"April is the cruelest month". T.S. Elliot

September, by far is the cruelest month for me. On the 9th five years ago my husband died in my arms after suffering all the horrors of chemotherapy. Now, of course we have the aftermath of Katrina and the memorials for Sept 11. It is all one big bad memory. I saw a documentary last night on 9/11. Seeing those pictures again brought back so much. The feelings of helplessness and defeat. I remember the sorrow that accompanied the knowledge that the life we had know so far was somehow over and things would never be the same.

Once about 8 months after my husband died I was hiking in Tortilla Canyon with friends. We weren't on a trail, just moving as a group through the canyon. I felt at the time like we were a prehistoric troupe of early wild humans. It was a pleasing sensation of something very ancient. Like this is the way it is supposed to be somehow. We came to a little piece of paper lying on the ground. A couple of the others stepped over it. I picked it up and on it was written, in this scrawling, psycho-like handwriting, "Nothing's the same any more". Like I needed a reminder. Interesting though. I think I did need a reminder. I needed to acknowledge the change and move back into the world of the living. When someone you love dies you die with them and then you wake up and you find out that they left you a passport into a new life. It is almost as if though them you can now live again. What a gift.