Dearest Michael,
It has been a very long day indeed.
I have been peering at the clock periodically all day, remembering what I was doing at this time, last year.
This was the hour I kissed you goodbye for the last time. This was the hour that I told Donna the news as she met me outside the hospital. This was the hour I posted my news to Callahan's. This was the hour the shock wore off long enough to shed my first tears as I spied your slippers beneath your desk. This is the hour I saw my mother's face, and felt my father's arms go around me in helpless pain. This is the hour when I was finally left alone, and the house went all roaring silence around me, and there was nothing left at all except the clicking of the keyboard as I typed and cried and cried and typed....
All day, these moment by moment memories have presented themselves, and in the midst of doing my job, and appearing normal, these moments, these still sharp images have filtered into my mind amid the maze of calculations and negotiations and dollar signs. I worked like an automaton, and looked through my picture album in my mind.
But you know what, Love? It's OK. Just as you promised, right at the beginning, the pain is fading, and leaving nothing behind but the bright remembrances of you. The dark, sticky, slimy snail of grief is passing by, and leaving a trail of silver in its wake.
And I'm OK.
I can remember with joy now. The light has gone on in my life again, and you are no longer living in the shadow of my pain, but have found the brightness of your new life, parallel to mine, but still side by side with it.
I look at my life, and I am pleased. I know you are, too. We have struggled together, we three souls, and have found a meeting place, and the peace within it is beyond believing and beyond compare. I am happy, and Paul is happy, and I feel you wrap us both up in the wings of your happiness as well. And you can find your peace, your new joy, your welcome adventure within the new life you have found for yourself.
I think of you often, and those souls you have met who you have always admired and loved, and who crossed over before you. I see you talking with them, excited and joyous in the chance to meet with great and like minds. And though you, for a year, have had a backwards look and a hand out to me behind you, I know that there was something in you that wanted the freedom to go and immerse yourself in what was new and brilliant.
And you can do that now, with a free and happy mind, leaving behind the heavy trappings of life on this plane, unfettered from the chains of grief and longing and pain.
You left us too soon for our liking, Michael. But you left when your time was filled here, and we are coming to know more every day how happy you are where you are, and how we can see you just as if you had only passed through a doorway into another room, and one day that room will wait happily for us as well.
I'm happy today, Michael, and I thank you greatly for that. I thank you for making it so easy for us to free one another, with no clinging feelings of anger or regret. I am grateful for every minute I had with you, and I am grateful for all the love and joy that makes the letting go much, much easier.
Our paths have diverged a bit for a time, and that is fitting, for we both have lives to lead now that are very different, and very wonderful, each in their own way. And I know that you peek in occasionally, just to see what's doing--as I peek in at you as well, in dreams and in memories and in sensations that come when you draw near.
I am glad that we are good enough friends to have found the peace in parting, and the promise that what was, still is, and always will be.
We all say hi, Sweetheart. And we all remember, with love and great affection. But we will not cling to you, as you have so very much to do before we meet again.
Be well. Be happy. Be at peace.
And thank you.
Your Belle--who looks at her life and knows that she is most wonderfully and enormously blessed.
I have been peering at the clock periodically all day, remembering what I was doing at this time, last year.
This was the hour I kissed you goodbye for the last time. This was the hour that I told Donna the news as she met me outside the hospital. This was the hour I posted my news to Callahan's. This was the hour the shock wore off long enough to shed my first tears as I spied your slippers beneath your desk. This is the hour I saw my mother's face, and felt my father's arms go around me in helpless pain. This is the hour when I was finally left alone, and the house went all roaring silence around me, and there was nothing left at all except the clicking of the keyboard as I typed and cried and cried and typed....
All day, these moment by moment memories have presented themselves, and in the midst of doing my job, and appearing normal, these moments, these still sharp images have filtered into my mind amid the maze of calculations and negotiations and dollar signs. I worked like an automaton, and looked through my picture album in my mind.
But you know what, Love? It's OK. Just as you promised, right at the beginning, the pain is fading, and leaving nothing behind but the bright remembrances of you. The dark, sticky, slimy snail of grief is passing by, and leaving a trail of silver in its wake.
And I'm OK.
I can remember with joy now. The light has gone on in my life again, and you are no longer living in the shadow of my pain, but have found the brightness of your new life, parallel to mine, but still side by side with it.
I look at my life, and I am pleased. I know you are, too. We have struggled together, we three souls, and have found a meeting place, and the peace within it is beyond believing and beyond compare. I am happy, and Paul is happy, and I feel you wrap us both up in the wings of your happiness as well. And you can find your peace, your new joy, your welcome adventure within the new life you have found for yourself.
I think of you often, and those souls you have met who you have always admired and loved, and who crossed over before you. I see you talking with them, excited and joyous in the chance to meet with great and like minds. And though you, for a year, have had a backwards look and a hand out to me behind you, I know that there was something in you that wanted the freedom to go and immerse yourself in what was new and brilliant.
And you can do that now, with a free and happy mind, leaving behind the heavy trappings of life on this plane, unfettered from the chains of grief and longing and pain.
You left us too soon for our liking, Michael. But you left when your time was filled here, and we are coming to know more every day how happy you are where you are, and how we can see you just as if you had only passed through a doorway into another room, and one day that room will wait happily for us as well.
I'm happy today, Michael, and I thank you greatly for that. I thank you for making it so easy for us to free one another, with no clinging feelings of anger or regret. I am grateful for every minute I had with you, and I am grateful for all the love and joy that makes the letting go much, much easier.
Our paths have diverged a bit for a time, and that is fitting, for we both have lives to lead now that are very different, and very wonderful, each in their own way. And I know that you peek in occasionally, just to see what's doing--as I peek in at you as well, in dreams and in memories and in sensations that come when you draw near.
I am glad that we are good enough friends to have found the peace in parting, and the promise that what was, still is, and always will be.
We all say hi, Sweetheart. And we all remember, with love and great affection. But we will not cling to you, as you have so very much to do before we meet again.
Be well. Be happy. Be at peace.
And thank you.
Your Belle--who looks at her life and knows that she is most wonderfully and enormously blessed.