Seven years

"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." — Romans 8:38-39

I woke up this morning and knew what day it was before I looked at the calendar because my body knew. My body has known this day for seven years and it does not need the calendar to tell it.

I made the coffee. I sat at the table. I talked to Earl the way I talk to him every morning, which is in the kitchen, at the table, before the light gets too bright. This morning I said his name out loud, which I do not always do. I said Earl. And then I sat with it.

Seven years ago today he died in this house, in our bedroom upstairs, on a Tuesday afternoon in July while the heat was doing what the heat does, which is everything. I was in the room. I had been in the room for weeks by then, and the room had gotten smaller every week the way rooms do when someone is leaving them, until it was just the bed and the window and me and him and the sound of his breathing and then the sound of his breathing stopping and then the quiet, which was the loudest thing I have ever heard.

I do not tell this part often. I am telling it now because it is the day and because seven years is long enough to say what happened without the saying breaking anything that has not already been broken and healed over.

The first year I did not know what to do with the day. I cleaned the house. I think I cleaned the house because it was the only thing my hands could do that my mind could follow. The second year Becca came and we sat on the porch and did not say much. The third year I think I worked in the garden. After that the days stopped being so different from each other and the anniversary became what it is now, which is a Thursday in July that I carry the way I carry all the days, except I carry this one knowing that I am carrying it.

Becca will call. Dan will call or text, because Dan is his father's son and sometimes a text is all a man can manage and that is enough. Hannah will call and it will be awkward and kind and I will hear in her voice the thing she does not say, which is that she loved him too and did not always know how to show it and that is something she and I have in common though neither of us has said so.

I will not go to the cemetery. I have never gone to the cemetery on this day. The cemetery is where his body is and I can visit that any time and I do, but this day is not about his body. This day is about the space in the house where he was and where he is not and where I have learned to live with the not-being the way I have learned to live with everything, which is slowly and without any particular grace but with whatever it is that keeps a woman getting up in the morning and making the coffee and sitting at the table and saying his name.

The porch chair is empty. It has been empty for seven years and it will be empty tomorrow and the day after and I do not sit in it and I will not sit in it and the emptiness of it is its own kind of faithfulness, which is the only word I have for it.

Earl, I miss you. I miss you the way I miss my own youth, which is to say I do not wish it back because I could not have it back and the wishing would be a waste. But I miss it. I miss the sound of the screen door at four-thirty in the morning. I miss the smell of the barn on your shirt. I miss the way you said my name when you came in, which was just Ruby, just the one word, and it was enough.

Seven years. The coffee is hot. The day is here. Lord, have mercy.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.