Three years ago

This was your first full day home,

And I’m circling the house like a phantom,

Looking for you everywhere.

But where are you?

Dear love, heart of my heart,

I cannot breach our trust.

But the pain, the pain you went through,

I had to watch,

Because you are my flesh, my bone.

I would not let myself look away from it.

Would not let you go through it alone and unwitnessed.

Now you are gone.

Gone, gone, beyond my reach.

Gone to where you were before that perfect day of your birth.

Before I first felt you move inside me.

I must feel this, I must.

For how can we, you and I Dan,

Help the multitudes of the grieving,

If I do not let this feeling in?

Every hug, every kiss, every mischievous smile from you, residing in the cells of my body.

Even with the too many moments you almost left me,

Before you really did,

I knew our time was limited. And the day you died,

I bathed you, took out every foreign object they had implanted in you to keep you alive.

And then, I kept myself from ripping open the bag they put you in,

The bag they zipped over your precious face and body,

And I didn’t scream “NO” though I wanted to with every fiber of my being.

I didn’t fall on your lifeless body and say “No! You cannot have him!“

I let them take you. And now all I have are memories and ashes.

Three years ago you were still alive and home.

I kept my promise and brought you home.

Suffered with you as diarrhea, uncontrollable, soaked your favorite leather chair the first time we tried to sit you down.

And would I put you through that again? Just to have you here with me?

Yes, I’m ashamed Dan, but yes.

Diarrhea is an inconvenience at worst, easily cleaned and tended to.

But a chance to have you here with me again….

a chance to see your smile,

To hug you once more…..

No, I couldn’t do it. Because I love you and could never make you suffer again.

Just know that I miss you,

That I look for you in every breeze, every tree, the bits of you still here.

In your shoes, your clothes that I cannot give away.

And I am glad your suffering is over, even if it makes mine so hard to bear, now that I must do it alone.

I can no longer push it down, to be the willing receptacle of yours, as I try to cheer you up, to make you laugh.

There is snow today and hard rain my love. Hard, hard rain.

And I miss you.