GPS Coordinates

The Asian jasmine is blooming. It's as intoxicating as the bottle of Kentucky bourbon that remained on the kitchen counter after everyone left. This is about the best time of year in Texas temperature-wise. Days not too hot and nights still have a bit of chill as the sun goes down. It won't last. I sit in the perfumed garden and watch kittens Chloe and Olive race through jumping, twirling and pouncing on leaves, imaginary foe and each other. I laugh out loud. It feels wrong.

We talked about this. All of it. What happens when one of us dies. I thought with my illness I'd be first. I worried that Tom would be lost. Wouldn't recover. I impressed upon him that I wanted him to be happy. Not lose the joy in life, not to retreat back into his shell and not give up on love if the possibility presented itself again.

He healed me. He made me whole. Because of him, I know I can survive the loss of him.

A friend stopped by today. She commented on my ability to separate from my emotions and concentrate on the tasks that had to be done in regards to the memorial service. I have possessed this ability for a long time and it always serves me well in times of emergency. Another had earlier commented that instead of people comforting me, I seemed to have taken on the role of comforting everyone else. This duality may also be my undoing. The rational side knows the stages/symptoms of grief and seems to believe I can just jump right over all of it because rationally I understand them so there is no need to actually experience them. That there is no point to it. That it will change nothing. Is this wisdom or delusion? I suppose time will tell.

Today I decided to go to the store and go pick up the accident report that I had asked Real County to fax to the the DPS here in Granbury. I should have done them in that order. I sat in the car and looked at the two page standard form of check boxes, text boxes and an area labelled "Field Diagram-Not to Scale." There is a drawing with little rectangles representing the vehicles and arrows indicating direction of travel. These sterile pages devoid of emotion represent the death of my husband, Unit #1. I understand them. The need for them. They don't intend to be cruel. Still it hurts. I go home.

There are GPS coordinates on the form. I type them into Google maps which drops me onto the correct road, but it's straight. Not a curve in sight. I know there was a curve. I go to the street level view and "walk" down the road. It's still straight. How accurate are GPS coordinates. I look it up. To within 49 feet. I continue 'walking' down the road until I hit a set of curves. Which one is it I wonder. I don't know when the street view was made, but I find it odd that I can sit at home and see the same things that Tom saw on his last day.

I'm tired. Very tired. Emotionally, physically, intellectually drained. Perhaps I will sleep well tonight.

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The painting is "Twilight on the Road Less Travelled"

It's of a road on private property in the Texas Hill Country. Tom and I had been on a catalog photoshoot in the Hill Country when someone stopped their car to ask what we were doing. Turned out they owned a Resort/Spa we were near and invited us to shoot there. Both of us walked this road that I painted. I will miss times like that.