May 3rd, 1952

Today would have been my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary.

My sister flew down to make sure my mom is with someone, & she’s telling stories. My mom was never really the talker of the two; it was my dad who was the social one, who could talk to anyone, anywhere, about anything.

My mom said to me recently “I know I should be getting over it by now because it’s nearly a year” but I didn’t let her finish. I actually laughed out loud, laughed at her, lovingly, because it was exactly predictable of her to think she, of all people, should be able to get on top of mourning, do it efficiently, magically. The funnier part of course is that it hasn’t even been a year; it’s barely been 9 months. (But I didn’t learn how to be hardest on myself from nowhere. )

It was a good reminder for me too: that mourning, of all things, of all change, takes a while, but the loss of a great love probably takes longer than anything.

< This is them on their 35th wedding anniversary, 25 years ago. I was 18. My mom was 57, my dad 59. The dogwood is in full bloom, the way it would be every May.

It will be a rough month of dates: Mother’s Day falls on my birthday this year, and my dad’s 84th birthday would have been on the 19th.

What doesn’t kill you, as they say, just leaves you bereft, broken-hearted, exhausted, and a little bit quieter than you used to be.

So I’m glad mom is talking.

I hope she talks about how much his eyes lit up every time he saw her, no matter how old they got, no matter how angry she was, no matter what she looked like. It’s an amazing thing to be around two people who light each other up like that – effortlessly and wondrously, as if their posture gets straighter, their eyes get clearer, and they seem to have a song on their lips. I feel very thankful to have grown up in the midst of a love like that.