My Heart Beats On This Ridge

My heart beats up here on this ridge. I stare out at the vast expanse of the nature and beauty before me. But none of it can ease the ache I feel deep within.
The emptiness.
The missing.
The torture.
Of missing his presence. Wondering what he would be doing with me now, fifteen months later. We packed so much life into our time here and I made the mistake of thinking that would always be. We didn't have fifty years. He had 18. 18 years and 8 months and three days to be exact. That was the length of his life. And now I have the next 50 years missing him and feeling that ache, that emptiness, that missing, that torture. That's what I get to spend the next fifty years doing instead of running gleefully through the forest, tubing on the river wild, stuffing our faces with Five Guys French Fries and Sauce pizza.
Oh this pain is a sharp one. Cuts deep down to the soul. I am left shattered by his absence. All of our joy that was wrapped up in him is gone. Vanished in an instant. Our whole life was watching him experience this world with a certain kind of innocence and unconditional love. His wonderment over the way the water moves in a lake, the feeling of leaves across his body and the taste of the sweetness- and bitterness- of nature was a sight to behold. Getting to experience life with someone like that changes you.

And their loss changes you in an entirely different way. Life feels less joyful. Less alive. Less wonderful. Less innocent. Less everything.

My heart beats on this ridge but it feels so very hollow. No one can tell me how to live in this world after losing your heart and soul. And I'm left seeing the beauty of this world, but feeling none of it.

I hate these fifteen months. I hate this grief. I miss our boy.  And yes that is a hummingbird and the blue orb together in one picture.

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
- Mary Oliver, The Summer Day.