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.
I admire you, believe in you, hurt for you and I love you my friend
ReplyDeleteThank you Laurel...and I love you as well.
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DeleteI don't know how I got to your blog because I don't do Facebook but it could be that your David is my Greg and as you are Kristen you could easily speak as Melinda. This post "a letter to heaven" had me reading many of your older posts and the similarities are spooky.
I am almost 23 months into this journey of shaking heads with death and your writing spills out my own feelings most of which are not on the most optimistic side of living.
Greg and I dated in my senior year high school and I declined his proposal that summer of "69. We had known each other since second grade. He married on the rebound (so I was told) and 9 years later when I had gone back to our hometown to "find my roots" we stumbled upon each other doing our laundry in the local laundromat. His marriage was over and I knew I would never have to look ever again for someone who knew me and loved me for who I was. It was magic from that day forward even though there were plenty of trials and tribulations I knew we would never part. 35 years and the day before Xmas 2012 I took him to the ER. On the day after Xmas he was operated on and they found stage four metastatic cancer had ravaged his abdomen. We were told he had about 9 months to live. He lasted 27 days.
I am beyond devastated. I have no children and no god. Your "letter to heaven" was written so that in my desperate search to know I am not alone in feeling the way I do was found by me tonight because Greg knows how hard this has become for me. If there is anything that I search for is company for my misery.
I don't know how I am going to make it either. I have a few hours of reprieve daily but then another trigger or just the welling of feeling catches up to me and I fall right back down in the hole. As opposed to the shock of the first year plus in the hole I am now finding when I fall in the hole it is much deeper. I climb out faster but the depth is swallowing me. I'm not sure if I that is better or worse. All I know is that the loss has penetrated every fiber of my being and does not want to quit.
The circumstances surrounding the death of your husband seem surreal. I cannot imagine what you have gone through in your feelings after having watched that happen. I am so sorry. So so sorry.
I don't know if I am making any sense as it is late but I wanted to write something/anything tonight even though it is late. Please forgive me if I ramble. Nothing I can say will make it better but I wanted you to know you spoke the words I feel. So sad we must feel them……...
DeleteHello Melinda. You found me because, as you said, you were led here. I believe that.
My blog is named "Facebook...."because I originally was writing on my David's FB page, but in time I thought maybe it was too much for all other eyes that could read it too, so I chose to move my thoughts to a place people would have to choose to visit if they were interested in what I had to say.
You finding my page is exactly why I created the blog (I could have just wrote in a journal) but I knew my suffocating feeling of lonely couldn't be just mine alone, others must live there too. My words are for you and anyone else who stumbles on here. They are for the sole purpose of letting you know in some small way, like a hand on your shoulder, I feel it too and you are not alone.
I don't recall what "Letter to Heaven" is about, I don't read what I have written because I'm afraid to. When the words hit me and I need to let them out I write and be done with it for the moment. Because they touched you I will read it again to know where I was 'at' on that particular day. What I can say though is that I am grateful you were able to find comfort or a kinship there to get you through what you were going through at that moment. I'm happy your Greg led you to me, he gave you a beautiful gesture of love.
Peace to you Melinda, and I'm sorry for the pain you have been left in. I hope you will come here again soon.
Kristen