I had my physical today. I think of you when I have to do things I find unpleasant or scary like go to the dentist for a filling replacement or have a pap smear. I think of you all the time but when I am afraid I think about how brave you were, you didn't have a choice, and it helps me suck it up and stop being such a wimp. When things are really scary like being wheeled into the operating room for an emergency appendectomy thats when I hold your hand.
God I miss you Stevie, you have no idea how much. The moon was full the other night and I was out walking, and I just slipped out of my body and wrapped myself around every memory of you. I cried and walked and cried some more, all the while talking to you about how much laundry I did that day, how your brother is having a major break-out, and that I made the best chicken soup ever on sunday. It was dark, surreal, comforting and very painful all at the same time. This is what grief looks like almost 9 years later.
Noah is doing some amazing things, I think you are helping make things happen, I don't know how but I feel you in it.
Aly is doing great, she is a grown up now. I am proud of her. She misses you so much. She can't talk about you without falling apart.
Elliott is getting so big so fast, you would love him.
I haven't been out to the cemetery for a while. When you left I went every Thursday, then on the 19the of every month, then just special days...I sometimes worry that you think I have forgotten you, I hate graves with faded flowers from a holiday long past. I will visit you in April, bring the tulips, bring something to make the brass plate shiny again, and maybe some art. I found a bag of clay and I cleaned off my old work bench, I am thinking of making you a big snail with wings, see I don't forget.
My faith is different now Stevie, I am not sure what I believe anymore. The thought of you not being anywhere, that our 19 years was all there was ever going to be, that you are not somewhere in a heaven of your own waiting for me, that you won't be the one to bring me home is too much to bear. So I hold on to part of the God fairytale I was raised with because it comforts me I am not sure anymore, that is scary.
I wish you were here. I wish you had a cute little apartment somewhere in Berkeley with a roommate or a boyfriend and I could come and visit, we could cook and talk and I would tidy up for you, feel like a mama. I wish we were swapping books, sitting in a coffee shop talking about work and life, I wish we could plan vacations and holidays, I wish I could just wake up in the morning and know where you are.
This is the life I have, this is what I must endure, I have to find happiness even though I am broken, I have to love even though my heart aches. I have to keep believing that this isn't all there is.
Stay close sweet girl, keep whispering in my ear, help me find things, come to me in my dreams and let me look into those eyes.
February is ending, March will come and then April...nine years.
