Nights and Days...

Nights were, for the first many months, the hardest for me to get through, my little sweetheart. It probably didn’t help that I started drinking again in those early days. And hadn’t you told me, my love, that I should never do that when I was lonely or sad or upset? So, I stopped again, my darling. In fits and starts at the New Year but on a clear path and righted course by the early days of February, so nearly six months now. And I’m getting to sleep better. I’m getting to sleep better, too, because I always talk to you, my love, as I take to our bed. I lay down quietly on my side and hold on to the open sleeve of your little purple shirt, taking it in my hand where it lay on top of your pillow and I talk to you. Take inventory of the day. Tell you how much I love you. Say a little prayer that you are kept safe and that I may meet you in the New Place come morning. Come soon. The nights are a little easier for that, now. It’s the dawn that has become so hard. Each morning waking is as heartbreaking as the first, with the terrible realization, coming out of the dream state, that you are not physically on this dark planet, not in body by my side. That in that way, I am all alone. Terribly lonely and alone. It hurts so much every time I wake that I can scarcely draw breath. But I say our prayer again and kiss your pictures and put on my necklace and say good morning to your beautiful spirit and make myself rise, make coffee, fill the daylight hours with a thousand little chores and tasks and projects to temper the horrible sting and muddle through until evening falls and I may lay me down and whisper again to you until I fall asleep. Dreaming of you and the Beautiful New Place. Hoping to wake there at last with you instead of this lonely world without you. How I pray to be delivered to you, my love. How I wish with all my heart and soul for that day. For you, my little sweetheart. For that day I join you, my love. Oh, Summer. My gorgeous girl. For that day… 

Every everything

I sometimes remember something about you or something that you told me or something that we did or any kind of anything, some little detail, my little sweetheart and it so delights me. But then also it makes me terribly sad, even angry at myself that it could've alluded memory long enough to actually be "remembered". But then maybe that's okay because it's all inside me, isn't it darling? All of you, everywhere we've been, everywhere we will go. I hold it all inside me. Just sometimes one piece or another of it comes a bit forward to say "hello". Isn't that right, sweetheart? And do you know what one came to me that made me think all of this, my gorgeous girl? It was your teasing me about being such a "brooder". Your texting me sometimes to say that you were thinking of me and sending love to me "(your) brooding partner". God, how I love you, Summer. Thank you for every visitation. I feel you with me and my heart is full. Thank you my little sweetheart, my little best friend, my every everything.

Treasure....

Summer was unafraid. The bravest person I've ever known. And she wanted to know. She wanted to know what had made me so sad. She wanted to know what had happened in my life and what was inside of me that made me feel that way. And she would hold me and she would stroke the well of my chest and she would calm me and she would call me her treasure. Like a mantra, she would whisper it lovingly again and again in my ear and soothe me. "My treasure", she would say, "my treasure..."