I haven’t written in a while. There’s very little change, good or bad. Each day feels much like the one before, neither backward or forward.

I’ve become a master of avoidance. I distract myself from feeling what I feel. Riding, reading, gardening, letters to friends, social media, television. It all fills the time so I’m not alone with time. Distract and divert.

Distraction served a purpose from very early on – allow me to breathe for a few moments before grief swept in again. The pain is so exhausting, and the confusion so extreme, sometimes I didn’t think I could take another moment.

But I’ve gotten adept at it now. Shoving down pain and emotion is ritual, constantly attended to every day.

I avoid thinking about him. I don’t think about him except in the most fleeting of ways. Each week in the “onlies” group Darle asks a question about our child, the subject varies “Tell us about what kind of music your child liked.” I’m usually near the last to answer because it takes so long to gear up my mind to go in search of answers. I actively avoid thinking about him, how he was, who he was, what he liked, what he was good at, what his laughter sounded like, what his voice sounded like, how his hand felt in mine, what his bear hugs felt like. How he smelled.

To think of these things keeps me bound to pain. But does not thinking of them release me? I don’t know the answer to that. I know active avoidance works temporarily. But if it works why do I continue to feel this shattered detachment from the people around me?

I’m living in their world but apart from it. My real world is the daily ritual of pain avoidance. And when that fails, as it sometimes does, I am crushed by the weight of loss, shattered by my new reality, left hopeless by the thought of the days to come. An unending vista of pain.