I wasn’t expecting your death.  I mean, I knew you were going to die, but you wouldn’t let me help.  You hid it from almost everybody.  But on Easter morning, you left, you died.  I didn’t get to say goodbye.  I’m angry with you for that. Maybe not angry…I don’t know what the right words are.  I’ve gone out to your grave and stared at the stick in the ground, that holds your plackard, with your picture.  But you are dust, in a box, in the ground now.   I knew you were dying…you told me, in a round about way, about six years ago.  You told me what the doctor said you should do.  But you didn’t stop; you told me you wouldn’t stop. We had almost 30 years together.  Good times and bad.  I remember one night you went with me to visit a friend, and got really pissed because you wanted to go home, and I didn’t.  You hit me with your pop bottle, in the face.  I remember another time we were driving somewhere and you swerved in and out of the edge of the ditch.  I got angry with you then and told you I needed to drive.  You said “You want to see what going in the ditch is like?  Here!”  And you drove further into the ditch at about 50 miles an hour.  Scared the shit out of me.  But then, when we got to the stop sign, you finally let me take the wheel.  Then you apologized.  I was just glad we both didn’t die that day.  I never thought your death would come before both of us grew old.  I’m still agonizing over the fact that I can’t see you.  I tried to pick up the phone and call you the other day, like I used to do, but realized my phone wouldn’t reach heaven.  I don’t know where you are now…what it’s like to be dead? Why can’t you tell me, somehow, where you are and what you are doing.  Where did you go the minute your body ceased to function?  Did you look down upon your body, and your family who were with you?  Did you know you were dead?  I told you that this would happen!!!!  I begged you to stop, but you didn’t.  I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that you are not here.  This grief is unbearable some days.  It’s like an anchor pulling me down.  I’m simply heartbroken, the ache in my chest won’t go away.  I know you can’t come back, can’t talk to me, can’t sit on the swing in your front yard anymore.  I have to do those things alone now, without you there.  There were good times as well…I remember one night after leaving a local establishment, we went out the back door and one of our friends was doing a headstand on the hood of my car.  We all laughed so hard that night.  I remember laying out in the sun on summer days, laughing and listening to music.  I remember all those years of things we did, where we lived, the birth of your son.  It’s all mixed up with this grief that I can’t seem to shake.

This grief is just too much some days.  Just too much.