I realized at some point since you were swimming, you must have died with your contacts in your eyes.  That continues to bother me.  I love your eyes.

I want to use the present tense because I “loved” your eyes, but even though I don’t see them, I still love them.

I let Audrey cry for a few minutes when she woke up early from her nap and thankfully she’s fallen back asleep.  I lay here on the bed- with your side of the bed full of “stuff.”  A’s books, toys, some of my clothes, half of a turkey sandwich.  Audrey still points at the side I now sleep on and says, “Daddy bed!”

I lay here just now asking aloud “Why did you have to go on that trip?”  “Why couldn’t you have stayed home with your family?”  I look at your army green shirt that hangs over the back of your office chair as if inhabited by a body.  I think of how the entire past year felt like it was building to this climax.  You leaving, my heart getting harder as I became more and more independent.  Me telling you I couldn’t take it much more and that when you were gone I almost had to pretend you were dead to get by.  Yes, I said that to you.  How ironic that now that you’re dead,  I have to pretend you’re touring to get by.  It’s been the kind of climax in an M. Night Shyamalan film- where everything you believed is turned upside down-
instantly.