Drafts
Widower, wanderer
Recent posts
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Your beautiful mind
⎯ ❤️1I know how lucky I am to have met you, changed with you, grown with you. I know how lucky I am that I have pictures and videos and notes to remember our time together. I am beyond lucky to call you my soulmate, my life partner, my best friend, my absolutely everything. For all these reasons and more, the loss of your life is heartbreaking. Soul crushing. Holding the gratitude together with the gri…
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Crying in public
I don’t know what makes me more sad, that I cried in Owego Donut & Beer or that no one mentioned it. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I heard one of the young women who works there telling two musicians setting up for their performance about a recent medical scare. A blood clot, she told them, in her lung. Low down where it was hard to find. She had been having shortness of breath, but really, th…
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Ours
⎯ 🫂1Almost everything is ours. Of course there are some things that aren’t, like our toothbrushes and phones and specialty grooming products. But everything that could be shared is. Was. Does that change? I still think of them as our things. Every time I say “we” to someone who doesn’t get it, it stings. But it also stings every time I catch myself saying “my” instead. No matter what, it sounds wrong,…
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Sundays
Sundays aren’t the same anymore. I used to have a love/hate relationship with them. On the one hand, we got to spend the whole day together. On the other hand, the Sunday scaries loomed over me no matter how much I didn’t want them to. I never wanted to return to the real world when we were in our little bubble. We’d almost always wake up, cuddle, and then go out for breakfast on Sunday. Occasiona…
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Prognosis
We knew from the pain that things weren’t fine, but we had every reason to believe you would recover. No one ever said anything about dying. The doctors talked about the cancer being aggressive, and so we’d treat it aggressively. They told you how you were so young, and they had to be sure to get all the cancer, which might mean the drugs and surgeries would be more severe than they would for an o…
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Rainy days
I love how much you loved a rainy day. There was nothing more cozy and wonderful than spending a drizzly day, just us two and the cats, holed up at home and enjoying ourselves. We’d almost always start a rainy weekend day with a trip to get breakfast and coffee. Some days we’d go to a drive through to stay out of the rain a little longer, some days we’d eat wherever we were. Some days we’d sit in …
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Alchemy
I didn’t think of it until now, but I think you’re an alchemist. You had no quest to hoard wealth, didn’t desire immortality, and preferred silver or platinum to gold. The way you could create joy and contentment from the most unlikely of elements is what I’m referring to. Who else could face the terror of a cancer diagnosis with such a bright smile? Who else would take a photo with Geoffrey the G…
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You’re doing really well
People love to tell me this. I know they think it’s encouraging. Mostly I just say thank you because I know their intentions are pure. They believe they are fortifying me, building me up, giving me the strength to go on. But it’s hard to be told that I’m doing well because it just isn’t true. I might be upright, but I haven’t been able to take out the trash in weeks. Someone always does it. I may …
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A thousand times a day
A thousand times a day, I wonder what you would think about something I encounter or experience. Would you think the “Meat & 3 Box” at Arby’s is stupid? Almost certainly. Would you like that Mystic Moon moved across the street? I bet you’d love the new space. Would you see the decorations I’ve put out, appreciate my efforts, then rearrange things to make it look better than I could have? Definitel…
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Food
⎯ ❤️1I always miss you, and I’m always thinking of you, but I think it’s the quiet little moments when I miss you most. So many of them are food related. I find that extra annoying because you cared so little about food, and yet it’s an important part of life. Probably once a week I remember your food list - all the foods you wanted to eat before surgery since you didn’t know when you could have solid …
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Time travel
The subject of endless discussion in sci-fi, pop culture, and many children’s imaginations, but as far as we know, it’s not actually possible to travel in time. But having spent so many months essentially living in the future, and now endlessly revisiting the past, I wonder how true that really is. Almost by necessity, much of Lindsey’s treatment was spent discussing all of our future plans. We ha…
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Death by a thousand cuts
Your passing itself cannot be described as one of these small cuts. It’s the black hole that swallowed me up and hasn’t let any light escape since that day. But somehow there’s another me, a shadow of myself, still here. Continuing on against my will. Animated by a life force I didn’t know was there. And it’s that self who is slowly, painfully, devastatingly being sliced up. Every single day, hour…
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Something beautiful
I went out for a walk tonight at 9 p.m. because I knew you wanted me to go see something beautiful. The stars were out, the moon shining, half-full, and there was barely any sound but the soft wind occasionally rustling through the trees. I gazed up at the sky so much my neck got the stretch of a lifetime. I kept using my arms, or my jacket hood, to block the streetlights and floodlights and every…
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The worst
No matter the situation, the time of day, the circumstances, the context, every single thing is now the worst. It’s the worst when I wake up without you. It’s the worst when I go to bed and you’re not there. It’s the worst when I have to make a decision alone. It’s the worst when I have to sort the pills myself. It’s the worst when I go to one of our favorite places solo. It’s the worst when it’s …
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Purple
Purple. Your favorite color. It was a fear of yours that you’d be reduced to your favorite color. I hope you felt honored and not oversimplified that I asked everyone to don that royal hue for your celebration of life. I requested fun earrings, too. I shared stories. There was music and crying and baja blast. No one could say that the most interesting thing about you was your love of purple. A sea…
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