50 (or not)

She knew he was awake, the soft sound of his breathing told her so.  She opened her eyes and watched him.  Arms bent with his hands behind his head on the pillow, staring at the ceiling...thinking.  Always thinking, sometimes a good thing, other times not.  Today though she saw peace on his face, today she was looking at the young boy she fell in love with 33 years ago.  Not the 50 year old man he was today...

We made it she thought, we are here...really here.  All the hard work and saving has finally paid off. The foregone honeymoon, extravagant gifts, vacations...everything. We wanted to escape to a tropical paradise, just the two of us, and we set the goal as his 50th birthday.  A number he had started dreading way back when.  "Let's turn that milestone into the best experience you've ever had, let's create a memory that is just for us in a place neither of us has ever been."  "Let's take the honeymoon we never had and then you will always have that as your 50th birthday present."  And so the plan was set...

I opened my eyes and reality hit, yet again.  The sight before me was an empty bed and empty pillows.  And cold.  Cold all around me, no tropical paradise for this gal.  Another milestone faced without you David.  "Happy Birthday my lover" I said to no one as a tear rolled down my cheek.  "Happy freaking birthday"!

I so had wanted this day to be one of the best of your life, a day for you to carry with you forever. There was so much I always wanted for you, so much I wanted to give you.  I'm sorry I will never get that chance and can only hope that while you were here with me I gave you everything you needed.  I hope that you knew, really knew just how much I adored you.  God how I still do.

Happy would be 50th my love.  I hope you are free and happy and spending time with Evelyn, she will have you doing tequila shots and whooping it up.  Hug her for me and when you feel her arms around you...know that they are mine.

I love you my husband, my David.

A letter to heaven

Dear David, 

I haven't talked to you in so long I figured I would write.  In fact the last words I said to you were
"I love you", not sure if you heard me...but I screamed it loud.

Things sure have changed for us wouldn't you say?  A year and a half has passed since we laid eyes on each other, held hands...kissed.  So much time apart.  And we thought we had fixed that...being away from each other, out of each others lives.  Oh how we were wrong!  

I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not really me anymore.  I tried, but she's gone, I think you took her with you.  Who I am now has yet to be determined.  I don't look the same, I don't talk the same, I don't think the same and I don't do the same.  I'm stuck in a black place between the light and the dark, a place between living and not.  I carry on, don't get me wrong.  Our house is clean, our bills are paid,  and our kids are well.  Occasions are observed, functions are attended and our families are appeased.  I've kept up with it all, I've done it all...but not really. My heart isn't in it, as there isn't one to give, I gave it to you a long time ago.  I function now like a robot, I work off of memory.  I don't know for how much longer I can do it though, what little life I have in me is waning.  My will to survive is about spent.

I need you David.  I need you to talk to me and help me fight.  We always talked, remember? We would face whatever there was head on and figure a way through it, together.  I'm alone now, but I still need you.  You calmed me and helped me to 'let go' a little, you were the soft to my hard, the laugh to my smile, the joy to my sorrow.  You were my everything love, and I don't know how to live without you, I don't even want to.

I wonder often where you are and what you are doing. I wonder what you think and what you feel. Are you sad? Happy? Do you feel like me? I hope with all the hope I have that you are well. That you are content and that when you look back on our time together you feel good. I know you wish me the same, and I do, look back and feel good. The rest though I haven't quite mastered, the living is where I have trouble.  I'm in dire straits.

I wanted to tell you though, I love you, and thank you.  Thank you for the life we had. Thank you for loving me the way you did and making me feel like I was the most perfect human being on the planet...for you.  Thank you for bringing me back to me, for showing me I was so much more than a Mom.  Thank you for your laughter and your silly antics and your goofy side.  Thank you for loving my children with your whole heart and for being the Daddy Gillian never had.  She loves you fiercely and hurts for you hard.  Thank you for sharing your boys with me, I love them like my own, I love them enough to let them go and be.  And mostly David...thank you for our story.  It is a treasure among treasures and I will never forget one single moment of it.  Not the part that began when we were children and not when we picked back up as adults.  It is one for the ages I believe and it means the world to me.  You enriched my life in more ways than I could ever express and you taught me about myself.  I have never had anyone love me the way you did, nor will I probably ever again.  I am blessed to have known that if only for a little while.

Wherever you are and whatever you are doing I hope that you will always find me, smile, and remember when...

I love you David John Machado, I love you big.  Please help me to be well again.

78 weeks

I feel like when you died I died too.  The slate of who I was wiped clean.

You didn't come back, either of you

I did.

I'm brand new. Bare naked and alone. An infant new to this world.

An infant without the luxury of having every little need cared for.

An infant without the luxury of gradually growing and adapting to this place I am in.

I am an infant thrown to the wolves...helpless and wailing with the need for protection and care. But none comes.

I have not been given the opportunity to ease into this life.  

I was born here, to this new life, with the weight of the world...with the weight of a parent...with the responsibilities of an adult.

How can an infant be expected to act and function like an adult.  It is impossible to think...

Yet here I am.

A year and a half later and I have grown no further.