Today?*

Not so much with the goodness.

Grief sucks.

SUCKS.

The sun is out. It is a beautiful fall day. The light is so sharp and clear that everything is crisp, and the blowing wind makes me think of fires and hot apple cider and good books and warm socks knitted by Nana.

Here's the awesome part: Grief makes you not give a shit about any of that. Yeah, it sounds good on paper. Yeah, I have some socks on right now, a hot mug of coffee and a sleeping dog at my feet on the settee by the window where I can watch the leaves swaying and the sunlight hit the deck.

So what. Big deal.

Platitudes. It's all platitudes. My whole thing has been to get out of bed and put my feet on the floor every day. Check. To keep moving forward no matter how small the steps. Check. To try really hard to be kind to The Child. Check (the trying part. I am trying.).

At the end of the day, it has not helped. I am, for the most part, out of the weepy stage (today not withstanding, and last Wednesday notwithstanding. Sometimes it hits you and you can't do anything about it but give in so I do and it doesn't feel any better), but now I am in the blank stage. Nothing helps.

(certainly not religion, by the way, which people recently have felt the overwhelming need to assault me with. I don't believe he is in a better place, and if you know Dane you would know that even if God did need an angel - utter condescending bullshit - He certainly would not have chosen my  beloved. No angel, that one. So STFU about his soul to me. He would be PISSED and talk about how Mary was no virgin if he could. So just stop.)

And I am SERIOUSLY considering smoking. I haven't smoked in 12 years. They make me violently ill. I don't care. Because feeling something has to be better than this.

(please don't send me messages or post about how I shouldn't smoke. I know. I am not a moron. I am too cheap to go buy a pack of American Spirits, and no one around me smokes with regularity. But I am also an adult, so I don't need a lecture about smoking. I know.)

Every morning when I wake up, I roll over and the first two words that pop into my head are, "Dane's dead." This was a regular feature the first several months after his death, but it went away for a bit over the summer. Now, as we approach nine months it has come roaring back. So welcome to the new fucking day. Dane's dead. Good luck.

*and with that, I believe we have entered another stage of grief: ANGER. Probably best to give me a wide berth. I'm just sayin'.