things that I miss

I miss our book shelves; our regular rotation of bedtime stories. 

I miss hearing you pull in the driveway; watching Axl exclaim “Dada home!!!!!!!” and running to the window. 

I miss having closets. A bedroom. Privacy and space and organization. 

I miss our couch. Our bed. The boys’ bedsheets and starry curtains. 

I miss having you on our team. My co-captain. 

I miss how it felt to go to sleep each night with peace and certainty. 

I miss when I didn’t have to take sleeping pills at night to block out the images of your pools of blood. 

I miss sharing the weight of parenthood and adulthood with you. 

I miss watching you be a Dad. 

I miss… you. The physical, tangible you. 

Your light is around us, but it’s not the same. You were 6 feet and 2 inches of real, solid human. You took up so much space in my life, metaphorically and physically. And then in a blink you were just… gone. I’ll adjust to your absence, I’ll learn to live life on my own, but I can’t see how I will ever get over the trauma of having my entire reality shifted in one moment like that. I don’t know how anyone does. 

I don’t really have a desire to fall in love ever again. I wonder if that will ever change. It’s not for fear of being hurt again; I think my largest lesson from all this is that none of us will ever avoid suffering. (It’s everywhere. But so is joy.) But I can tell that the only way I will get through this is to have myself and my kids at my heart center and I just can’t imagine having room for anything else. If I can raise these 2 small boys on my own, I can do anything. My own mind has kept me busy and kept me company my whole life; I hope to squeeze every last drop of my thoughts and ideas out until I no longer can. I’ve already experienced real and true, unconditional love and two kids were born from it. Now I intend to experience other kinds of love. But I won’t spend the rest of my life chasing what I had. It’s just not where my priorities are for now.