Song: Quite Miss Home - James Arthur
It’s easier for me to pretend you have died.
My last image of you is running out of the washroom and giving you a big hug at the airport. Then waving at you as I went through security. And then the movie stops. I ask it to stop. I want to cut the lights and the soundtracks and everything that comes after.
The fractured moments of reading your text on my carpeted staircase. The phone calls. The texts. All the in between.
It fast forwards to today wading through a grief I have never gone through before.
I think I see you everywhere. In the streets, beside me in the car, at restaurants. I think you’re coming back. I unlock the door to the apartment and call out your name by accident some days. I hear your voice. It’s been 13 days since I last saw you.
But this is what grief is. This is what people feel when someone is suddenly gone.
I am doing the work on my side. Reflecting, I’m on a consistent medication routine, and looking for a therapist that is more catered to what I need to work through.
Maybe there will be a day where I don’t call out for you in the night.
And maybe that day will never come.
So here’s the eulogy:
To the love of my life. My sweetie. My whole heart. I wish I could have seen you one last time, but that is not what fate had in store for us.
I don’t know if you left knowing how much I loved you. I hope you did. I will find you in the next timeline, the next lifetime. We may look and feel different, but I’ll find you.
I don’t know how scared you were in those last few moments, but I’m sure you were. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I wish I could have held you and told you to not be scared. I’m sorry for it all.
I left the Christmas lights up. You once told me you thought you’d enjoy seeing them from the outside of our apartment lit up. I left them up so you can find home. So you know that I will always be waiting.
I left your yogurt in the fridge. And your smoothie glass in the sink. Your trail mix is still there if you ever came home and were hungry.
I’ve kept chocolate chips in the cupboard, frozen bananas in the freezer and a box of TJ’s chocolate peppermint loaf mix in the cupboard.
I sleep on your side of the bed to keep it warm.
I hardly sleep anymore, I hardly eat. I do my best to because I know if you were here that’s what you would tell me to do.
You were my home. Nothing feels like home anymore.
Every time I look at a clear night sky I will think of you, knowing you’re there in the stars.
Until we meet again, in the next chapter. All my love.