GRIEF: ANOTHER CALENDAR PAGE FALLS TO THE FLOOR

... and we start a new month ... putting more and more distance between us and our beloved son and daughter. A whole new calendar? Everything is poignant, my dear ... any changes that keep slapping us with reality of our loss, the irreversible changes that have occured and our powerlessness to d'o anything to make it different.

I had to pack away last year's Christmas tree - the last one my son saw and put away the decorations he'd helped me put out. There would be no more shared trees or shared moments of decorating.

The calendar I have up in the kitchen is one I bought as a stocking stuffer for him last Christmas. He hadn't gotten around to putting it up on the wall yet. He never used it. Another stab in the heart. So I put it up on the kitchen wall. I didn't want to throw away an unused calendar that I had given to my son. However, now the year is done and the calendar is useless.

Unlike my previous calendars, filled with appointment dates - this calendar had no markings. I didn't go many places, except to work and the doctor. I didn't entertain or go out. And there were no special days to celebrate. I used to love the kitchen calendar - marked with teacher conferences, soccer games, dentist appointments, special days of celebrations, notations of expected guests. It was quite colofrul and the sign of a very busy household!

I only just watched this calendar, out of the side of my eye, as if it were now part of the conspiracy, too - the conspiracy to put more and more time between the moment I last saw, talked to and held my son; the conspiracy to keep moving on with life.

I will need to recycle the calendar realistically. It's time for a new month and a whole new year. But now I'm saying goodbye to the last year that contained memories of my son and something inside me makes me want to cling to every and anything that has anything to do with him.

The calendar ... it's just paper with beautiful photos of wolves. He liked Native American things and eagles and wolves. Unseen to others who might look at it, however, it contains the dates of the last nine days he was alive. It contains the date of that morning I was at work and received a phone call from the sheriff giving me news that would cause me to actually collapse and my whole world to spin out of control. It contains the date of our appointment at the funeral home where I would view my son's body for the last time. The date of his memorial service. The date of his 33rd birthday which he wouldn't like to celebrate. The dates of his two daughters' birthdays that came up right after his - and the dates in between their birthdays where he was hoping to get back to Iowa to celebrate with them and see and hold them again. He had only been able to talk by phone to them for over a year and a half before he died. He had missed them desperately every single day.

There's Easter - my beloved Matthew would take me to services during that holiday because I wanted to be at church but couldn't actually get myself there on my own. Matthew and I would take communion together for the last time on Good Friday and I would watch him happily perform in a wonderful, comforting and inspirational cantata with the choir.

I would relate to Mary, mother of Jesus, that Easter with a new deeper understanding. She lost her son at approximately the same age. She watched and knew about his suffering before he died, too. Mary, however, was given some peace and hope and joy just a few days later. I'm still waiting for God to give me just the teeniest of signs that all is well.

Mother's Day would follow. No card from Michael this year and he had never failed to give me a special card he had made or purchased. Fourth of July - our annual family gathering which he loved so much - I could only just sit on the sidelines this year. I didn't even really want to attend but I just keep trying to do these things which are customary and traditional and part of normal livng.

The September page contains more dates of pain - my last phone conversation with Matthew, his death on the 14th (unknown to me at the time), my surgery on the 18th (I thought he was praying for me all that day), the 21st when he was supposed to be coming home and would come to see me and bring me home from my mother's. All those phone calls I kept making to a phone that wouldn't answer. And that last call to his cell when the recording told me the cell phone had been disconnected. The frantic call to one of his daughters to find out where Matthew was and what was going on.

The first Thanksgiving without Michael and Matthew. Matthew's memorial service. Christmas Eve. Christmas Day. New Year's Eve....

A lot of people think I'm strong and brave. I suppose from the outside they may well get that idea. Inside I'm so tired and hurting, still hoping that someone will make me wake up to find this was all a bad dream. I cry often, almost daily, when I'm alone. Almost anything can trigger it - even just glancing at that calendar on the wall.

It has been a year of sorrow. Ah, that reminds me - my given pagaen name is Deidre, of the Sorrows - a name selected for me by a very kind and wise man many years before this all came to be. He also told me tjat the panther was my spirit guide and the wolf was my abiding friend.

I stop at the doorway to the New Year. I don't want to enter and leave 2007. But there is no lingering and no going backwards. There will be the first anniversary of each of their deaths this year, and more holidays to celebrate without them. There is no longer a relationship with possiblities of happiness and comfort in the future now.

I reach up to take down the calendar and walk by the recycling basket. I keep walking right on by it down to my room. I open the closet and pull out a plastic box and place the calendar inside. At least for now..