looking up

The phrase “look up” has been taunting me for a couple weeks now. I’ve been doing a lot of looking down – of keeping my head down, metaphorically – since Pete died. I write as much as I can, but since writing is the only time I’m actually tuning in with myself, the rest of the time I am just trying to stay afloat. I’m raising two boys, I’m rebuilding my life, I am dealing with endless paperwork and logistics that come with a spouse’s untimely death. In the quiet moments between all that, I don’t really want to be thinking. I bury myself in my phone, mindlessly scrolling. I put on podcasts to distract myself during even the quickest or easiest tasks. I do a lot to make sure my nose is staying to the pavement, minding my own business, not looking around me as if I’m afraid a break in my concentration will be the breaking of me.

And I know while I’ve been doing this, I’ve been missing all the signs. I’ve felt it in my bones that if I would just “look up,” if I could just face the world head on and try to let myself exist instead of merely accomplish that new things would come my way. I’ve been disappointed at the lack of signs that Pete is still with us and all around us, knowing full well that I’m just not paying enough attention but unsure how to stop going, going, going long enough to pay attention to anything else besides the next thing on my to-do list.

Yesterday, 4 months to the day he died, the first hot day of the year… I found myself looking up. 

Literally. I’d brought all my work stuff out to the deck, and I took a moment to soak in the sun. I closed my eyes and pointed my face right to it and relished in the feeling of my skin beginning to bake. When I opened my eyes, I noticed there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. There was just blue as far as I could see, from mountaintop to mountaintop. Since Pete died, the weather has been existing in these extremes. It snowed nearly every day, and each time it did, they were the most perfect, fluffy flakes. When it rained, it poured all day. There were ice storms, frequent hail… every possible variation of winter weather and each time it was in absolute full force.

And now, spring. My first new season without him. He’s not here to mow our lawn or plant his garden or play water balloons with Axl. And yet… looking up, I saw the brightest blue sky I can remember. The temperatures are unseasonably high for spring. And I felt him here, as if he crafted the most gorgeous spring day just for me, as if he’s had his hand in the weather every day since he died and has been waiting for me to notice it’s his doing.

Axl had gone on a nature walk at school and came home with a newfound obsession with gathering acorns and pinecones. He’d collected an armful of pinecones off the lawn and he asked me where they came from. I brought him over to the side of our deck that brushes up against the trees, and I pointed to show him how the treetops were dotted with pinecones. As we looked, a bird flew right into our view and perched on a branch. It wasn’t a cardinal, the bird that’s supposed to represent a dead loved one visiting, but he was red and yellow and green. I have no idea what kind of bird he was, but he was beautiful. Axl and I both gasped and stared at him, and then he flew away.

So this is what I’d been missing out on by looking down, shying away from living my life for fear that looking up left me too vulnerable.

A little while later, a hummingbird. And a little while after that, King the cat came to visit us (more on that another time). The moon was out during the day. So many little things that I see Pete in clear as day if I just pay attention.