Three years ago today, Mick left me and started on his own spiritual journey. When the angels came for him, I know they gave him two legs, a healed, perfect heart, functioning, working kidneys and a reunion looming with all who passed who loved him both two-footed and four-footed.

Since his death I have seen him quite a number of times. Not him as if as a ghost, but men who look remarkably like him. Balding, rotund, gray beard. I would see them walking on the streets (always alone) or in cars or restaurants. One time, I almost veered out of my lane the resemblance of the man who had just driven past me was identical to Mike. They could have been twins.

I only cried twice this year. Both times, Kota came to me well in advance to let me know the storm was on its way. But these storms are different now, they are healing. The last storm I had yesterday didn’t last very long. I had a written a poem for him. I’ve started a new ritual for my remembrance. I write him a letter on his passage day. Then I take the letter out to the burn pile, set it on fire and send it skyward.

When I finished the letter, the phone was ringing. It was a dear old friend of ours,  her and her husband ran an Inn in Talkeetna Alaska. Mike and I would go there three times a year. His company, Alascom (the major phone company in Anchorage) would send him there for three weeks to calibrate the earth stations up on Denali. I would go with him.

She told me that she had learned he had died, but that was all she knew. Over the years, she and I became good friends. The rooms back then were sparse. No television (back then there wasn’t cable or cell phones) it was that long ago. LOL  I did a lot of hiking with our dogs, and a lot of reading. Finally one trip, the Inn was full and Renamary looked like she might need help. I asked her if I could help her clean the rooms or work with Vern in the restaurant. I told her it wasn’t for pay. So that’s when it started. Every time we would go up there and Mike would vanish on the mountain- I would help out with cleaning and laundry.

So when she called me, she wasn’t being nosey. I had called the Inn just prior to that phone call. This year I have started to go through the two upstairs rooms where a lot of his boxes still remain. I ran into a card her kids made him one time when he broke his leg fishing on a friend’s boat. The card was amazing being that it was made by children ranging from the age of 12 to 4 years old. It shows Mike on the dock, he has his fishing pole he is using as a cane, but you see a line going out from the pole into the water and there is a huge halibut fighting underwater because Mike has hooked it. His broken leg is propped up on a cooler and I am sliding the cooler along the dock slowly so we can get him up to where the ambulance was supposed to be arriving. The kids did a good job illustrating a true story (except for the halibut part).. So I called the Inn, but in the winter, they don’t man their phones,  I left a message. Within minutes she called me back and we talked almost two hours.It was cathartic for both of us.We laughed, we cried, we shared memories we had to him and we reconnected. It was healing and confirmation for me, that my path of grief was indeed changing.

He died at midnight on the 9th- so once again sleep eluded me this year. I was up all night opening boxes and finding bits of myself again. I have been lost for a time now. I am finding my way back.

Now if you will excuse me, I have a letter to deliver.

May God Bless All of You-