How can you be gone…..you were just here

Today is that day…..the one I’ve been dreading for the last year. It’s been exactly one year since you died. This day has hung over my head like a noose and I just wanted it to come and go as fast as it could.

This has been the fastest, slowest year I’ve ever lived through. It’s also been the absolute worst one in my life. This past year is the one that completely broke me.

There’s been so many moments in the last year that I thought to myself How can you be gone? You were JUST here. You literally were…..just…..here.

I’ve also had moments in the last year where I forgot you were dead. I would see something that I knew you’d like and want to get it for you but then remember No, I can’t do that. He’s not here.

I’d find a funny meme on Instagram and want to send it to you because you’d laugh at it just as much as I did but then remember…..you’re gone.

I’d wake up in the middle of the night and expect to hear you breathing in the bed next to me and realize your side of the bed was empty.

I’d look out the kitchen window waiting to see your truck pull in the driveway after work and then remember your truck won’t ever be out there again because it’s now in Colorado with our son.

I look at my phone and expect to hear Rock Me Like A Hurricane by The Scorpions playing when you called but realize I’ll never again hear that ringtone because you can’t call me from where you’re at now.

I see peanut M&M’s in the store and think to myself I should grab you a pack of them because you loved them and then remember you won’t be at home for me to give them to you.

I automatically walk down the tool aisle every time I’m at Ross to see if there are any small tool items there you might want and then remember you don’t need any tools anymore.

A year later, I still do and think so many things like I did before because I was always thinking of you in whatever I did.

A few days ago I put a pair of my shoes in the shoe holder in the hallway and saw your work boots sitting there and it hit me right at that exact moment that they’ve been sitting there, untouched by you, for an entire year. That moment felt like the scene in a horror movie where the person is standing at the end of a long hallway that you can’t see the other end of and all of a sudden the hallway gets shorter and comes right up into the person’s face. Even though I’m consciously aware that a whole year has gone by since you died, something about seeing those boots sitting there right at that very moment brought home the realization that an entire year has passed.

I started to cry in the hallway and told our daughter what had just happened and that I wondered if that meant it was time to either give the boots away or put them in the back of the closet. She said that I didn’t have to do either and if I wanted to leave them there then do just that. I said that a part of me wanted to just rip the band-aid off and move them or give them away just so it would be over and done with. I think I’m probably going to move them to the closet now so I don’t have to look at them every day. I think for now that’s the best choice for me.

I look at pictures on the fridge and on my phone every day so the memory of what every part of your face looked like won’t fade from my memory. I watch videos of you on my phone for the same reason as well as being able to hear your voice. I don’t want to ever forget what your voice sounded like or that distinct chuckle we all loved to hear when you laughed. I don’t want to forget anything, not ever.

I want to wrap the memory of every single little thing about you in a carefully protected box that can’t and won’t ever be destroyed. More than that though, I want for you to be back here in the physical form with me, our children, and our grandson, right where you should be, instead of over there, on the other side. I just don’t understand how you can possibly be gone though because you were just here…….you were literally just here.