“Excuse me”, I interrupted, “the person you have listed as my next of kin is dead.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. When did your husband die?”

Pause. “32 years ago.”

“Ooh,” a half-startled sigh from the passport agent, behind the window at the Italian consulate. “We must change that. You will need to submit a death certificate to the comune where you’re registered. In Palermo.”

I wasn’t expecting to be asked to dig through the rubble of a life left behind, a story old enough that I sometimes wonder if it’s really my own, or a fiction I imagined. It’s the first time I’ve handled that document in a very long time. The feeling evoked tells me it is my story.

In the beginning every insurance institution, government agency, bank, and utility company needed to see a copy. I had dozens of them. No matter how many times I was asked and efficiently presented another copy from the file in my portfolio of paperwork, the sensation of slipping outside my body to deal with the death record never left. Time of Death: 1725 (FND)  Cause of death: Suicide

The gut punch feels fresh. Now I’m certain, it’s my story. 

32 years later I retrieve the document from the envelope, from the file, from the closet where it’s buried. Apropos. And still, an overwhelming feeling of wanting to double over, cover and protect my core. As I did so long ago, I straighten, look forward, breathe, and do what needs to be done. 

Every memory of the day, of finding his body, of living outside my own, of sheltering my son from as much of the chaos as I could knowing his childhood had been stolen by a murder, washes over me. Emotion rushes in and envelops as though no time has passed. A familiar sensation descends.  I step outside myself. 

I reflect on my past. The shock, loss, rage, grief, horror, the act that crashed into our lives and left cinders for years. I ache at what he has missed in the three decades since his death, and what we have missed sharing with him. I can see the smoke still rising from what was then. With breath, the embers glow.

All that we have become and the remarkable, happy lives we enjoy is not evidence that we are healed or have accepted what occurred. It is evidence of strength, will, resiliency, adaptability and bedrock commitment to mine joy from every crack, and love out loud. A promise we made in answer to our loss: cherish life, cherish time with beloveds.

Including all that has come before, today’s life is the answer to a prayer said in the early days. Please allow me to grow in grace, each day, with what is so.