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A Letter I

Last updated on October 23, 2018

It’s been a year.

I have written that sentence all week more times than I care, staring at a blank wordpress post page and trying to culminate thirty three years of my mother in one post. This is the ultimate task which I feel a real writer can face down and conquer…Writing a life in words and having the world understand.

I can’t seem to do this. No matter how many times I have written it and deleted it and re-written it and stared at a little black line that blinked and blinked and blinked, demanding, I can’t.

There’s so much I want to say but no way for you to hear it.

I have my tree up. I have the tinsel. My apartment is decorated. I miss you and look for you sometimes but don’t even know it until it’s too late. I’ll stand in the middle of my living room and puzzle out the christmas cards, the tree, the lights and wonder what am I missing? And then I remember.

You.
All I am missing is you this year.

I have come so far this year and I wish I could show you. I wish I could tell you and talk to you and have you be even more proud than ever at all the leaps and bounds I have made just in 12 months alone. Sometimes I feel guilty–that I’ve done all this and you can’t see it, can’t experience it with me. You can’t share with me my excitement and hope about getting a new home (and I KNOW you loved house shopping.) You can’t see how much better I am now that I have admitted to my depression and am getting treatment. You don’t and won’t know how much sweeter my life has been thanks to the people I have met and known online; you won’t see how horrible my tree looks with it’s rainbow colored tinsel that seems as if christmas–like a big, over eating cat, came and horked up festiveness all over it. You can’t laugh at how crooked it is from all the times Isis crawled up it, and you can’t see the way I’ve covered my apartment in lights.

I’m always missing you, every day. It doesn’t get better and it doesn’t go away. I just…have learned to cope.
Is this what it’s like when someone loses a limb? I feel like you are here. I should call mom. I should tell mom about…I bet mom would love this…Mom would like to know..And then I remember.

You aren’t here.

You are the puzzle piece that I will be missing for the rest of my life.
You are the first puzzle piece of me that I have lost, too, and the hole that you have left is so wide and so vast some days I don’t know if I can cross it.

Other days, I throw a rope and climb because I have to. I don’t want to, but I do.

I try not to be too sad, though. It’s christmas and you would be so mad at me if I were. There’s lights, there’s tinsel, there’s ornaments, there’s christmas songs and peppermint and we haven’t gotten them yet but hopefully your favorite rainbow-cherry-flavored candy canes. There’s going to be a firepit at my mom in laws for Christmas eve and we’ll have cookies and coffee and drinks. Each hour of this month I have stood in the kitchen, stilled in the bedroom, paused in the shower, circled the living room and frowned at the kitchen– what am I missing? 

I cannot believe it’s been a whole year.
I miss you.

Darlene Mae Noseworthy
April 1st, 1956 ~ December 11th, 2011

If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you. 
When mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me. 

Kind woman, I give you my all, Kind woman, nothing more. 

Little drops of rain whisper of the pain, tears of loves lost in the days gone by. 
My love is strong, with you there is no wrong, 
together we shall go until we die. My, my, my. 
An inspiration is what you are to me, inspiration, look… see. 

And so today, my world it smiles, your hand in mine, we walk the miles, 
Thanks to you it will be done, for you to me are the only one. 
Happiness, no more be sad, happiness….I’m glad. 
If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you. 
When mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me.

Published inPersonal