the twelfth month
They bloomed again this month, like small messengers
Two years ago, on a winter walk with Jack, we passed a garden where a blanket of snowdrops spread over the roots of an old tree. I thought it was beautiful. For me, Jack planted snowdrops in our garden.
They didn’t bloom the next year or the next. I’d almost forgotten them when first the slender spears of leaf shot up and then, one morning, white flowers.
They bloomed again this month, like small messengers, not just of spring but of love.
It’s been a whole year now since his going. Has time healed? Not quite. The sting is gone but there are scars.
Perhaps someday ‘death will us part’ but it hasn’t happened yet.
Copyright Maryalicia Post
Maryalicia Post is a travel writer. When her husband died, after 30 happy years and a lot of travelling together, she knew her hardest journey would be learning to live without him.
She chronicled the journey though the first year of grief in a poem called ‘After You’ which was published as an illustrated book by Souvenir Press, London. Recommended by the British newspaper columnist Bel Mooney, After You is also one of the texts ‘on losing a partner’ suggested by Cruse, the UK bereavement support group.
In this series of postings, written for the readers of Aftering.com, Maryalicia describes how her book took shape, in a month-by-month journal of that daunting first year.
After You is available through Amazon.
Her travel website is at maryaliciatravel.com
