The Voice

Image can be found here...

Before changing the message on the answering machine, I recorded the previous message.  He had left it.  We weren't even living together at the time, but he said he wanted to hear his voice.  I think it just made him feel safer...  For months after he passed, I'd listen to that message play back in the dead of night, when I longed to hear him speak to me.  In the bright of day, when I longed to have him close.  And many times in between.  Just to hear his voice.

Not too long ago, my cell phone died.  That message was saved on the cell phone.  There was no getting it back.  And so another piece of him died too.  Again.

I still call home every so often, listening to my voice answer back where his once was.  Thinking of what used to be.  Wishing I had never changed the message.  Longing just once more to hear him speak.  I have his voice saved in other ways.  Videos of him and Gavin.  Voicemail messages.  But that distant, impersonal answering machine message was the one I heard the most.  Aside from the voice when he was standing next to me, its the one I miss the most.  I carried it with me.  I could listen to it whenever.

I still think of that lost recording, and sigh.  But I don't need the message.  His voice isn't really gone.

He's the voice of reason that echoes in my head.   The angel - and devil - that sit on my shoulders.  The second opinion when I don't know where to turn.  The other end of the silent conversations on those long and lonely nights.  He's the lullaby that sings me to sleep.  The calming reassurance when I am afraid.  The "you can do it" when I don't think I can.  The "I love you" when I need to hear it most.

In my dreams - those wonderful fleeting dreams where he lives again - we speak to each other.  His voice.  Just as I remember.  Just as I need.

And when I'm awake, every so often, if I listen hard enough, I can really hear him.  Maybe its my imagination.  Maybe its wishful thinking.  I choose to believe its him.  And I know he's still here.

They say the voice is the first thing the memory loses.  The hardest to recall.  I don't think it goes away. It just retreats inside you, buried by the constant bombardment of noises in the every day.

If you turn your mind inward, still your own inner voice, your own thoughts, and just let him speak, he's still talking.  I can still hear him.

He's inside me.

And no phone error or hard drive failure is going to change that....

The Ordinary

Of all the pictures I took in Gavin’s first year, these are the ones I remember the best.  I remember the day so clearly.  One of the first times Gavin was out crawling on the front lawn.  Mommy with her camera.  Waiting for Daddy to come home from work.  It was about 3:00 that he came home.  Seeing that silver Corolla turn the corner made me so happy.  Like a little kid at Christmas.  He waved.  We were together again.  I always felt that way when we were together...

Kurt parked in the back, and walked around to the front, where he sat down with his wife and his boy.  I put down the camera, and we played – the three of us.  How I wish right now that I had snapped just a few more pictures with him in it....

Based on the time stamp on the pictures, that was two years ago today.  

Two short years... a blink in the sands of time.  Yet a life time ago, in another place, another time.  How I wish I had a time machine to take me back there. Even knowing what I know now – that in less than two weeks our lives would be ripped apart – I would go back to that moment in a heartbeat.  A time when we all were happy.  So blissfully unaware.  A perfect ordinary day for a perfectly ordinary young family of three. 

Its amazing how extraordinary the ordinary can be....

The Story

Image can be found here...

Five years ago today, with 11 roses, a sparkly diamond, and a lot of love, Kurt asked me to be his wife.  Half a decade.  Its not really that long ago.  It seems like forever.  I remember it like it was yesterday....

I'll never forget that day.  10 random roses throughout the day.  One by one.  At unexpected times in unexpected places.  A ring around the 11th.  And him calling me the 12th.  Me laying on the bed.  My love on his knee.  The question.  My answer.  The embrace.  It was perfect.  It would have been perfect regardless of how it had played out.  Because it was him and I...

The story is like so many others - engraved in my memory.  Etched in my mind.  And the life that followed.

It was the answer to my prayers.  My hopes and dreams.  I was so happy.  He was so happy.  The beginning of a new chapter.  The beginning of the rest of our lives.

We never even imagined that the chapter - the story - would end so soon.

But you know what?  Even knowing how the story would end, if I could go back to that day I would.  And say Yes all over again.  Because the story was worth reading.  Worth living.

It was a damn good book while it lasted....  I only wish we had ben able to write the final chapters...