The 419 Windsor that love built.

When I crossed the threshold into the Wilson house for the first time, I was accepted as family. They loved Merritt as their own. It's been incredible to experience their love and acceptance, and inspiring that Erin loves me enough to share them with me. And me with them.

So it's hard to believe that the patriarch of this family has been gone a year.

We spent 10 days there when it happened. Grieving. Laughing. Crying. Sitting in silence. Sitting in chaos. Listening to Grandma tell stories about Granddad and cherry orchards and rumble seats. Seeing the love in her eyes. The love that they shared that created this gigantic family. Watching her cry. Watching her break. Watching her be strong. They were married for 63 years.

Each night as we crawled into bed, we were racked with grief. In the darkness of the room there was nothing to focus on except our loss. We struggled to fall asleep, and instead kept ourselves up thinking about Granddad, about seeing him without a breath in his lungs, about how cold his cheek was when I kissed him for the last time, about how we wished that we were trying to sleep, but couldn't because he was upstairs with his television blasting (as always), about how angry he got when he sneezed, about how he'd fall asleep with an electric razor still spinning around his chin, or with floss in his mouth, about the way his aftershave smelled, about how he could take the lord's name better than anyone you ever met, about how he knew exactly where your sugar was ...

And when we couldn't think about that anymore, we found ourselves contemplating the universe. Its size and complexity. Its existence. Much like our family, huge and entangled. And here, all 50+ of us, without him.

A year, now. And somehow that concept, much like the universe, hasn't gotten any easier to comprehend.