These past few days it’s like I’ve fallen into a trap door on this stage where I get up every day and act the role of the widow.

It’s caught me off guard.

But suddenly it’s as if all of the supposed “strength” I’ve been mustering for eight months to get through each task as it comes…has dissipated completely.  Is it hormones or the oncoming spring, or is it just the strength in me coming up has met the reality coming down.  And is crushed.

I can tell when people have no idea what this is like and have never lost anyone close to them when they tell me they imagine it will take a few “holidays” before I feel well again.  Or when they tell me that something made them think of you and they can only imagine how many more things make me think of you.

Because I think of you every moment.  You never leave me.  The memories are sparked every moment –  because there is no item I can look at, no place I can go, clothes I can put on, or music or movie or song- that doesn’t trace its root back to you somehow.

I was remembering tonight how you were always trying so hard to become a better lyric writer- and one way you did that was to study poetry- my poetry books.  So I remember you carrying around a really big hardcover of ee cummings for a while.  And then I would see lines from his poems in your song idea notebooks to inspire you.  I thought it was very sweet and endearing.

You know I just got up to look for that book in my bookshelf and it’s gone.  I remember asking you to be sure to bring it home from somewhere I guess three or four years ago when you were carrying it around to and from work.  It’s gone.  My first instinct is to get angry with you- “I told you not to lose that book!”  “Think hard- where could it be?”  But then this is years ago already.  It is gone.  I hear the bus just now screeching to its stop in front of our building.  You are not on it.