Five Days...

December 20th 2012

Dear B,

There's only five days left until Christmas. Five. Yet it doesn't feel like it, not at all. This will be our second Christmas apart. Last year I was still in shock and in denial and went through the motions of the holiday season only feeling a numbness clear through the early Spring of this past year.

I've had an entire year in my life without you now and nothing has changed. With the college break upon us, you would be home for the holidays possibly traveling from some far away college. You would be filling our home with  the wonderful smells of freshly baked cookies and more pies than would fit on the counters. We would be catching up on the local town happenings and you'd have stories of your own from school. We would power shop for last minute gifts and hang Christmas cards from people we had forgotten to send our own cards to vowing to make sure they got one the following year. We would laugh at the silly stuff. To only be able to hear your laughter again.

Instead I find myself numb again. Not from the cold, but from the thoughts of going through the motions again, alone. Walking through crowded stores with all of the festive merry-making everywhere you look. Witnessing all the families coming together and seeing the smiles on their faces. It's just to much for me.

After a year you would think that after almost a year of grieving I would have gotten a bit better about this stuff but in fact slipped into a further depressed state.

What am I supposed to say when people ask me how I'm doing or when they ask me about you. Some people still don't know the situation. What is worse is when someone asks me how you are and the minute the words leave their mouth they remember what happened. I can see it in their eyes.

It's late and even though I don't have any plans for tomorrow I am going to go rest. Something that I have been doing a lot of lately.

I miss you and love you.

-Dad