It would be my Tony's 35th birthday today.
Tomorrow marks one year since I last heard his voice, felt his arms on me... one year since the world was a safe and contenting place to be.
I miss him so much, some days it hurts every time I breathe in. I'd give anything that was mine to give, to see him again. To hear him laugh.
He stopped me taking life too seriously, teased me into smiling when I needed to... I miss that.
I miss the simple pleasure he took in our children, especially his son.
I'm aching for the presence of him, the essence of him. It's been a year. I didn't know I would still miss him so much, so fervently, after a year.
It hurts to think about it too much.... I hesitate in writing, my fingers brushing keys with deliberance instead of pounding them, fleeting across them, not being able to type fast enough to keep up with my brain.
If I go too far, you see, if I write what's clamoring at the back of mind... the way his eyes were the colour of melted chocolate, how much he would have adored our daughter if he knew her know, how proud of me he was, how he knew me better than anyone... if I get into to that, probe too deeply, I may not come back out that fog all day. My mind will begin that rocking rhythm again.... "This time last year..." (Anxiety attacks that peak and burn, sucking the oxygen from the air around me so I can't breath, and I wonder if this is how Tony felt, driving home from work on the last day of his life... My God. What a tragic, terrifying thought.)
***
Tony loved to take photos when we first got together, and occasionally he was very good at it. This is one of his best.. my favorite, taken, I think, before our kids were even conceived.
Tony taking photos was one of those things that slipped by the wayside as our children came along... I became the family photographer, Tony's camera broke and we never got around to replacing it.
I think about that, and how it only really occurred to me now, that fatherhood took that from him... and I wonder what else we took from him, without knowing, and with the best of intentions... what else did having a family take from him, that I never stopped to see?