Life without you

November the sixth.

The calendar this morning reminds me that it is two months since you died
I sit and stare at it and can’t comprehend
How I sat there next to your bed and you slipped away

And like that morning, once again tears stream down my face
I choose to wipe them away this time so that the kids can’t see them,
Not that I’m ashamed
Just that I don’t want my melancholy to disturb their joyful laughter.
They need to get ready and go to school.

Last week I looked back at old emails we had exchanged,
Pictures of us at Christmas past -
A photo of a bending tree, kids smiling with presents.
Our joyful life before cancer,
Before chemo wrecked your feet,
Before neuropathy swelled your arm,
Before the horror of a mastectomy and the removal of your ovaries.
Before the pain and hope and expectation           
And disappointment
Of a dozen different treatments
A life before Xeloda and Tamoxifin and all the others
You never complained, you said it “Didn’t matter”
You just wanted something to work.
Nothing really did. Turns out that it did matter. 

Christmas is going to be strange without you this year my love.
People tell me that I’m doing well.
I don’t know if that’s true,
I’m living day by day, I’m surviving.
The kids driving me on.
I tell myself it will be ok.

The noise of the children's laughing returns.
Audrey finishes the chapter from her fairy book,
Eli brings his teddy bear to the table
The toast pops up from the toaster
“You ok Dad?” Audrey asks.
I lie to her in the affirmative.
And so another day,
Another roller-coaster day begins.

I look at the children.
Their happy smiles and scraggly hair,
Their bashed up, school-yard knees.

They are the pot of gold at the end of your rainbow.

I miss you so much.