Dream Boat

I always preface these things, little sweetheart, by saying that I’m not too good at remembering my dreams, and generally I’m not, but I do know that my dream activity has been on an uptick of late, somehow.

The ones I remember are almost always ones that I wake from, even if I only awaken briefly and then go back to sleep. That usually happens in the last hours before I get up in the morning. I’ve had one or two almost each morning this week that I remember or partly remember. And the nature of them, at least in the way that I recall them, tends to jump-cut. That is, it’ll begin in one location or circumstance and then, without transition, suddenly be elsewhere, sometimes seemingly without regard to what was happening just before.

Perhaps that’s only in memory. Perhaps on waking I simply can’t recall the middle bits that link them. I’m not sure.

The two most distinctive parts I recall are that I/we were shooting a film on my iPhone. I was trying to get all the coverage from the location we were in at the time - the lobby and elevator of a building - so that we would have continuity with all those shots from each character’s POV before we moved on. I was even thinking ahead as to what the natural light through the windows should look like and if there were any shots we should get now for scenes later in the film that should have this look so that they match. I was a little worried that my phone was full, that there might not be enough memory on it and that I needed to get my new upgraded one soon.

So, it was exciting but there was some anxiety around it. The next thing I remember - and this is the most wonderful part - is that I was with you. We were no longer at the first location. We were alone, together, and in a big, nice, old apartment kind of at dusk. It was a bit dark, that point in the day when you haven’t yet turned the lights on. I remember that from being with you in your apartment in SF. Light would be streaming in through the afternoon and I wouldn’t notice that the sun had begun to set. You’d come home from the gym or something and I’d be there on the bed writing and you’d say “What are you doing in the dark? Turn on some lights in here” and you’d snap them on.

This was like that only we never turned them on. I’m a little sad and frustrated that I can’t remember too many details of what we said or were busy doing but I’m enormously grateful for the feeling it gave me.

I know you were really there because I had this sense of well-being, one that I had every morning when I woke even if we were 3000 miles apart, because I knew you were in my life. I knew you were probably asleep - might’ve even left me a message or a text, I should look at my phone and see! - and that we’d talk in a few hours, that we had plans, that I knew exactly how many days or hours it would be until you were next in my arms.

In the dream last night, I had that feeling. And I haven’t had that feeling in years. But I knew it immediately and can still touch its lingering presence. Your lingering presence. The relief, the sense of home that you bring to me just by being near.

That more than anything is what I remember and what characterized this part of the dream - in a darkened apartment between night and day, together, feeling safe and home and free and loved. And you were making sure that I had everything that I needed the way only you ever and always did. You had to go somewhere but you were making sure I had everything I need - keys, directions, where to find anything I might want or need in the cupboards and closets while you were away. And most importantly that you would be back. Or that I could come meet you. For the first time in the longest time, in the dream, I felt sure of that, you made me feel that certainty, that safety, that all-is-well. That was the best part. By far. By far.

There’s more tho’. Before you left, I know that we kissed. That was wonderful. Then, I walked around in the apartment a little. It was a charming old place, full of character. One thing about it that I remember I really liked was that it had a second entrance - a back door that led out to a wooden staircase a couple flights up. I loved that. It reminded me of the place in Bernal Heights where you and I were first alone together, that funny little apartment I had the first two months I was there.

The dream felt like I had been given my life back. I went down the back stairs, I think because I was planning on driving to meet you, and I noticed your car was gone. I remember thinking, of course your car was gone, you’d taken it yourself - you had to be somewhere. I’d just take the bus or a trolley or something. I wasn’t quite sure where we were. In San Francisco? It was dark. It wasn’t New York. Just then, two women came through. One or maybe both of them was European. Either Scandinavian or maybe German. She was a artist and she was with her friend. They were a bit lost. I was feeling happy and safe and friendly and I spoke cheerfully to them. She said she liked being here this time of year. I think by then I recognized that we must be in California. I told her it was even better in the fall. In the autumn.

I don’t remember much after that. I think I woke up for a moment. Good thing, too, because that’s how I usually am able to remember dreams - if I wake even for a moment right after. There was one more dream that I remember just a little that followed.

Again, I was somewhere I didn’t quite know. A house. Your mom was there, tho’, and I think it may have been a house of theirs. This dream had more of a lingering sadness about it because it was closer to what life is like now. In this dream, you weren’t there and I knew that you had already passed. Many dreams, sadly, are like this. That’s why the other dream is so magical and special and important - you were there and I could feel your presence in the familiar way you touch my soul.

In this sadder dream, I was walking around the house and there were little things, some things of yours around. I decided I wanted to give you something - an funny old little lamp that I got when I was 16 on a trip to Europe with my high school choir. My grandfather had it for a long time. I just got it back a year or so ago. Right now, it sits on the nightstand near a couple pictures of you. It’s funny that it should be so close to where I lay sleeping and somehow find its way into my dreams. It’s a little ship. I think I got it in The Netherlands. The light is behind the sails. It’s a small light, like the size and wattage of one you’d find in an old refrigerator. I placed it carefully on a white shelf for you.

It’s waiting there in the dream for you. A ship that is also a light. Waiting for you to snap it on  - “Michael, it’s so dark in here - why don’t you turn on some lights?” - and illuminate the room. A ship, maybe to take me to you.

I see now how the dreams are connected.

Thank you, my angel. Thank you for finding me. Take me to you just as soon as heaven will allow, won’t you? With all my love forever.

Dream Notebook

Little sweetheart, I write down dreams I remember as often as I can. I’m not too good at remembering them for the most part, but I’m trying harder to now. The album, of course, is filled with dreams - some of the songs, their melodies, even the words sometimes, straight from dreams and in other cases, the story of a song coming from one.

Anyway, I was looking over some of them and I found this one from a while ago. I don’t know if I ever told you about, so I will do now, even if I have before…


“…Dreams of you, my sweetheart have been ever more vivid somehow this week and I awake knowing that you are trying to find and guide and remind me. "Remember" was such a word of yours and I find so potent in my waking hours, missing and longing for you. And trying to do better. To be the person you were trying to help me become and I know even still are now from beyond my earthbound consciousness. Last night into the morning hours I dreamt you were with me. I'd bought some funny old car. I think now awake and writing of it that is a kind of recurring dream of mine. That I have some weird old car some place left forgotten and that I happen upon it or go looking. In this dream, my sweetheart, you were with me and we needed to get the funny old thing back to Davis but we had your Prius with us, too. I was so afraid to part with you. I knew we'd each have to drive one of the cars and had asked if you wanted to take a turn behind the wheel. You said you might like to in a while. Somehow I had the feeling that I was so lucky to have found you again and couldn't bear the idea of leaving your side even for a minute. But the sweetest part of the dream, my darling, through all of the strange, mundane logistics - what a normal, silly thing to dream of, no? - is that we kissed, my lovely girl. We kissed and kissed. And although I always used to close my eyes as our lips met, in the dream, again I couldn't bear to. I kept my eyes open and watched your mouth approach mine and I swear I could feel you. The way only you could ever feel in my arms. The way only you could ever kiss me. And for those moments, be they minutes or hours, in the other place of dreams, I was finally and again at home. You, my home, my love…”

From Dream Notebook. With all my love. 

Loneliness

I write lots of little things down, sweetheart, as I think of them. Usually it’s some idea or a question and because I’m on my way out the door or in the middle of something without the time to sit at the keyboard here or open my notebook, I’ll grab whatever is nearby - maybe the back of an envelope or something - and write down the germ of the idea or a question for discussion or something that alludes to the thought that I want to write about in greater length later.

I’ve got quite a few of them going at any given time but the one I’m looking at right now written on the back of a piece of unopened mail is about loneliness. It reads as follows: “Loneliness is not doing laundry. Not washing your hair. Rarely going out.”

In just those three short sentences, little sweetheart, I can remember exactly what I was thinking and how terribly I was missing you in the moment I put pen to paper. And to be honest, those thoughts are rarely far from me. There’s often an underlying bit of unspoken thought narrating my everyday life and it is largely this: what does it matter?

Much of the time I can’t find a reason to do anything. In the moments when I am most activated it’s almost always because of you - something I want to tell you, or something I want to write about you, or something I want to share with someone else that is entirely about you - some precious memory or special story that conveys what a treasure you are and how unlike anyone I’ve ever know. Something to cherish.

I’ve said many times that you are my reason. When Danya told me long ago now, shortly after your tragic passing - and how tragic it is now too to realize that that itself is “long ago” - when she told me that I mustn’t harm myself, mustn’t take my own life or I “would never find you” - I took those words to heart. They cut deep into my being. Even after I asked her, so very moved and curious, what spiritual beliefs led her to know that and she had none to back it up, it didn’t matter.

Sometimes a great truth can be spoken by someone with their knowing its root, its source, the divine truth within which it is so manifestly grounded, like an anchor deep into the earth’s core set there by God himself.  Faith need not come from a believer, from one awoken. It only need be received. And held. And treasured. As I treasure you. I know I mustn’t harm myself but must instead wait for you to call and take me when it is my time. I cannot know when. Like a million things out of the grasp of my mortal mind, I cannot know that. I can only have faith.

And in my best moments I do. In my best moments my faith is firm and I am calm. But many more moments are filled with such terrible longing for you, my little sweetheart. And unmoored from the life-staining nourishment and the very gravity of your love, like ballast, that keeps me from simply blowing away, scattered into bits with the merest breeze, I cannot find my way. Cannot find my reason. Cannot go on to even try.

I heard something the other day, my love, or read it, I can’t remember which, it might’ve been Laurie Anderson quoting someone in “Heart of a Dog” that we must try to be able to “feel sad without being sad.” That’s a lot to unpack right there, let alone take up. But maybe there’s something to it.

I’ve got another one of these little notes that I mean to write upon and it relates to this. That note reads: “On Accepting Your Fate”. That’s a much bigger conversation and a separate one but it does have a relationship here to this theme of being so desperately lonely and not knowing what to do. I think it’s this: I’m going to be lonely. Of course I am. Remember how I told you what my friend Gina said when I read her what I wrote for your memorial. How she said “what a loss!”? Of course I’m going to be lonely. I don’t have you at my side. Even worse I’m not at your side. That may sound much like the same thing, identical, but the second thought has more power for me.

Of course I’m going to be lonely. But maybe knowing that, knowing that whatever is left of my life is going to be lonely one, a much reduced and smaller one, and that I just must go on until it is my time, maybe knowing that will help. Of course I’m going to be lonely. I need to get used to it. Not long so hard for what cannot be just now. Just for now.

Later, because I have faith and I know, we’ll be made whole, made one again, won’t we, my darling? I just need to hold on. And you… you’re still and always my reason. With all my love forever…

Where it's brightest

Little sweetheart, this morning just before I woke, I had the strangest dream. You and I were at some house, I don’t know where, I didn’t recognize it. I was reaching for something. We were out by the garage, and somehow a small container of blue paint tipped over above my head at the farthest remove of my reach and dripped down over part of my face and my hand, my right hand, the one I was reaching with, and through my fingers. I was annoyed but you thought it looked rather amazing and wanted to take a picture. I had my sunglasses on and I took them off and shook some of the still dripping paint from them. You liked that even more. There was a spot - like tan lines - where my shades had been and where the paint, the blue paint, had spilled over my eyes and the right side of my face. You led me to a place where the sun was shining most brightly and started taking pictures. Close ups of my eyes and face and fingers, where the blur paint still dripped. With and without my shades, and a close up just of the shades with the paint falling off in droplets. It was starting to fade and dry when we heard my mom calling from a room in the house. She was trying to corral one of the kittens, I think because she needed to give her some medicine or something. We went inside and I woke up soon after. I didn’t immediately remember the dream but as I was making coffee I was trying to think what day today is. I remember that last Friday was Paddy’s Day, so add seven and subtract one. That made it March 23. March 23rd. Why did that date seem familiar, I wondered. Then it dawned on me. Today is my mom’s birthday. I lost her just 10 months before your own tragic passing. The dream makes more sense now, sort of. I hope you’ll bring me to the brightest spot again soon, my love. And take me into the house with you. Love you forever.

Your Special Hat!

Little sweetheart, a couple of years ago on my birthday, your Mom sent a wonderful big package to me. Inside were several things including four beautiful Serafin towels (with the “S” monogram) smelling lovely, some pictures and that gorgeous black sunhat of yours - the one you wore all the time in Ireland making you look like Zorro and that I’d like to peak under and come in close for a visit and kiss you. She affixed a little seahorse pendant to it. She said that was something that you would do (I know!) and would call it one of your “tricks”. 

I remember you doing little things like this. Talking yesterday about our first times together I forgot to mention remembering how you asked me for a pencil and I asked if a pen would do and what did you want it for and you twirled you long red hair all up in a knot on top of your head and stuck the ballpoint pen through to hold it aloft, turned to me and said “I’m famous for this”.

Your mom thoughtfully included a little hook for your hat to hang from so that it wouldn’t lose its shape. I thought about where to put it for some time but where I ultimately decided it was best was for it to rest on your pillows next me. I never turn down that side - your side - of the bed except to wash the sheets and I already had two little pieces of your clothing - one pink and one purple (your favorite colors!) there. I often go to sleep holding a little corner of them.

I’ve always been a little worried that your hat would lose its shape if not hung up properly. I very assiduously packed some cloth into the crown and that does the trick just fine but the brim is quite wide and that’s what I couldn’t figure out - how to keep the hat from collapsing a bit into the brim.

But the other morning as I got up and said our prayer and kissed your things good morning, I had an idea. If I just took a bit of nice clean bubble wrap and neatly tucked it around the brim, your hat could sort of float there on the pillow. And you know what gave me the idea, little sweetheart? You did!

Because… remember how after you got your ears pierced you were so careful not to sleep directly on the side of your earlobe? What you figured out was to use one of those travel or air pillows people take on planes. You would put the air pillow on my shoulder and then sleep on my shoulder with the air pillow holding you up and your sweet little ear through the donut hole. We started calling it your “ear pillow”, remember? I would always say before bed, “don’t forget your little ear pillow”. And you would cuddle up with me and we would fall asleep together that way.

And I still fall asleep with your things and pictures around me. And I say our prayer and talk quietly to you about the day until I fall asleep. And when I wake up now, your sweet little hat is floating right there too, just as it should be.

I think you’d like that. It’s ready for you anytime, little sweetheart. And so am I. Come collect me just as soon as heaven will allow, won’t you? With all my love forever…

The Happier Anniversary

Little sweetheart, as hard as all these days of March are, there is also the remembrance that years before the saddest, most tragic anniversaries there were the happier, glorious ones of our finding each other. You always used to relish saying that you found me and I quite like the idea of that and believe it too.

All of these days were coming so fast and biding us sweetly together one after the other that’s it’s a matter of some debate as to what might definitely be our anniversary but I think we kind of settled or seized upon this day - the 19th, two days after Paddy’s Day - as the one.

I’m so keen to write at great length about all of those days, everything I can remember, everything I can conjure and bring up and in the kind of detail that even Proust would envy. And there’s so many days and events and things.

There’s our first kiss, which was actually a few days before this and is a whole other story in itself. And there’s quite a lot of detail around even this moment I’m about to describe, so - just for now - I’m going to limited it to one story from that first night that we came to settle upon as our “first”. 

I won’t say just now how you walked hand in hand with me the first time down the little alley and into the basement apartment where they were putting me up - which, because it was in San Francisco had a back balcony, being on a giant hill, the “basement apartment” was above ground on one side. I won’t talk about how you sat at the little kitchen table and when I asked you if you’d like a tea or a diet soda, you requested a cup of boiling water (which I’d come to understand and find totally normal). I won’t talk about how you were cold, so that I wheeled over the space heater from the little bedroom into the kitchen where you leaned right up against it. I won’t talk about how instantly I told you every single thing - some I’d never told another soul - about me and what was going on in my life that worried and upset and I feared had formed, or rather dis-formed me. And I certainly won’t go into what happened just moments later. Not just yet. That’s for another time.

But I will just say it was our first time. That I didn’t have a car and that the theatre was putting me up in Bernal Heights while they were down in the Marina, which is about as far, one from other, that you can get neighborhood-wise in SF. That I’d mostly had to rely on rides from the rather unpleasant SM but that you had said you would drive me home, now. It was second time you had. And actually you asked me to drive your car. We parked on a hill. Duh, I know it’s SF. But this was a particularly steep incline and I had the parking break on. We talked for the longest time. You in the passenger seat and I behind the wheel. You’d broken three of your toes the night of the dress rehearsal, flying from one side of the stage to another during a quick change and banging into some errant piece of scenario, a stair unit, I think, and had one of those enormous boot casts on. After quite a while of talking very animatedly but not at all yet anything like erotic, you suddenly swung that enormous boot over the steering wheel and my head, reached for the seat release under me by the driver’s side door at the floor of the car, yanking it hard so that I was immediately flat on my back and you on top of me kissing me with every hint of what was to come.

The Kiss of Life. “Well, hello”. I finally got it. You finally made your thoughts and intentions known.

Thank god, little sweetheart. How could I be so dense? Thank god - always and literally - for you. After we caught our breath, I asked, “um… would you like to come in?”. You did. And... to be continued.

There’s more to detail and I know there’s more to come. This is our happier anniversary, one of them. And someday soon, as soon as heaven will allow, I pray that you will jump into my lap and wrestle me to the ethereal ground with just as much force and love if not more so.

Yours forever, my darling…

March 18

Little sweetheart, today is a very hard day. I think many of them are. And certainly these ten from the 8th to the 18th each year.

I’ve come to call this day your Ascension Day. I think that’s the best way to think of it. And the band always doers something special on this day and on your birthday each year. Today, we’re releasing a special digital-only single. It’s my new arrangement of an old Scottish hymn (with some lyrics - about you, of course - too) and in our signature dreampop sound. It’s called “Watchers and Holy Ones”. The cover is below.

So, I’m glad we’re doing this today but it’s still a very hard day. A hard day to do very much of anything else. And I have to let myself do nothing and take it easy and just rest and sleep and pray and think of you and have your pictures and your presence around me. I sent some flowers - a pretty blooming Azalea plant - to your folks house for you and for them.

Mostly I’m just going to be nice and quiet today. And know there’s a reason it’s so hard and that’s okay. Because if I just quiet myself, I will be able to hear you in all the ways you try your best to let me know you are there, closer than I can imagine. And that one day, one day very soon, I may come to you or perhaps you to me (that’s better isn’t it, you finding me, just like before, just like always?) and that the Ascension will be complete because I will be with you again and forever and being with you is what completes me and this little life of mine. Isn’t that so, my sweetheart? Love you forever. 

Boston

I’m on the afternoon train to Boston, little sweetheart. I can never go there without thinking of you and the wonderful times we had there when you were in residence.

It’s suddenly freezing again in New York and is meant to be even colder today in Boston - the high is supposed to 19f! - so, I’m dressed warmly and in particularly because I’m wrapped up in the beautiful blue and grey scarf that you knitted for me in your downtime there and gave to me as a gift at our very Christmas together. I’m wearing the beautiful scarf you made in Boston on my way to Boston and will be wrapped in it and same way that I long to be wrapped within your arms and love.

I’m going up to see a friend’s play. She runs a small theatre in Cambridge that’s mostly dedicated to female playwrights. I’m coming back on Monday. It’s really cold, as I say, little sweetheart, so I don’t know if I’ll do much more than go to the theatre and stay inside.

But I’ll be thinking of you, I know, and all the wonderful times we had there together in the few days that I visited you around your birthday that year you were there working at The Huntington.

I remember it was quite cold and snowy then, too, even though it was early November. I remember walking a lot. Walking you to and from the theatre. Walking for what seemed like hours on your day off looking for a nice place to eat. I remember that by the time we finally found something - a cozy old pub - we were so hungry we got big bowls of clam chowder and burgers! And then had dessert! We were so hungry and needed to warm up. I remember the sweet little apartment they put you up in. I loved being there with you. I went to nearly every performance but on your birthday, I went out during the show and got groceries so that I could make you a nice dinner and a birthday cake for when you got done.

We had the most lovely time. It was that trip where we really started listening to DCfC quite a lot. And you burned CDs for me of some of their stuff and especially a Goldfrapp one. I love how you changed the order of songs around to ay you like them! Who thinks to do that?! And it’s one of the things I love so much about the CD-R of Goldfrapp’s “Felt Mountain” that you burned for me. The title track, which is basically an instrumental, comes up at the beginning and then twice more in the sequence. I wasn’t until later when I was looking up the titles online that I discovered in the original sequence it’s midway through the order and only appears once. Your way is better! It’s like a theme coming back and permeating the album.

Just the way that you are the theme of my life - all that’s important, all that matters, all that makes sense of everything. May you flow through me to the end of my life, my little sweetheart, in the same way that you came into it, saving me. And may the end of my life come soon, so that I may flow into you, joined together again and finally forever, flowing as one. As it should be and was meant to. With all my love…

Read(y) For You

Little sweetheart, tonight is the anniversary of the terrible accident that took you from me. I'll never forget what a wonderful day we had had right up until the worst, cruelest thing that could ever be. Today is Wednesday, so I went to that little church I told you about to pray and sing and sit quietly and send every thought to you. They asked me to read one of my poems for you, one of the Dream Together poems. It came near the end of the service when we name aloud or silently those dearest ones in our prayers. I spoke a little about you and then read this:

She sent him a dream so he would know. 
And she whispered "remember when you wake." 
It was the spot where she often stood 
on the opposite nearer-than-he-could-imagine middle distant shore. 
Ever faithful. 
Watching the other half of the darkened sky 
for him to pass from his world and fall gliding safely into her own. 
Forever and returned at last. 
Two halves of the same soul.

You are in my every thought and prayer tonight, my angel. And always always will be. With all my love forever.

 

March 7

March 7. Six years ago tonight was our last night, little sweetheart. The last night I would fall asleep with you in my arms, your head on my shoulder, your sweet little feet hooked around my ankles, holding my hand. And we went to bed a bit early that night. 

It was a Monday, so it was your day off from doing On The Waterfront but you & I were in rehearsals for Blackbird so you were working double-duty and you were tired. We both were. It had gotten a bit chippy in the afternoon. We were rehearsing at ACT and they kept moving us every other hour. Something went awry with the space rental, with the scheduling, and they kept coming in and making Michael French pack everything up and move us to yet another room, yet another floor. 

When we got back to the apartment we were beat. I asked you what you wanted for dinner and, shockingly, you asked for pizza. We almost never had pizza, little sweetheart. And only in New York where you liked Two Boots because they have that one with the whole grain crust. So I called for delivery. Some place in The Mission called, fittingly enough, “Escape from New York”. (I put it on my AmEx. I remember because that statement is taped to the wall over my desk. Because that charge is the last one made on my card before the accident. I wrote “still alive” next to it and taped it there after I opened and first read the bill three years ago. I’m looking at it even now…). We ordered pizza and then forgot about it. We forgot because they took like an hour to deliver and when it arrived it was big enough to feed a small battalion. Most of it got wedged into the fridge overnight. 

We ran lines for a while and then our hands over each other for a much longer, much needed while. Coming up for air at one point, breaking the clench slightly, you looked into my eyes and said with a wry smile “you were pretty mad at me today, huh?”. “No! No,” I insisted, well aware that I’m a complete pain in the ass in rehearsal. “I wasn’t really. I’m just…”. “You’re a such diva!” you said laughing. “I know, I know," I said. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. And I…. I…” 

There were more words after that but hard to make out while kissing. I do remember later as we lay there entwined and talking in the kind of whispers that lead to slumbers that you said so sweetly to me, “all you ever needed was just to meet the right…” “Girl”, I said in the same moment that you said “woman”. And nothing truer was ever spoken. 

I believe my whole life was a route, circuitous but determined, decreed, leading to you. You alwats liked to say that you “found me”, didn't you, darling? And I like that idea. You found me, little sweetheart and I needed to be found so that I could meet you and know you and love you. That’s the only reason why I was born, I think. I only reason why I was ever here. I really don’t know why I remain but I suspect (one of your favorite words, “suspect”…) that you holds that answer for me, too, don't you? Goodnight, little sweetheart…

Candles and Prayers

Little sweetheart, today is Ash Wednesday.

I went to services up at that little church I told you about. It's the usual Wednesday night for the candlelight meditation, so it was part that/part Ash Wednesday-ish. When they put the little cross on your forehead, they call that "the imposition of ashes." They did that and I said my prayer for you, for us, and I sang and I was filled with thoughts of you.

Ash Wednesday is also the beginning of Lent, little sweetheart, when people "give up" things. Another part of the service was an opportunity to write something down, maybe something that you wanted to unburden yourself of, and then burn it in a little bowl. I wrote down something that weighs very heavy with me, little sweetheart - all my mistakes.

I'm so very sorry, my darling, for every mistake, any time I may have hurt your tender feelings, any cross word that I may ever have uttered. I know that we are both terribly emotional and passionate - that's one of the wonderful things about our finding each other, we could never scare the other away, only match one another and cling together even stronger. And I know both that little arguments or rough patches are just a part of relationships in general and that any of ours always came with and from the underlining great need that we just wanted to be together even more. Any little flare up only ever had at its root a plea from you to me or from me to you just to hold each other a little tighter and never ever let go. I know it's mutual. But I still just ache and want to kill myself for every and any mistake or ever hurting your feelings, even if we made everything okay moments later and I cried and you forgave me and understood. It still haunts me.

So, I wrote that down, little sweetheart. I wrote down how sorry I am for all my mistakes, little sweetheart. And I folded it up and burned the piece of paper in the little bowl there and then I prayed.

Before I left, I talked to that nice lady minister, Jes, I've told you about. And we prayer together for you, too. And then I asked her if she believed that you and I would be together again. I cried and cried as I said the words. And she yes. She said we believe that and she said that she believes that and she will believe that for us and that I can believe too.

And I do, little sweetheart. I believe and pray for that. And when I came home, I made sure your candle was burning and then I took a little picture with my head titled close to yours.

I love and miss you, my love. My True Love, my best friend, my soulmate, my partner, my gingersnap, my little sweetheart. My Summer, I love you with all my heart and soul. Please help and guide me today, my darling. And please take me to you the minute that heaven will allow. With all my love forever...