Birthday

You would have had a birthday Saturday.
You would have been 59 years old that day.
You would have had to renew your driver's license. Or decide not to.

School started, and River Days came and went before the date.
Reminders.
Reminders of a date I was trying not to think about.
(At least there was no Tobacco/ Farmer's Festival this year the weekend of.)

My sisters remembered you.
Our daughters remembered you.
I knew it to e your day, minus you, and I slept and went to work, where way too many of the men in the pictures had some feature that reminded me of you.


I don't think you have birthdays Where You Are.
If you do, wouldn't your birthday there be October 16?
But your mom is there, and your sister Dorothy,(and others) and I like to think that you felt the good memories and love from here, and that they somehow reminded you and remembered the day as yours, and I hope that they gave you the attention and the loving notice that I could not this year.




I could not, because you weren't here.
Because you aren't here.
 
You will never be here again.

But August 23 will always be your day.

I Miss You - Avril Lavigne with lyrics

I want You Back

I miss you.
I miss you.
I miss you.

I want you to come home.
To me.

I don't like me too much without you.
I don't like you being without me.

come hme, come home.

How I wish you could.

Or that I could be wth you

Still

Still here; still missing you; still loving you.

Working third and driving makes it hard, sometimes, to have any other life but working, driving, and sleeping. That's okay most of the time, I think. Less time to brood or feel the aloneness. Less time to listen to the Silence of the Home.
Our Home.
Where you aren't.

I think the blog will be boring if I were just to write that opening line every few days. Doubt that many people would find it useful or helpful. Although there are those out there who would probably be reassured that they aren't alone. I may have to think about that.
Hmmm.

United We Stand - Brotherhood of Man

3/4 of a Year

That's how long you've been gone.

What an empty, useless, lonely year it has been.
Empty.
Useless.
Lonely.

Soon, I'll have most of the dreadful and dreaded annual firsts behind me -- and I don't want them behind me. I want them ahead of me still. I know that isn't going to happen -- if I haven't wakened to a 'before' reality in nine months, I'm kind of getting the idea that it will never happen.

Oh, but I wish.
I wish.

The biggest first is looming before me. Your birthday. I don't wanna have your birthdate without you. That's so "not right" that I can't express it.

Hailey's birthday, too. It will be strange without you to share it with. And then yours. And, of course, your family, with its cluster of August birthdays. I know they will think of you, too, and that a bit of them will feel the loss of not knowing you're there -- of knowing you're not there -- on the day that was always yours.

I dread the day. I know it will hit me hard. The week of the 10th through the 16th of every month is so hard, and those are (usually) ordinary days. Should I work and sleep and pass the emptiness that way? Should I take the day off and wallow in grief and aloneness?
But that would make your day about me, and I don't want that. Somehow I will make it your day, because it is.
It always will be, for me.

All out of love - Air Supply (With Lyrics)