On Thanksgiving...

I'm thinking of you on this cold and snowy Thanksgiving Day in NYC, my sweetheart. On my own. With Christmas coming. The holidays are filled with memories and longing too. I am glad and grateful that I got to spend some of the very best ones with you, my love. Still, I miss you terribly. Someone asked me lately if I had experiences that made me feel you are near me and I told the story about the watch. The watch I had that my mom gave me (and who died just 10 months before you, my darling girl.) Remember how I was wearing it when I was in California with you after Valentines Day and the wristband broke, so I threw it into my laptop bag? And there it sat, forgotten amidst the tragic events.  Months later, I came across it, looking for something else and it had stopped because it's self-winding - you have to be wearing it and moving around for it to work. I put it on the mantel behind a bunch of framed pictures of you. And one day sitting on the sofa beneath it, inconsolable, I heard it begin quietly ticking. And it's happened since. Sometimes when it's quiet or I'm terribly sad, I have heard it simply start up. I told that story to the person who asked - a friend. You know him too, my sweetheart. And he said he thinks our loved ones, our beloved, like you, are definitely around. "Oh, they're still here," he said, "and, actually, not that far away". I like that idea. Always be with me, Summer. Don't go too far away. With all my love... m