Grief is a slender girl who hovers in my delphinium bushes. She lingers in my peripheral vision.

Always there. Quiet. A gossamer shadow attached to my heels.

Today, she sat on the backseat of my car which my husband borrowed because his car is being serviced.

She took a moment to sit next to me in the faculty meeting when we had a moment of silence out of respect for faculty members who have experienced grief and loss.

But when I walked up three flights to my classroom, grief remembered to spend time picking dog hair out of the backseat from all the times I took the dogs to Shenandoah National Park because I was aching too much to teach.

I laughed today. That deep belly jiggling laugh.

I told jokes and was sarcastic and laughed even more.

I held up the wall and I rearranged my classroom and I read poetry and I made lesson plans and finally felt confident in myself.

Today, grief and I breathed in symmetry and then she gave me a kiss on the forehead before strolling away.

We are never going to be fully apart. I will always live side by side with my grief.

But today. Damn it just felt so good to be alive.