The First Step is Admitting it

Not so long ago I found myself at your resting place, but I was not ready to leave the car. My mom wanted to go see you, she wanted to feel your presence again and she still does. We all want to, we all go through the roller coaster of thinking you're here and then realizing you're gone. But it never really ends, we awake the next morning in the past only to repeat the same process over and over again. I wonder how long it's going to take to get used to it, to remain in that state of acceptance, the one in which we miss you, but know that you're really gone and that it will be a while until we find ourselves with you again. Again someone close to me passed away and I felt overwhelmed with guilt...not with regrets, I never regret anything. I believe everything happens for a reason and that every experience no matter how small or large becomes a part of who we are and betters us in the most unexpected ways.

But I did feel guilt, the same guilt I felt only a few short years ago. I wanted to be there. No matter how painful it would have been, I wanted to be by your side that very morning, that very moment, telling you I loved you more than anything in the world and that I cared about you more than could ever be put into words. Of course I know you knew, I don't wonder that, but nonetheless no one can help but wish that they said more, did more, showed more. My mom said I wouldn't have wanted to see you like that, that you were in so much pain I would have cried and made you feel worse, but I would've hid it, I would've given anything to know what was to come, to have my chance to say goodbye, even if no matter what, it would not prepare me for the next day or months. I just wanted to hug you one last time and put all my emotions into that one embrace...but it is in the past, it is something that I cannot change and if I remain trapped in that moment in time I may never move on. For if we live in the past, we have no present...no future.

I did say 'I love you' two days before, when i sat and prayed and asked for one thing and one thing only. I didn't bargain, I didn't plead and my intentions were all but selfish. I asked for you to stop suffering...even if it meant I had to suffer...even if it meant we all had to suffer. It was our turn because you had been put through so much pain already. You lived 20 years more than was possible, escaped death once and had for the past few months been through the worst of it. Never had I met someone who was put through so much that had such strength and put up such a fight.

I was there during it all. Numerous amounts of hospital rooms, tests, accidents, episodes, all which could be put into one super-category...suffering. The ICU was perhaps the worst, you didn't even remember being there, but it was something that I'll never forget. I can still hear the monotonous beeping of the machines and the constant whistle of the respirator, a sound that i will not soon forget and a sound that often haunts my mind and dreams...or rather nightmares. But the worst of it was where all the machines led to. There was tubes everywhere, all around your neck, in your mouth, in your nose, IVs in your arm, and even in that sedated state you felt pain, you groaned upon feeling all the mess of technology around your body. When you finally awoke you could not even speak a comprehensible sentence and instead of forming words you made sounds.

From then on it was ups and downs, but there was not one second that you weren't in pain emotionally and physically. We all experienced many things and underwent many changes, we worried, we prayed, we kept hope and uplifted people's spirits along the way, we made many friends and they still call our family to ask how we are holding up. Everybody loved you, we all still do. I wonder if this very moment there are people praying for you, unknowing to the fact that you have passed away. There probably are.

But that is not the man that I will remember, I will only refer to that time as a symbol of your strength and as time that I spent by your side.

It wasn't the cemetery that made me think of you...it did, but only of the fact that you were gone and, I felt the sting of a void and emotions of emptiness hurt brought me to tears. It was the smallest thing. I was looking through my drawers and found the lock that you gave me when I was a little girl, the one that I could never open after not using it for so long. I remembered how I went to you when I couldn't recall the combination and how you always did no matter how long it had been. I sat there spinning it a few times determined to decipher it and after a few tries it all came rushing back to me from the past. I turned the dial hesitantly...right.....left.....right................click. I remembered it, I don't know how I remembered it, but when it opened I smiled and thought of you.

Strange how it's the little things that always stay with you, surely one of the reasons I spend so much time doing little things for the one's I love. I have so many memories, but even in this state of pain I do not wish to forget them. The emotional morphine has been taken as I come face to face with the reality....I am ready. Finally.

You'll always and forever be in my heart and every time I see a baseball game, or a park...every time I feel the streaming sunlight or a gentle breeze...it'll remind me of you. I may not always stop and think about it, but it will.

I miss you.
I love you.
I'll see you again.
One day<3