Death by Chocolate...

February 1st 2013

Dear B,

Two weeks have passed since I have last written to you. I just do not know where the time goes. I sleep a lot these days and usually by the time I get up to do my morning ritual of getting coffee and checking email it is pushing two in the afternoon.

What woke me up today was the slamming of the ambulance doors outside the house. The lady across the street must have gone into another self-induced diabetic coma again. It has become a monthly occurrence. Half the time the EMTs just give her a shot to regulate her sugar and she is fine within a few minutes. The other half, she goes for the ride to the hospital only to be released either the same or next day. What a way to live.

I keep thinking that one of these days she is going to go into a diabetic shock and her husband won't be there to call 911. Or maybe the EMTs will be too late to administer that special life saving shot or that her body isn't going to recover and she's going to die regardless of what the paramedics do. To pass clutching a bag of chocolate chip cookies isn't exactly a dignified way to go. Then again, what is?

Not much else has changed in the last two weeks though. The weather has been crazy though. The temperature got down to the single digits last week. Then it warmed up to nearly 50 degrees the other day only to drop back down to around freezing today. It has snowed a few days but nothing really accumulated. Oh, and it got windy. Really windy with gusts up to around 50MPH. I haven't noticed any downed limbs in the yard but I haven't really gotten out either.

Last week I took all the Christmas decorations down and packed them away for another year. The house looks so empty now. It was a sad few days packing up the trees and putting away your still wrapped presents that are now two plus years old. I think I got a total of three Christmas cards this year. Now I know why people are so depressed this time of year.

Some doctors and scientists blame it on the shorter days and lack of sunlight. I think it's the fact that a new year has come into existence and nothing has changed but the fact that I am hanging a new calendar up. I'm still broke. I still have a ton of bills with no work coming in and nothing on the horizon either. Nothing has changed. You are still gone and no longer a part of my life.

For the last two weeks I've been advertising on Craigslist that I have a room to rent. I have not received any replies thus far. I'm not crazy about taking in another boarder but I need a way to make the mortgage payments somehow.

I'm advertising used computes for sale and computer services on Craigslist as well. I haven't had any luck there either.

The year is 1/12 over already. There are just over 46 days until the first day of Spring. Not that I have anything to look forward to in the Spring.

The ambulance is gone. It left empty again. It looks like the neighbor lives another day. I guess some people get to have their cake and eat it too.

I miss and love you.

-Dad XO

2013 and the Future...

January 18th 2013

Dear B,

It has been a few weeks since I have written to you. I basically shut my brain down for the remainder of the holidays the best I could. Thinking of how I won't be spending the holidays with you is just... well just... hard.

Let me see if I can deal with getting caught up without losing it altogether.

I attended Christmas Eve service at church as I had the past two years and took pictures of the service. To think it was only three years ago we had attended this service together. Sure it cost me $20.00 to convince you but you went just the same. As we stood side by side holding our candles during the candle-light portion of the service, I thought to myself, things were going ok between the two of us. They weren't going great but I thought they were at least going ok. I'll always remember how you looked that day. You were dressed in your red wool petticoat and black boots. You looked beautiful as always. The fact that you were standing by my side in church with the rest of my "church" family made it extra memorable.

I caught a glimmer of snow flurries in the street light out back as I was going to bed after writing you last. It was well after midnight making it officially Christmas snow. Do you know it has snowed every Christmas since we have been apart? I know it's only two years but I don't think it has snowed on Christmas day prior to this in about 14 or 15 years.

I woke late Christmas morning to the same empty house I fell asleep to. There were no stockings to fill after midnight and I missed placing the tiny box of chocolates on your nightstand this year.

I did climb the stairs to the second floor and stood just outside your bedroom door with my eyes closed trying to recapture a happy memory from Christmases' past but just didn't have the strength to do it.

The coffee was on the bitter side and I was grateful when Lisa called to say she was on her way to coming to pick me up.

Lisa is doing all of the driving these days as the Jeep has a bad front axel on the drivers side. It won't matter soon because once it starts snowing I wont be able to go anywhere as the heat and defroster still don't work.

Lisa and I opened our gifts pretty quickly. I got her a basket of assorted girly things, a set of hand painted mugs by Ms. J, a bracelet she had her eye on, and a couple of poster sized framed prints of some pictures I took at a Dave Mathews concert we went to last summer. She got me a blue Pyrex dish, coffee, some underwear, and a Kindle.

Now don't get me wrong. The underwear I needed, the coffee I can drink, but the Kindle? I tried to be a good sport about it by registering it and all. However the more I tried to do things with it the more I found out how limited it really was. It ended up getting sent back and Lisa got the Amazon credit.

On a happier note, this was the push I needed to take apart my old tablet, make the repairs and return it into service.

We headed to Lisa's house where I watched Lisa and her daughters open their gifts to each other. I took a few pictures and then we all went to Lisa's mom's house for dinner. Nothing formal. Almost everyone in Lisa's family vegan but there was enough meat for me to feel full after eating.

The rest of the holiday was uneventful.

I didn't hear from anyone in the family, nor did I expect to. I thought about calling my mother and father but considering I didn't even receive a Christmas card from them I didn't call.

New Year's Eve this past year was a bust. I stayed home and did nothing. And although I was streaming the countdown on my laptop I didn't really watch. Lisa couldn't afford to come down and went to bed early. I'm not quite sure when I'll see her again as money is tight for both of us.

I really don't know what 2013 and the future has in store for me.

I don't see this getting any easier as time goes by.

I miss you and will always love you.

-Dad XO

Christmas 2012

December 24th 2012

Dear B,

It is Christmas Eve. Lisa could not stay the night so I am all alone again on a very dark and cold night. I have all of the holiday lights on including both trees... even the bubbly lights. I miss you. It's not that I miss you more as time goes by or even less. It has just leveled out and I just plain miss you and I don't think there will be anything that can change that fact. And there shouldn't be. A parent's love for their child should be forever, regardless of the circumstances, as bad as they may seem or get.

But some days are much harder than others to deal with. Today and especially tomorrow will be a couple of those days. Days where I just don't want to wake up and face the reality my life is.

It hurts knowing the last few things you ever said to me were hurtful and even borderline hateful. The fact that we didn't spend much time in the last year together didn't help either.

Since your mom and I split where you were barely 1 year or so old I fought for your rights. I fought to make sure you got a fair education, food in your stomach, clothing to keep you warm, and a place to call home for at least on the weekends. I continued to take you to dance lessons and always made sure you never went without.

I knew that when your mom got married things could change and you might get attached to your new "step" dad but you didn't. In your early teen-aged years you were very vocal about coming to live with me full time which I took as a sign that I was doing something right as a parent.

Then when "we" bought our house... no, our home, I thought I had a good chance at really focusing in on being a full time parent. Your mom had already been fostering multiple kids for a few years and even adopted a couple by this time. I can understand how you felt left out most of the time. When you were here with me there was no competition from the other kids. Sure you loved them and they even looked up to you but you felt that mom should have paid extra special attention to you being her only natural born child. And you know what? I get it. You had every right to feel that way.

It took the threats of a law suit towards the Fall River public school system, countless meetings with officials in both school districts, (Your mom's and mine) and a lot of money and effort but your mom finally let you come to live with me on a full time basis. That meant you could go to a town school at an accredited high school instead of an inner-city school with thousands of students and not enough books to go around. Instead you were one of only 600 hundred students with a great faculty to student ratio and more than enough books to go around.

It was the Christmas break in your Freshman year just a short four years ago. Your mom had her hands full with the adoptions and foster kids and didn't put up much of a struggle. Not unlike any other holiday visitation your mom and I would split the break down the middle with you returning to your mom's to return to school. Except this time you stayed here with me.

I'll never forget signing you out of your former city school and the rudeness of the faculty. You could feel the hostility in the air. It's no wonder they have five full-time city police officers and two drug-sniffing dogs assigned to that one school.

The transition to the new school went a bit smoother. Sure you resented the guidance councilors at first but I think over time you grew to appreciate all that they did for you. By the second term of your Sophomore year you had settled in and even made some close friends.

I finally felt relieved and complete. I was at a point in my life where I felt I had won this great battle that I had been fighting since you had been born.

But instead of things being OK between us they started to deteriorate rather quickly during your Sophomore year of high school. I couldn't relate to what you were going through. But In reality I think I could but just didn't see it at the time.

Now I am realizing I didn't know what I was doing. Like most people raising their first born child, it really is by trial and error. Most parents pull from prior experiences when they were raised by their own parents. I didn't really have those experiences to pull from. I led a very unhappy childhood. In fact I was happiest when I was with my grandparents. Your great-grandmother accepted me unconditionally whereas her only child, my mother didn't.

That still troubles me to this day. A child is supposed to have their mother's unconditional love period. I didn't have mine and you didn't have yours.

It's all hindsight now.

The few times you approached me to talk I felt cornered and on the occasions I approached you I got the same reaction I gave you. We never seemed to be in sync and or ready to completely discuss things out in the open truthfully, We both felt the discussion had to be done on our own terms.

I wish you were here so I could have this discussion with you now.

Well... I've said it here and that's about as good as it gets I suppose.

It's two past midnight, officially Christmas.

Merry Christmas honey.

 I miss you and love you so much.

-Dad XO

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