Fifteen Miles Out

Calvin (Dar) and The Coyote

Grief punches a hole in your heart so big, there aren’t enough words in the world to fill it.

For me, I tried to fill it with stories. I wrote a book. I gave him a cap and a wave and a quiet goodbye by the fire.
But grief…grief doesn’t work like that.

When Mark and I drive down that road, I feel it coming, that wave of anxious grief that starts even before we see the house.
Not the garage.
Not the driveway.
It starts where the smoke used to rise, from the fire that was always burning. But there’s no smoke now. No fire. Just the memory of it. And still, it hits the same.

Sometimes, fifteen miles out, it starts in my chest. I know Mark feels it too. He can’t even say the words. I just look at him,
and then we’re both crying. Because you don’t need words when you’re both carrying the same weight.

Some small part of me still whispers, “We’ll just stop and see who’s there.” But it’s never him. And even though the stops have mostly stopped, the memory of them lingers. Because he was always there. Waiting. With a cold one, a grumpy smile, the kind that came with a furrowed brow and a twinkle in his eye, and a story you’d already heard a hundred times but never wanted to end.

Calvin meant a lot to a lot of people. Many knew him longer, knew him deeper, and still, the space he left behind feels impossible to fill. And no one feels that more than his wife. Her grief is deeper than I can speak to, an everyday ache that none of us can imagine. What I feel is only a shadow of what she carries.

And then there are the fishing buddies, the hunting crew, the wonderfully wild misfits who knew his laugh in the early hours,
and his stories long before I ever heard them.

There are his brothers, his cousins, his nieces and nephews, the kids and the grandkids, a family who knew the inside jokes and the old stories that only belong to people who go back.

They miss him too. In their own ways. We all do. Because everyone has a Calvin, don’t they? That person who made the world feel a little lighter,
a little louder,
a little more theirs.
And when that person is gone, it leaves something that can’t be patched or filled. Not really. Everyone carries that grief in their own way. Sometimes it’s loud, sometimes it’s quiet, sometimes it hits fifteen miles out with no warning at all.

That’s why I wrote this book. Not just for Calvin, but for anyone carrying a grief that doesn’t go quiet. For the people still trying to find words for someone who was never just one thing. I hope it helps. Even just a little. I hope it feels like sitting by the fire with someone you miss, and letting the stories carry what words can’t.

Calvin and the Coyote is now available on Amazon and here on the site: www.fireflyandfog.com/books

If this speaks to you, please feel free to share.
And if you’ve got a “Calvin” of your own, I see you.