Easter 2

It's so not right without you here. It just is (or isn't.)

Last night, I should have been coming home from work (if I was working) and got busy setting up Easter baskets for the kids. I should have been standing at the table, sorting out the gifts, sharing out the candies, arranging the contents, while you sat there commenting on everything and eating all the Reese's eggs. You should be sitting there suggesting places to hide the plastic eggs, and digging through your stashes for dollar bills and quarters to put in them. Some of your suggestions -- most of them -- would be silly. A few would be genius.
You should be here to see the children find the eggs and to see their faces light up when they discover the surprises inside.

The table was there, the candies were there  (except for Reese's eggs), the special gifts for the babies. The baskets -- not our purchase, though. There was even a leftover basket for the grown ups.
Everything was there.
Except you.

It also wasn't our home. That, too, is gone.
We have no home, but then, there is no us.
I guess we don't need one.

I've missed you so these last few days. It breaks my heart that I couldn't "pull a rabbit out of the hat" and get those babies some Easter outfits. It just breaks my heart.

And I am heart-sore without you. If that heart break had happened, it would somehow not be so grievous if you were here to share it with. Although, had you been here, it wouldn't have happened. You would have figured something out that I couldn't.
Not being you, I don't know what that would have been. But there would have been something.

Heart sick, heart sore, and heart broke -- just another holiday for this one you left behind.

One More First Without You

Christmas was never your thing, except for the shopping. It was the one time of the year you would voluntarily go out into the stores. Last year you went and leaned on the cart  and rested a lot, and we didn't go far or for long. This year, had you gone, I would have Been pushing you in the wheelchair and you'd have been pushing the cart. Not for you those wheelchairs with baskets that the stores provide. You somehow saw those as an insult or a put down, and if you went, it would have been i n your own chair and under your own steam.

I missed our once a year shopping expedition, under whatever terms you would have dictated.

More than that, I missed talking with you as I wrapped the gifts for the babies. I never realized what a pleasant thing those chats were. Discussing the gifts, the possible reactions, what she would say and what he will do -- oh, those thousand hundred million little things that are everyday living.
Except that you are not living, and so we didn't have that this year.

I'd share pictures with you, but I don't have any yet. They haven't opened their gifts, for one thing. I didn't get to wrap them until Christmas Eve, after we took them home to Tam's and had Christmas dinner with them. Tam trying for a new tradition, I think.

We all missed you so.

But, this first Christmas without you has passed.
We survived.
I don't know that there is anything m,ore to say than that.

We love you.
We missed you.