End times

I'm meeting up with our friend Graeme tomorrow, little sweetheart. I'm meeting him at the Renaissance diner. Remember that place, my darling? We got take out there a couple of times and maybe even sat in one of the booths at least once. I remember that you found something you really liked on the menu. I can't remember exactly what it was just this minute, I'll need to think about that. But I remember waiting for our food to come up and introducing you to someone I noticed sitting there who I hadn't seen in ten years. A few years later I saw him again and had to tell him that that beautiful little red headed girl I had been with had passed away. 

It's a terribly sad story that I've had to tell over these last four years and eleven months since you left this world. Whenever I see someone who I haven't seen in a long long time and they ask how I am, if they really insist on wanting to know, I have to tell them because that's what's going on. I'm still and forever in mourning for you my darling. 

And tomorrow I'm seeing Graeme. He was very kind in those first days and months. And when your mom came out to see me in that play it was Graeme (and Jason too) that were so attentive and kind and friendly to her. 

I actually haven't seen Graeme in a while. I was going to say a year but it might actually be two. And the Renaissance is a place where I've met up with him before. And that's what I was thinking of just now and wanted to write down and tell you. 

One of the first times I sat down with Graeme after I got back from your memorial was at the Renaissance. We sat there and I tried to eat but mostly what I did was cry. I wept, my little sweetheart. I bawled. I keened. Horribly. I'm thinking of the sound I made. It was like a dog. A heartbroken, lost, miserably alone, frightened animal. A poor poor sad little dog who had lost everything and couldn't find his way home. Lost! So so lost! The sound I made was a howl. A wailing. The saddest, most mournful imaginable. Because I was so lost without you. 

For years and even now I can feel how near I am to that place of total despair. I try not to touch it, or rev it or bring it on. But I also never want to really lose it. Somehow the pain has a thread to you. 

Maybe I'm wrong. Will you tell me, little sweetheart, if I am? Will you tell and guide me? May I call to you? Am I living as you want me to? I wear your handwriting on my flesh. Your words are tattooed into each forearm. Your pictures and many of your things surround me. I don't want to ever get used to it. 

Please be with me, please remind me. Please take me to you. I'm having chest pains more and more often and I welcome them. I rejoice because I hope it means soon may be my time to join you. 

There's still much to do in making a testament to you. The records we're working on, the long-by-fits-and-starts memoir I've promised. I must do all this, I know. But most importantly I must honor you and pray and meditate and be mindful and quiet and listen for you. And remember. And remember. And remember. Always. Forever. Always.