There's a lot of talk about looking forward and starting a new life, my love......even as I am coming up on the one year anniversary of your going away, and our 43rd wedding anniversary.  What they don't get Babe is that in 43 years, I hardly know myself apart from you. I gave all of me to you a long time ago- happily. I can hardly remember the "me" without you. So I'm expected to start a new life which is nothing that I am familiar with because everything is new without you.......no real frame of reference except all of the remnants and left overs of the past. I dearly love them, but they are no longer relevant to starting over a new life- have to look back to even know who I am.

    Today I loathe that expression; "looking forward".  I hate Mt. Everest even though I'm signed up to go.  I hate my motorcycle- all my running escapades. They are a ruse........calculated distractions- feeble attempts to keep myself from "looking back"- stupid old man, you will never be what you were with your lovely girl.  You became more of you when you met her.  She was a step up from your mundane existence.  Lynn Flomer made you want to be the best you that you could be and stayed next to you all along the process, good and bad. She laughed and cried, and marvelled at life.....made you see ALL of the beauty of it, and the beauty of the people in it. She was an angel, sent to you by a God who knew exactly who you needed to share your life with- and she willingly took that assignment even though she knew that you were an impossible essay to write.

    Today I am so very tired my love. Tired of trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.......of trying to put together jig saw puzzles with no pictures on them. You were so could at figuring out the puzzles of life, and you helped me be patient in solving them. Even though I didn't seem to be listening, I heard you loud and clear........now I hear you through 2000 watt speakers. Only wish I could hear your cheerful voice again.  I would give anything to do a jig saw puzzle with you right now. We were going to grow old together and sit in rocking chairs around the wood stove.  Well I burned all of the wood this winter Babe, rocking alone in my chair, loving the warmth of the stove, but cold without out you my love........without you.

    I have tried to stay busy to keep from thinking about you, my mind is fatigued trying to prevent "the past" from slipping into my consciousness. It is all that I wanted in life.  Not sure today that I want what's left- IT WAS GOOD. I have had everything that I could ever want in life, but all that I really want now is you, my loving wife.  Funny how we all seem to want so many things that we can no longer have in life. But to love and be loved was, and IS life, and I certainly had an abundance of that. God I hope that I can keep going now. Show me the way before me, and I will follow, but I'm scared Lord, and I'm up and down and all over the map with myself. 

David