Easter Week and Missing You.

I thought Easter would be really hard this year. I prepared myself for the grief to creep up my back and into my skull. I practiced breathing into it, forcing a smile back towards it, so that my boys wouldn't notice anything but the thrill of finding their baskets and over-sugaring themselves at Grammy and Pap's house. 

It wasn't hard. I didn't really feel much. I went for a run and I drank a few beers and the kids had fun and I went to bed. 

So you can imagine my surprise when yesterday, your absence hit me like a ton of bricks, a barreling train, a knife to the throat, no creeping sadness, just crushing hurt at the disappearance of your light from my life. 

Maybe I prepared myself too well for Easter. Maybe I just didn't give myself time to allow you to cross my  mind. 

I hope you aren't hurt that I avoid dwelling on you much, but the thing is.... I can't. I lose so much time. I think of you and suddenly, it's evening and I haven't done a damn thing. I get so lost in it, the overwhelming, all-encompassing, never-ending-ness of your death. It's a lonely and shitty place to be, you know? I would have called you to talk to you about it, to see what you would say, but you're gone and I can't. And so I sit and try to summon the courage to imagine what you would say. 

It just-- it feels like I'm drowning, my body, my head under water with my clothes and hair swirling, dragging me down, and I keep reaching my hands up above the surface, waiting for you to grab on and pull me out. I'm free falling from a tall building, a tower, a ledge, and I'm not scared but I wish you would catch me. I wonder if this is what it felt like to be you. 

And, you know, I thought that the summer days and the warmth and the sunshine would make me feel better and make things seem easier, but the truth is, I miss you so much more in the light of day. I just keep expecting you to show up. I keep thinking I could call you, maybe, you would pick up, maybe I could take the boys to finally see your place and go to the park like we said a million years ago but then things always came up for one of us so I didn't ever make it. I keep hoping you'll text me and tell me you're in the area and you were thinking you might stop by if I'm home. 

And then the tears come again and I am picturing you in a million ages and I keep thinking about leaning over the casket, how I watched a tear fall onto your chest, how if this was a fairy tale, my tears would have brought you back to me. 

I wish I hadn't wasted so much of your life being mad at you. If I could go back in time, I would do it over and over again, just to be with you. 

I miss you.