Late days in March

It is coming up to the last days of March. In the distant past, March was a gloomy month I couldn't wait to end so Spring would finally be on the way. Late March is the detritus of winter replete with receding dirty snow on the sidewalk, its debris, salt, gravel and leftover litter embedded in there- winter's mess out staying its welcome. March is an ending, the end of winter, the end of cold weather the end of dark nights and the end of my life with my husband. The last days of March were the days I found out my husband was diagnosed with fuck ca and the days he spent dying of it. It will always mean this. Now when I get past March 20th it starts. The memories of what I was doing and not doing, knowing and not knowing, noticing and not noticing etched forever into my story as those last days slipped into never being a normal month of March again -not for me. I count down the end days of March and remember now what I didn't then. I wish for a different ending. I don't want March to end because I know what it means. I know what early April brings and I fervently hope by some magic twist or turn of fate, by some rethinking of it all perfectly, perhaps I can do it differently this time.

It's a funny thing this concept of time and even though it's three years since he died, for me time acts like it doesn't care or remember or give a shit. Time waits for no man- isn't that what they say? Not true - it waits for me every March. Once that calendar rolls over to March 20th I am back to 2014 like these last three years was a cruel twilight zone joke. And it's a hard go, when I say I relive it, I mean I relive it. I know those days and the events and the feelings like they are happening now.  I am walking to work, and functioning, and going through life's motions they are not happening now - but they are.

People are talking to me and forgetting that I lost him this week, they don't know that on the 25th I came to the realization that I missed the fact that he was dying as he did it right before my eyes. That, on the 28th I was telling him his death sentence and he wasn't getting it, too far gone in his illness with the toxins in his brain to comprehend such madness. That I am dreaming of it again, that I am reliving the loss of my world this week. No wait they are not forgetting this, scratch that, the truth is they don't know it at all. They know I am a widow, they know I lost him somewhere along the way, but they don't know what the end of March means to me. Oh some very close to me do, and they hush in my presence, they who know but don't want to go. But I go, I have to go. I march into the end of March like a death sentence on me, like a walk to the gallows where it will all be over come early April.