The Waiting Month.

Made it through August, the month of birthdays.The month of your birthday.
You would have turned 62 this year. Early retirement age.
Would Social Security have been checking over your file, and going over your benefits? They have a (good) reputation for doing things like that. Checking out all the ways you might qualify. and deciding which one gives you the most money.
That would probably still be disability, given that there haven't been raises in benefits for a while. And on the summaries they send in the mail, disability usually pays more than retirement -- especially early retirement. At some point they probably even out, and maybe retirement even comes out ahead, but, in your case, we will never know.
Right now, I get more as your survivor than I would draw on my own, even, at this point, at full retirement age. I can see you smiling at that, thinking something finally works the way its supposed to.

It's been a different August this year.
Hailey's last year in single digits.
Max's first birthday with you since you left us.
Cool and dry, especially for August.
Long and lonely days and nights without you while I'm not working.

And now it is September.
Warren is going to school, starting tomorrow. How did he get so big already?
Hailey's last year in elementary school. She's unhappy that she won't be there next year to show him the ropes when he goes into kindergarten, our big-hearted loving little girl (and Warren's big- hearted big sis.)
And I am off work with bad legs and bad eyes and no one sane to talk to for all the long hours.
The West is afire, the South is awash, and climate change is inevitable, because change is inevitable. This years natural disasters seem to be doing quite a bit of terra-forming.
I find that interesting.

I called it a waiting month, because soon it will be October again. And October seems to have an affinity for tragedy in many small ways.
Yes, I see pending personal losses, but hope and pray to be wrong.
Miracles happen.
They do.
They can.

And so I wait.

But not for you, because it is sinking in so much more that you just are not when it comes to living out my life, and even these few years later, that is immense.
Immensely empty.

In the immense emptiness of the desert, cactus blooms after a shower.
In the immense emptiness of space, stars are born and die.
In the immense emptiness of me, there is always you.

Love, always,
Always.

18 Months Gone.

It happened the other day.
I didn't consciously know it, but some inner part of my mind or soul has been counting and keeping track.
Some part of me knew it, without my knowing I knew.

I was mean and hateful and bitter for two days -- April 15 and 16. Sometime Late on the 16th, I realized it was the 16th of the month.

And then I knew.

18 months without you.

18 months alone in the loneliest way.

18 months, just -- 18 months.

Is it only 18 months already, or is it finally 18 months?

I don't know.
Don't suppose it matters.
18 months is just a fact; a word; a number.
An anniversary.
The kind that needs acknowledged but is nothing to celebrate.

People sometimes wonder what I miss the most about you.
What a silly question,.
I miss the you-ness of you, not just your parts.

But I think of you not having to draw breath, not having to choose between eating or breathing.
Those are the thoughts I cling to and try to find unselfish comfort in.

But I still miss your presence in my life.

And I surely truly wish I could take or find or have new pictures of you to share. The old ones are so old.

One More First Without You

Warren's birthday is over, and you weren't there -- and you were. Your devilled eggs, your paper plates, your grandchildren, you. Just you.
And Warren wearing a suit and tie, but his dress shirt that just wouldn't stay tucked in. (Remind you of anyone?)

Day after tomorrow, Tommy will be 14. I doubt he'll even know it's his first birthday without you. If he does, I doubt that it will matter much to him. He never got a chance to know you, save for those few weeks he won't remember.

Coming up, Easter. I  should be able to make baskets for them, and maybe some clothes (new to them.) They won't be able to show/share them with you, and that makes me sad.

The whole upcoming spring and summer makes me sad.

The return of October makes me more than sad. Hailey says you might come back when it's Halloween again. I tell her that you can't, and she just says but you might. Last visit she didn't go into details but was happy talking about October when it will be Halloween again.

Of course, when that happens, we will have completed the cycle of calendar firsts, won't we?

I wonder if that may nor be a way you "come back" to us.

I wonder, too, about the Halloween thing. Is she expecting you to come back as a ghost? Or maybe you'll be reincarnated by then. ? Or does she think you will come back as the you she knew? Is the Halloween when she couldn't show you her costume and call you about trick-or-treating her benchmark of your death? It's so hard to know what to say to her when I don't know what she is thinking? And she doesn't have the words to explain her thought or emotion. How could she have? I am barely able to do so and I've been reading and writing and using/learning words for a half century plus.

You won't be here to  see the forsythia this year.
That is so unbearably sad to me,that you won't see the bright blooms you looked forward to and enjoyed.

The firsts will continue as we go on without you, Rex.But we will soon be halfway through the cycle of calendar firsts, and it looks like we've made it so far.

The distance between now and next October is nothing at all compared to the distance from us now and where you went last October.