Insight?

For the first time time in a very long time, I actually went outside on my lunch hour, probably because I had an office-related errand to run in Dupont Circle. Anyway, I don't think I'd been down that way on foot since way before Christmas. I guess that really isn't such a long time, but it's amazing how quickly things change.

Several stores and businesses along Connecticut Ave. are now vacant, and what was for decades a D.C. landmark -- the Lambda Rising bookstore -- is now all boarded up and undergoing transformation into something else. The fact that the logo and signage are gone and it is no longer recognizable seemed especially sad for some reason.

It got me to thinking about my apartment. As long as it remains unchanged, with Lionel's things strewn all over, untouched. I continue to feel his presence very strongly. Even once his family takes possession of whatever items of his they want in remembrance, the empty spaces that are left will still signal his absence...and therefore his presence.

But if I start to change things, move them, rearrange furniture so that things look different, will that also seem to register to me a certain, sad, finality?

And am I ready, able to confront that?

I'm not sure.