I’ve been slowly and somewhat painfully going through my piles of stacked-up letters, bills, insurance crap and other miscellany that I collected last year during The Dark Days.  It continues to be a tough chore but it needs to be done.  More specifically, it needs to be done now because of timely tax issues I’ll write about later.  But the process put me squarely back into the months, weeks and days before Maggie’s Angel Day (oddly enough, the days after are just blank.)  Thus, as you might imagine, all today I’ve been in quite a funk that’s been hard to shake.  My heart has hurt (and is still hurting) deeply.

So, after I dug through as much of the pile as I could (which, sadly, wasn’t much) I stood up, brushed off my hands, walked out the door of the house, got in Maggie’s cool car and drove off.  I ended up at the movie theater watching the new Angelina Jolie movie Salt.  It’s low on meaningful dialog and high on car chases and blowing up stuff, just like I like um.

(I’ll try to avoid any spoilers for you inclined to see Salt)  In the movie, Jolie is married to a guy she is happy, happy, happy with.  They are kind of an odd couple which reminded me a little of me and my sweet wife – he’s a little awkward science type and she’s, well, Angelina Jolie.  And she loves, loves, loves him.  There’re many scenes in the movie that show her doting on him and he, her.  Then there are scenes where she’s reflecting back to happy days: when they met, when they got married, when he rescued her from a prison camp in Thailand… stuff like that.  And she always had a nice smile on her face.

I think not too long ago those scenes would have been a heart job for me.  But today it was a nice and needed reminder about how great Maggie and I were together and how lucky I am to have had what we had.  I’m still sad, yes, but I think my mind (and heart!) has changed.  Those scenes were just what my mind (and heart!) needed.  I went into the movie a 2 and came back out nearly a 6 on the ol’ Doin’ Ok scale.  Nice.

In general these days, unless something really drags me down, I’m really happy about us.  I find the things that drag me down are things that remind me of the sick times.  I kinda don’t like to think about the sick times.  Most other times I reflect fondly on all the fun we had and the love we shared and how just perfect our relationship was.  I still grieve for our lost future together and god I miss her so much every single day.  And, frankly, it’s tough, tough, tough being single again.  But at least it doesn’t hurt quite so much to see happy couples on the movie screen. I’ll claim that as good progress.

P.S.  Angie, if you read this, please know you are welcome to come console me any time you’d like.  I’m sure Brad wouldn’t mind.