The other night, I was browsing through my photos and ran across this one. It’s always been my favorite picture of Mr. Virgo. It’s a selfie before the term was coined. Before you started taking pictures at arm’s length that distorted your nose making it way to big for your face. He took this in his photography studio in Evergreen. It was his profile picture on match.com. It was the hook that captured my heart.

I don’t cry for him nearly as much now. I’m not “done”…you’re never “done” with grieving. You journey through grieving. And you do reach a point where you choose to remain neutral…a sort of DMZ where you just don’t go visit the pain as often. It’s not denial. You totally get that he’s gone and not coming back. Mr. Virgo is resting on a shelf in my heart and I don’t have to relive the gruesome death scene anymore.

Unfortunately, the downside of putting him on that shelf is forgetting things. Important things. Personal things. Intimate details of the person you loved more than life itself begin to seem just out of the reach of your mind, as if you’re looking through a dense fog. It’s just almost, but not quite there. It began to worry me. I was so afraid he was totally gone from me. Until the other night, when I came across this photo.

I was laying in bed, in TOW-Wanda. There was a lovely thunderstorm and the rain beat a steady roar on the roof. I pulled this pic up on my iPad and studied it intently. And suddenly it all came back. I could remember how his forehead felt when I brushed my fingers across his skin. I remembered the coarseness of his hair and how he had to use hairspray to keep that little bit in the front from falling forward. I remembered how he didn’t like me to touch his nose but loved me to nibble his bottom lip. I remembered that spot on his left cheek that worried me a little and I was going to ask him to see the doctor about it. I remembered that one wild hair in his eyebrow that he always seemed to miss and how he had me trim the neckline of his beard (even though he could do it fill well himself) just to have me pamper him a bit. I remembered the way he tucked his cuffs to the inside of his sleeve. For some weird reason I found that to be incredibly sexy. I could see him trimming his nails and carefully washing his watch and drying it on the towel. I could smell is Halston and leather and woodsy scent. I could feel his hug and his hand on the small of my back when he led me to our table in a restaurant. I remembered everything.

I was so afraid these memories were lost to me. But instead, I put them in a box on a shelf in my heart so I could pull them out when I was stronger. I am so relieved that I listened to my gut instinct and put Mr. Virgo away for awhile because now I can look at this picture and feel him again. And I can smile.