My love,
South Korea was a blast and Croatia was beautiful, but since I have been home life is feeling empty. You have been gone six and a half months now. I keep waiting for your return. Wishing that one day I will wake up from this bad dream and you will be sitting in the garage reading your newspaper, smoking your cigarette.
I guess I can’t run anymore. There are no more projects to fill me up. No more exotic places for me to run. I am just left here in a season were the leaves are beginning to fall and coldness is setting in. Darkness will arrive early soon and the days of settling in for the winter are close behind. Always a difficult season for me anyway, but I can’t imagine surviving them without you.
The boys continue to struggle. They miss you so very much. They miss your laughter, your smell, but most of all they miss your warm embrace. They need to feel you wrapped around them. As do I. How will we ever survive without your love? Oh, how I wish you could answer me.
I laid in bed all weekend. Thinking about you. Wanting you to come in as you always did when I slipped into my moments of depression. You never judged me for not wanting to move. You just let me rest and loved me. You knew I would always bounce back. I was your ROCK, as you were mine. So how will I bounce back now? Oh, how I wish you were here to hold me.
The space on my ring finger is empty now. I thought after twenty-three years it would take more than a week for the indent to go away, but it is gradually disappearing. Soon strangers will know I am no longer married. I find myself in a panic at times. Touching the space that held the rings of our commitment to one another, wondering if I lost them. Knowing I have lost you.
One of the hardest things I had to do was to delete your number from my phone. The number has been disconnected for months and my voice was your voicemail, but I found myself wanting to dial your number the other day. “Dad” still comes up in my Jeep every time I start it up. Oh, how I wish I could call you and tell you how I am feeling.
Every morning I get up and kiss you. I wrap my arms around a box and I want so very much for it to hug me back. I know that will never happen and that is why it is time. Time to let you go and put you where God intended you to be. I will place you this week between your father and brother. You will rest easy there. It will be hard to finally let you go. I know down deep it is what I must do to keep moving forward.
My love, I know this sounds like I am sad and broken. I am. Don’t worry I have been in this place before. Remember how broken I was when we met. You loved me through it all and you will love me through it again. I might not understand God’s plans for me, but I now feel, deep within me, you do. And I have faith that will see me through. Keep loving me from where you are.
Luv, luv,
Julie
