Reading the Leaves.

There’s something in the air this morning.

Like a stain in my memory, the sunlight streams through the windows to soak the stillness of the house. The steam of my tea rises soundlessly, my breathing a wordless collision with the silence.

This is what life used to be like. What it could be again.

Summer is fading and a hint of fall has returned to the mornings, bringing with it the stressors of a busy life. While thoughts return to ice rinks and football fields, pumpkin spice lattes and falling leaves, goblins and ghouls, the familiar pain that lingers within is resurfacing. Our nerves are fraying and the angry words and the tears that we fight to keep in check come quicker. And months of frustration over the unbridled mess of broken dreams and unfulfilled wishes and unmet promises have spilled over on this long and lonely long weekend.

For years fall has swirled around me, the leaves of decay and grief and regret and loneliness and frustration piling one upon another until defiance breaks through to scatter them again.

Each year has dulled the pain, but on the eve of our fifth the edges have sharpened.

Perhaps it is the accumulation of things no longer needed and wanted that set me on edge when I open the garage door. Perhaps it is the cyclical breakage – irrigation system, refrigerator filters, water heaters, air conditioners, irrigation system, pool motor, floor cleaner, garbage disposal, car battery, floodlights, electrical outlets, broken tiles, unpinned carpet, shower heads, picture frames, dryer hose, leaking toilets, broken faucets, television, phone, computer, backpacks, shoes, glasses – that has plagued my existence ever since. Perhaps it is the knowledge that I am trapped in this life with no freedom to think or to be unless I pay for an hour’s reprieve. Perhaps it is the women who believe that their singleness is equivalent to my widowed singleness without recognizing that it is not the same and never will be, just as my widowed singleness is not heirs. Perhaps it is that my biological clock is ticking because I am alone in the prime of my life.

Perhaps it is that I have had 19 days of solitude in the past 4 years, 10 months and 9 days.

My mind races through all the things unfinished and unspoken and fall looms like a suffocating blanket as much for its untimely milestones as for its unfinished business, and the long weekend has only served to make my anger simmer longer and deeper before life rushes back to distract me from what death has left behind. But for a few moments all of the anger is washed away in the quiet morning light.

Just long enough to watch the tea leaves stain the water.