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.

Big Hole

There's still such a big hole in me where you aren't.

I miss your presence, your look, your laugh.
I miss someone to (not) talk to, but there anyway.
I miss company.
I miss laughing together.
I miss plans.

I see you every day. In Tammy's work, and Warren's walk, and Hailey's big brown eyes. In every corner of my house, where you never were, but are somehow still there. (Such an add, otherly feeling) I hear you sometimes as I lay drowsing, or as I begin to rouse. (Rousing and drowsing -- where I find Rex.)

Warren makes me laugh, but its a different kind of laughter.

I try not to bother you where you are. You should be free from earthbound problems. You deserve enjoyment and freedom and all that stuff.
Sometimes I just need to talk.

Sometimes I just need to rest my eyes on you, but you are only a picture and a memory. (Well, pictures and memories.)

I don't know how to go on like this.
Not that I have much choice, since the days come and the nights go as they always have.

I miss you.

Warren

Let me tell you about our boy, Rex. I haven't for a while, and I want to. Good enough reasons? Good.

He has your eyes. Not the color, his are more grey than brown, bordering on blue. But the shape of them, the clarity, the way the soul looks out through them -- all very Rex.
He walks like you, he sits and thinks like you (the cogitation, not the actual thoughts. At least I hope not.)

It may be that he talks like you. I don't know how you developed verbally.
He is verbally closer to a two year old than a four year old, which he is closing in on fast.  His words are just now becoming clear, more often thsn not. One can have a conversation with him now. A limited conversation, but a conversation.
He still speaks a great deal of baby babble -- his own private language. But he Englishes more and more frequently.

And he has understood a lot more than he verbalizes for a very long time.

He's in the tantrum stage, which is fairly normal and fairly close to age appropriate. He's very very good at those, the little cutie stinker stubborn hardhead. He likes to bang his head and smack himself, which is somewhat alarming, but not unheard of.

He is so smart, when it comes to doing things. He stacks anything. You would laugh s hard, sometimes. When he comes to see me, he strips the bookshelf under the television. Not to make a mess, not because he can.
Where I see books and quiet escapes and all, he sees blocks.
Blocks to build with.
Blocks to stack.
Walls.
Ladders/steps.
Bridges.
Towers.

What a boy!

Thank You

Been talking with you, telling you how Tammy needs your help with her car. If there's anything you can do to help, please help her. she really needs it/you. Don't know what you could do or how you could do it, but if you can please do something to help her.

Then help comes, and it has to be from you. Because who it is.

Don't know yet if it will be bad news, good news, or a mixture, but help is coming and it's coming from your direction.

Thank you.

Another Year Without You

And we need you more than ever. Tammy needs you, Tracy needs you, I need you, and I'm sure your brothers and sisters think of you from time to time, and then this whole awful terrible Rexless reality slaps them in the face that they need not wonder what or how you are doing because you just aren't. I know Bo thinks of you often, because he is helping me in many ways.

So hard, this time of year. Last year was Niagara Falls.
This year was work, and 80 degree weather in friggin' mid-October.

I just hate yuou being gone...

Moved In

Well, I am moved in, for the most part. Still settling in, but I am in. Thanks for my good friends, I have almost everything I need. The only "necessity" still needed is a refrigerator. I have a lovely bed, a working stove, a more-than-complete living room.

The funny thing is, I cam see you here.  You sit in the tan recliner over in the book nook, and you grin at me. Maybe wave, maybe nod, but always smiling. You look so happy and healthy.

What are you doing there, I wonder.

I have your recliner. Its in the bedroom, beside the bed. Its in bad shape, and can probably never be repaired, but it still holds some essence of you.
You would never sit where that tan recliner is. It's beside the TV, not across from it, And, of course, it;s nestled among tho books. No, that's not a Rex place. And yet, there you are, in my mind's eye.

You even watched Warren watching Ice Road Truckers, a-hollerin' "Look atthat! Look athat!" I believe he even made you laugh with his excitement.

Now, I've brought your afghan out and tossed it in that chair. If that's gonna be your place here, so be it. I'm glad you are here.

It's Your Month

It's your month, and I'm missing you as I move away from crowded quarters and lack of privacy.
It's your month as I sweat and swear and try to arrange life to my liking. (How can that happen without you?)
It's your month as we prepare for Hailey's birthday and back to school and the final fall festivals.

School starts on the 17th this year, almost a week before your birthday. Remember "celebrating" your birthday with Back to school?

Oscar and Veronica have been helping me with the move -- funny how  that has worked out. They were always right up there with help when we needed it, weren't they?

I have your chair, and its kind of been all over my house already. It will probably end up in the bedroom, but that will have to wait until the bed is moved in. It isn't a very big bedroom after all. Even after being in storage over a year, it still feels like you.

I want to go back three years.
I really want all this to have never happened; to be a bad dream. (That said, I'm tired of dreaming it's a dream and then waking up to find out it isn't. I hate waking up more than usual when that happens.)
I want it to not be; but I know that this is how it is.
I just wish it wasn't this way, that's all.

I miss you more these days, whether it's because August, or because of moving, or maybe just because. All I know is there's a hole in me where you aren't.