It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world. Mary Oliver
This year entered more gently than 2025 did. Still reeling from the ten-year anniversary of Jimmy’s death, I hadn’t caught my breath by the time 2024 came crashing to an end. My schedule packed with meetings, I took three days off for Christmas and started right back up again. Stressed out and busy, I stopped making time to walk Lucy which only made the winter days feel shorter and darker.
Towards the end of last year, Molly suggested that we escape to the ocean with our dog Lucy for a week over the holidays. She found a small Airbnb tucked into the hillside in Shelter Cove with a balcony and huge windows overlooking the ocean.
Even though California was in the midst of a torrential rainstorm during our stay, we managed to find pockets of time every day to walk on the beach and hike amongst the coast redwoods and Douglas fir trees. At night, we binge watched an old season of Survivor on Netflix and listened to the rain dance on the tin roof.
Winter shortened the days but couldn’t dim the light. The sun broke through in bands across the gray clouds making the wet sand glisten. At the end of the day, all four windows of the Airbnb were lit with the golden yellows, glowing oranges and fiery reds of sunset, a river of color blazing spread across the horizon.
The absence of human-made noise near us made the silence pulse, leaving space in the solitude for the song of the sea lions down in the cove and the owls hooting in the trees further up the hillside. At night, I could hear deer and other unseen creatures rustling in the leaves when I took Lucy out just before bed.
There wasn’t a moment when I didn’t think about much Jimmy would have loved the trip. The slow pace of our days. The buoyant energy of our eager retriever, her black shape a blur as she raced in and out of the waterways leading to the ocean, biting and pawing at the waves as if to bend them to her will. The joy in her eyes as she stood in front of us, tongue hanging out, panting hard, sea foam dotting her nose.
Much as I love spending interrupted time with Dan, Molly and Lucy, there are days when Jimmy’s absence washes the color out of the world, muting even the most verdant greens and sea blues of the California coastline. But on the empty beaches of Shelter Cove, the world shimmered more brightly, as if the quiet spaciousness of the place was making room for him, too.
Maybe I needed a year of darkness to find my way back into the light. A full descent into sadness after a decade of grieving before I hit rock bottom, pushed hard and kicked my way back to the surface.
I’m not eager to find myself in a black place again any time soon, but I know that I am wiser for having spent time under water. Even now, busy with work, distracted by the detritus of everyday living, the light burns brighter, reminding me whenever I raise my head how much beauty remains in this life of mine.
I never want to stop being stunned by the world. To forget how precious my days with Jimmy were, how lucky I was to have had them at all. To remember how much easier it is to feel Jimmy with me when everything goes quiet except the symphony of bullfrogs in our creek, and the ebbing light draws my eyes upward to the stars.
