search, and it yielded the photo. I know. I know. The fact that his name still comes easily to my fingertips for the purpose of Web searches is obviously telling. But believe me; it was spontaneous. I didn't expect to find much...and I had searched for others in a similar fashion.

Anyway, that photo knocked me down. It was the representation of all that was familiar to me and known by me about him...but represented, equally, something undiscovered and new, though it was from a time in our friendship when things were the best they ever would or could be, between us.

On Sunday morning, over coffee and grits, I stared at Caryl blankly. I. still. love. him. I miss him. I miss knowing that person from the photo. He will be married in two months. It would be one thing if the epiphany had visited itself upon me when I had the comfort of his ambiguous singleness, but he is soon to be legally, spiritually, and emotionally connected to another woman. I have too much self-respect to long for someone who is lost to me, which is why it's important to note the almost academic, intellectual nature of this realization...

This isn't pining. This isn't hope. It's just the bald fact that beneath the first excavated layer of grief, there is still this....this indomitable remnant.

Walking the dog this morning at the lonely hour of 5:30, I stared down my arch nemesis. The next layer of grief, far less prosaic than candid sadness... this foe is formless and has no direct object, and does not mourn the actual loss, but more pointedly the elemental, irreducible, singular points of passion...that which is pure essence. The part of loving someone else that we, ourselves, can never understand. This grief is my new houseguest.