—My feet will want to
walk to where you are sleeping,  but I
shall go on living—Pablo Neruda

 

One blink of an eye. One flutter. Eyelashes touching a
bottom lid.

 

Open.  Close. Open.

 

And before you can shut your eyes a second time…

 

Blackness sets in. Shadows arrive. The love of your life
has been shot three times in the head.

 

Life transforms.  A
family torn apart.  A world becomes
reduced to something you’ve never known or imagined.

 

Never in your most horrifying
nightmares.

 

After your murder, I faced darkness directly in the face.
I never turned away. I absorbed

Every. Single. Detail.

 

Your  powerless
body on a breathing machine. The doctor of death giving us the news.

 

Brain Dead.  Are
you serious?

 

What does that mean? What the hell does that mean?

 

The preparation. The fucking preparation. It never ended.
The insignificant, idiotic, monotonous preparation.

 

The ironing of salmon colored shirts for the pall
bearers. Sitting with the gray haired man discussing the ceremony. How many
seats will we need? Do you want cake or cookies? Coffee or punch?

 

I don’t give a shit.

 

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

 

Observing your shell within a shiny brown casket.

 

A  perfect
porcelain doll.

 

Emptiness. Hollowness. A soul removed.  A flower left out.

 

You were beautiful.  You were always the beautiful one.

 

I ordered the autopsy report. I want to know, needed to
know everything the son-of-a-bitch did to you.

 

You had a bruise on her right arm. You still had the
remnants of bullets stuck inside your head.

 

You had three caesareans.
A scar on your left ear. Brown eyes. Brown highlighted hair.  A strong back. Flawless lungs.

 

Then you left me.
Left me.

 

Alone.

 

I’ve heard people actually die of  broken hearts.

 

If so, why am I still living, breathing, walking,
working, eating, celebrating Christmas, loving?

 

It’s been 948 days since your murder.

 

Sometimes I find it unbelievable, unbearable,
incomprehensible that my heart still beats.

 

But it does.  It
does.

 

And sometimes I feel bursts of joy—eruptions of
possibility.

 

Sometimes I actually believe I’ll be able to live without
you.

Kay’s Christmas Tree at Oneota Cemetery

 

You can link up anything you would like to
share about your lost love one: a link to a Facebook photo/post, a blog post
about a particular memory, a Pinterest pin sharing how you cope, whatever you
would like others to read or see. The link ups will be displayed as follows:

We have also created a Pinterest board
called Hugs for the Holidays and will be pinning many of your posts there as well. Please place your comments, stories, or anything else you desire below in comments, too.

Love  Love  Love

—–I also ask that you pray ceaselessly for the 27 shooting victims of Sandy Hook.  Our country can never go back to where it was
after that kind of evil.

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