
It’s autumn and Mabon is just days away, which will be quickly followed by Samhain, my all-time favorite holiday, but since 2011 it has become less fun and more bitter-sweet. It doesn't help that she was autumn
I want her back!
I am still in mourning it seems … even after all these years … and I fear that I will never be done with it. My pagan-self berates me for still lingering on her physical absence since I know she is truly still around me, her spirit lingers in so many areas of my life: she often comes to me in my dreams, she appears to me during the day when I am alone (like now) in silent support and consolation, I feel her hand on my shoulder when I am going over lessons with my daughter, when I am in the kitchen cooking for my family she is with me … but as much as she is present spiritually I miss her physicality.
I miss her smile. I miss her laugh. I miss the softness of her voice when she would offer me honest advice. I miss sharing a bottle of Pinot Grigio or Shiraz while sitting on her sofa late into the night, listening to The Princess Bride or Days of Thunder playing on the TV in the background while we chatted, catching up on things in our busy lives. I miss meeting for leisurely dinners at Davey’s Locker overlooking the ocean. I miss our email correspondences and I often reread the ones I kept, but they offer no real consolation as they are the ones that documented her journey with the cancer. Recently I visited Live Journal so I could read some of her older posts there … but it caused me more sorrow than joy.
I miss her.
I miss her.
I miss her.
I want her back!
“This movie always reminds me of us, Sheri,” she would say when speaking of both Practical Magic (I was Sally, she Gillian) and Beaches (I was C.C. and she was Hillary). Her energy, her spirit is now thoroughly imbued in both for me. I cannot watch either without crying.
I don’t think my family realizes how much her death still affects me. I’m embarrassed by the fact that it still does because there’s that part of me that believes I should be “over it” by now, that I should have “moved on”, if I am such a spiritual person, but the brain and the heart are seemingly unwilling to compromise over this one.
I’ve asked myself if this is a Shadow to be worked on. Is there work that I should be doing to help myself heal? I don’t have an answer for myself and I don’t know if it really matters if I did. I just know that I still hurt … that I miss her presence.
We met in 1980. We were in the sixth grade at Wareham Intermediate School. We were in the same homeroom class because our last names both began with the letter “B”; I am Breault, she was Brown. The school department was too cheap to purchase enough music books for every student so she and I had to share one when we went to music class. Perhaps The Universe brought us together so that we could enrich each other’s lives … because we did. Our friendship spanned 31 years through college, multiple marriages, divorces, births, and deaths. She was part of my life for longer than she hasn’t been. And it’s a struggle to let her go.
I want her back!