Bittersweet

I think sometimes it's the little things in grief that make the heart skip a beat. The milestone occasions – holidays, birthdays, anniversaries – one feels the sting of loss there for sure. But in some ways, it's an expected hole. You step into Thanksgiving or Christmas knowing you step into a gaping abyss, bracing yourself for it, willing yourself to smile, to find joy and thanks.

But it's the unexpected moments that sear my heart and steal my breath.

I place the kettle on the burner, reach into tea canister and pluck fragrant Darjeeling with the purple tag – the tea I bought special when she visited.

Darjeeling was her favorite. She drank two cups each morning, carefully squeezing and then setting the used bag on a tiny plate, saving it to reuse for her second cup later in the morning.

There are just three purple-tagged bags left in my kitchen canister, mixed with the Lipton and the ginger-green. I remember sitting with her on the screened porch, feet tucked beneath floral cushions. I watched chickadees swoop between birches. She did the crossword. We sipped tea.

The boys beg to decorate the house for fall. I haul out Rubbermaid containers packed full of plastic pumpkins, garish leaves, light-up ghosts. A grocery bag sits knotted on top, in it tangled bittersweet, brittle, looping vines and flaming berries bursting from papery husks.

She always stopped to pick me a bag full by the roadside on her way to visit Hilma.

I lay the bittersweet gently on foyer table and mirror shelf, careful.

I hum Silent Night under my breath as I sit on the patio. I don't know why the song springs to mind in early October. But I think of Jon and Janice, standing in the pew of the tiny yellow church in Big Pine Key, hand on hand as we sing the solemn Christmas hymn that Eve.

Sleep in Heavenly peace.

Sleep in Heavenly peace.

I hum and remember.

Bittersweet.

"The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace." Romans 15:13