I’m in mourning

Paul and me, 2008-ish, Lake Siskiyou

From the my “mourning book.” Mourning for Paul Robert Hurley — my friend, wusband, father of my sons, true bodhisattva. He died unexpectedly on March 27, 2026. He would have celebrated his 79th birthday, yesterday, on April 17.

I’m mourning and it’s just so strange. I know, I’ve known, grief. And longing or yearning. I think I know love in several forms. But this. This is like a thick grey phlegm stuck deep in my lungs next to my heart. Every now and then there’s a cough, a purging of a thin secretion or a stubborn green. Happy — intensified and curious. Sad — formless, no words. Numb — comforting. A flu without the flu symptoms. Waking each morning with one second of freedom. And then a crushing remembering. Remembering. I can’t even write. Not really. Nothing makes sense. Nothing quite matters and yet everything matters. There are literally wild geese flying by my house and calling out every day. A Mary Oliver reference. Just the thought of their cries — then the reality of them. The rain, the wind, the smell of earth, the yellow of the surviving daffodils, Kevin feeding his favorite deer an apple, my aching back, the smoothness of this pen. It’s all so… it’s all so.