a specific sadness: missing your echo

Have you noticed that sadness takes on different forms? Even inside otherwise wonderful things, there can be a very specific sadness.

I’ve been taking more time off of the computer lately. Lots of walks, time in the woods, road trips to nowhere in particular. There are some big projects just getting started, and my process of beginning includes space to let ideas take root without my messing with them too much.

All in all, it feels like a wonderful time in my life. And that is – weird. Not bad, just weird.

So much is happening that has to do with Matt, with his death, his life, who I was with him, and who I have become. I want to talk with him about it. I want to celebrate with him, tell him. There’s a sadness, if a subtle one, running alongside the goodness in my life.

I know this feeling. It’s very specific: this familiar pervasive wave of sadness is about missing the one who was there at the end of the day, the one who understood without needing explanation. The one who was both backdrop and participant in my life. 

When Matt first died, someone said: “you didn’t just lose your everyday life, you lost the echo of that life.”

They were entirely right: the echo of life.

There was an echo to my life. There was an echo to your life. 

When you’re partnered, you have a reflection, an echo. You live your daily life, and then, in partnership, you have the discussion of daily life: what happened today, what you’re dreaming of for tomorrow. Your person doesn’t need a lot of backstory to understand the current events in your life. They already know you, and know you well.

We long for that familiar relationship, the connection and kinship that belonged to that one specific person. The person is gone, and the longing remains. Love seeks its familiar resting place, and finding it gone or changed – well, carries sadness in it. The sadness of a very good day, of fascinating and exciting things happening, not shared.

In a way, I come to this page, to all of my ‘pages,’ to share my day. To connect with the echo. I think this is what most of us do, as we write and connect within our chosen communities: we find ways to answer ourselves. To find that relatedness again.

How about you? How has that longing for the familiar, or the echo, made itself known to you? Are there times of day, or certain days, that bring it closer to your heart? As always, I love your questions and your comments.