February 16, 2026

The Cove is entirely covered over. It’s not frozen at the very top of the dam. Prints cross the river, but no communities of birds gather near. No geese, no ducks, no swan not even a gull or two gliding over a puddle.  It’s actually quite bleak, as I am.

I have this sense that I have no right to grieve this time around. I’m not a wife, nor a daughter, not an ex-lover; yes a friend, but something other.  What happens with the grief when the love was deep and there wasn’t a standard label to place on it?

This is true for both men I’ve lost in the last month. We had no standard labels to place onto our narratives.  Their stories are so totally different; too, the labels would be different if they existed. 

And the grief, I start to question my right to grieve either of them.  Even knowing all I know about grief.  Everything I know about the triggers of grief, the fact that it is not predictable, does not conform to rights and wrongs, and is ever present.  Grief composes the background tract.

Today when the Connecticut River is covered flat and white with snow, clouds of three different shades of grey are billowed across the sky, there are no sudden contrasts of color, grief takes a seat closer to the front whether I think it is valid or not.  A steady pressure on my head, something clasped tight around my heart, I feel grief. I miss a presence; I want to make someone laugh. I want that large laughter, that long slow throb, that sudden spark of a new curiosity.  These are all features of love.  Grief is a part, grief is a steady rhythm in the back, and grief may be the cello part.  Grief is brought forward because they are gone. I cannot ask either of them a question out loud ever again.  I feel the weight of tremendous grief under these billowing clouds.  They are gone in human form and whether one thinks I have the right to or not, I do.