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I remember the times I didn’t want to be anywhere but with him — my husband Neil, even when he was in the hospital for weeks and months at a time, even though it was summer and the desire to go out and do things coursed through my body. I was just happy to be with him, doing basically nothing. Long lazy days. Sometimes we would watch some long television series, filling up the long spaces of silence amid the beeping and whirring machines. Life seemed easier then. Now I don’t really have a desire to be anywhere. That must just be the grief, I think. It’s temporary, I think. But I don’t know whether that’s really true. I don’t know that I wish to be anywhere, let alone elsewhere. The only place I’d like to be is back with him. His life was cut far too short, far too quick. If there were anywhere I’d like to be, it would be with him but with him no longer suffering from one of the many ailments cancer brings. I think this must be why one always sees movements of following in constellation work. Again and again, someone in the constellation, in a movement of deep love turns to follow the one who has crossed over, follows thoughtlessly, as if in a deep sleep. I feel I, too, am sleepwalking through life, wanting to want something from life but again and again coming up short, coming up empty. Maybe grief is just a great hollowing out of us, of all of our desires for life to be what we want. Grief teaches us, or at least it’s taught me, that life will never be what I want it to be, that my optimism will not find a place to nestle in and blossom, that life is indeed all about suffering. I will probably never have the life I dream of. It’s okay. It doesn’t mean life is all that bad. I have learned a lot, stretched, matured. I now have more ground to stand on, a more nuanced understanding of pain and sadness, loss, grief, and losing out on life. So many things that didn’t happen, won’t happen — at least not with him. Years spent dreaming impossible dreams. So, maybe that’s why I hold myself back from dreaming too much, maybe that’s why at the moment I am happy to be in my small little house with my small little intimate life. Maybe that’s why I am not wishing to be elsewhere but here. All alone with me. It’s enough.