Outside the sky was grey.\u00a0 Dark clouds hung over the hilltops.\u00a0 You could still see the green, although most have given way to the browns and yellow\u2019s of an old autumn, an autumn that had lasted too long.\u00a0 Spent weeks ago, yet holding on, awaiting the first snowfall \u2013 anything to move it forward.<\/p>\n
Loretta watched as a particularly dark cloud shifted into the frame of her bedroom window.\u00a0 It had cast an even darker shadow on the hill across the lake, so dark in fact that it was hard now to distinguish the trees from the terrain.<\/p>\n
Her coffee was old.\u00a0 She\u2019d been up early this morning, and now the coffee tasted stale and burned.\u00a0 But she sipped it anyway.\u00a0 Disliking the taste on her tongue.<\/p>\n
There wasn\u2019t much in her mind these days.\u00a0 At times, she tried to sift through the feelings she had, the hopes and dreams she ought to have, to find a path.\u00a0 But mostly she just went through the motions of daily living.<\/p>\n
It had been like this since Stephan had died.\u00a0 And that was a very long time ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cLor,\u201d Angie said sympathetically.\u00a0 \u201cLor, I just don\u2019t know what to say.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how to help you through this.\u00a0 God.\u00a0 I am heartbroken for you.\u201d\u00a0 And a look of love and compassion.<\/p>\n
It had been lost on Loretta then.<\/p>\n
They had been at a caf\u00e9, having a coffee then.\u00a0 It had been weeks since they\u2019d been out for their usual weekly get-together.\u00a0 Loretta\u2019s fault.\u00a0 Or perhaps Angie\u2019s.\u00a0 Life had been busy.\u00a0 There had been many things to do, and never enough time to fit in a moment for one another.<\/p>\n
Now, at the small round table, in the mid-morning sun, they sat together.\u00a0 The first part of the conversation had been an attempt on both parts to catch up on the news.\u00a0 What was John doing?\u00a0 Oh, he\u2019s now a partner!\u00a0 Wonderful.\u00a0 I\u2019m so happy for you, Angie.\u00a0 And what are the boys doing?\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 Good for Mark.<\/p>\n
And the questions had come back her way too.\u00a0 And she\u2019d answered dutifully.\u00a0 Marlene now had her hairdressing license, and Toby was doing really well in third year at university.\u00a0 He had received an economics award for achieving 100 per cent on an exam.\u00a0 Wasn\u2019t that wonderful?\u00a0 Good for him, Angie had said.\u00a0 Loretta had agreed.<\/p>\n
And Rob?\u00a0 How was Rob?<\/p>\n
Rob was fine, Loretta had said.\u00a0 He\u2019s busy.\u00a0 They\u2019re always wanting his opinion on one contract or another, she\u2019d said.\u00a0 The phone rings all evening.\u00a0 Yes, sometimes he gets called out to a meeting after he\u2019s home.\u00a0 But it\u2019s ok.\u00a0 He\u2019s happy, Loretta had said.\u00a0 His life is moving forward.<\/p>\n
Loretta had become lost in the conversation several times.\u00a0 Her thoughts wafting to places that were painful, but places they wanted to go.\u00a0 She knew herself well enough to let herself go to painful places, because it was there that she was able to feel alive.<\/p>\n
Angie had noticed.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s that way with old friends.\u00a0 They notice things.<\/p>\n
And she\u2019d asked.\u00a0 As sometimes old friends do.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s up, Lor?\u201d\u00a0 A simple question.\u00a0 A huge answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, you\u2019re lost here.\u00a0 Lost in thought.\u00a0 What\u2019s happening?\u201d<\/p>\n
Loretta had been shocked, actually.<\/p>\n
She answered with her eyes, not her mouth.\u00a0 She looked Angie in the eyes.\u00a0 Angie\u2019s looked became worried.\u00a0 It was as if she were at once wanting to know and not wanting to know.<\/p>\n
Which of course, was the case.<\/p>\n
And as it is with old friend sometimes, she knew the answer.\u00a0 Or part of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh Lor,\u201d was all she could say.\u00a0 And glance away.<\/p>\n
There had been no phone call.\u00a0 No notification.<\/p>\n
There had been nothing.<\/p>\n
Just one week, he\u2019d been gone.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t shown up for their usual foray in the park.\u00a0 Or the foray that happened afterward.\u00a0 He just hadn\u2019t come.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d gone through the motions.\u00a0 Wondered if she\u2019d got the wrong day, wrong time.\u00a0 Tried every day for a month.\u00a0 Tried to find a phone number, or an address.\u00a0 A cell phone.\u00a0 An email address.\u00a0 Nothing.\u00a0 She hadn\u2019t known his home phone number, nor had he known hers.\u00a0 They\u2019d been very careful to preserve whatever integrity of family life they still had.<\/p>\n
No, it hadn\u2019t been an affair.\u00a0 Not in the sense that you would think of an affair.\u00a0 They had never actually slept together.\u00a0 But they had made love in many other ways.\u00a0 In conversations.\u00a0 In glances.\u00a0 In hugs.\u00a0 In letters or notes.\u00a0 Physical union had crossed their minds, but they had avoided it.\u00a0 Both of them.\u00a0 For one reason or another.\u00a0 Perhaps neither wanted to alter what they had.\u00a0 Perhaps it was a way of hanging on to what they did have, at home, with their families.\u00a0 Perhaps they had really been cowards.\u00a0 Perhaps not.<\/p>\n
But they had loved one another.\u00a0 A spiritual union, Loretta had always thought.<\/p>\n
So after Stephan disappeared, which is how she looked at it, she was worried.\u00a0 Worried beyond belief.\u00a0 She couldn\u2019t imagine what had happened to him.\u00a0 And she didn\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n
Eventually, as despair set in, and the insecurity of wondering had dissipated, she went to the library and did her own research. \u00a0And that day.\u00a0 That day was the day the grey clouds had set in.<\/p>\n
She searched and searched.\u00a0 Finally even searched the obituaries.\u00a0 She remember having found nothing.\u00a0 No sign of him\u2026..for she didn\u2019t even know his last name.\u00a0 He had been \u201cStephan\u201d to her, always.\u00a0 So she searched by first names.\u00a0 And it took a long time.<\/p>\n
Eventually, she found him.\u00a0 Listed.\u00a0 Dead.\u00a0 Of a stroke, she guessed.\u00a0 Since his wife had asked for donations to the Heart and Stroke Foundation.\u00a0 His last name was Perset.\u00a0 He\u2019d been 49.\u00a0 She knew that.\u00a0 Suddenly, at his home, on Sunday February 27th<\/sup>.\u00a0\u00a0 Survived by his wife, and their three children.\u00a0 One was already married, and it listed his name too. The obit had listed Stephan\u2019s accomplishments, his life in a box, she\u2019d thought.<\/p>\n And known that it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Today was the first day of spring.\u00a0 The snow was melting, and Loretta was outside cleaning up the winter\u2019s debris.\u00a0 She always marvelled at how little tiny specks of green had lasted through the harsh winter.\u00a0 Horticulturalists told her it was because the winter was so harsh that the greenery could survive.\u00a0 It was almost like a deep freeze that preserved life.<\/p>\n She thought back to that day when she and Angie had spoken, without words.\u00a0 She had sometimes smiled to herself, knowing that Angie must have thought she\u2019d been having an affair.<\/p>\n Some things can\u2019t be explained, not even to old friends.\u00a0 Loretta had known that.<\/p>\n And let it be.<\/p>\n As she raked the garden with her fingers, loosening the earth so that the bulbs would be able to force their way through, she remembered that grey fall day a year or two earlier when she had felt the depth of life.\u00a0 It had been her winter, she thought.<\/p>\n And she wondered what had led her through that winter.\u00a0 The winter of her life, when everything had seemed dead.<\/p>\n She hadn\u2019t analyzed things very much.\u00a0 A feeler, not a thinker.<\/p>\n She still thought of Stephan.\u00a0 All the time.\u00a0 He was part of her, she\u2019d thought.\u00a0 After she\u2019d grieved, it had been a long grieving, she had consciously decided to keep him with her.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t want to imagine if he\u2019d thought of her before he died.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t want to imagine if he had ever wanted more than she\u2019d offered him.\u00a0 She just let it be.<\/p>\n What reality was.<\/p>\n We find people in our lives, she had thought, to help us move forward.\u00a0 Stephan had kept her moving forward and still kept her moving forward.\u00a0 The conversations they\u2019d had.\u00a0 The introspection and the philosophizing.\u00a0 What was God?\u00a0 Was there a God?\u00a0 How had the universe begun?\u00a0 Was there other life?\u00a0 They\u2019d talked about relationships, and love, and religion.\u00a0 About moral issues.\u00a0 All the conversations, while maybe not the details, were played out in her head over and over again.\u00a0 All the readings she had done, and still did, were discussed with Stephan, silently, in her head.\u00a0 She played things out against him constantly.\u00a0 He was still moving her forward.<\/p>\n But not perhaps to an ultimate end.\u00a0 She wondered about that.<\/p>\n He\u2019d always said she was a \u201cfeeler\u201d.\u00a0 She\u2019d always prided herself on that, actually.\u00a0 What more could there be to life than feeling?\u00a0 He had encouraged her.\u00a0 To feel.\u00a0 Not to focus entirely on the routines, the mundane.\u00a0 But to allow a depth in all emotion, good and bad.<\/p>\n Life, she thought.\u00a0 Life is a series of seasons.\u00a0 And we do what we can to make the winters harsh so we can protect the greenery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Outside the sky was grey.\u00a0 Dark clouds hung over the hilltops.\u00a0 You could still see the green, although most have given way to the browns and yellow\u2019s of an old autumn, an autumn that had lasted too long.\u00a0 Spent weeks ago, yet holding on, awaiting the first snowfall \u2013 anything to move it forward. Loretta […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[67,69,51,68,66],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-writing","tag-death","tag-friendship","tag-god","tag-love","tag-seasons"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}