The
return address on the envelope catches my eye, my heart skips a beat
and I have to catch my breath. I know what the contents are and yet
I'm afraid to open it. It's been almost a year, yet waves of high and lows still wash over my body like the tides of an ocean.
There are days of looking at pictures and laughing at the crazy things she did. Like stealing the nurse's phone and locking them out of the playroom,
Or the time she told the Dr. her boyfriend worked in the cemetery and when he asked her, how she felt about that, she said, "I'm just dating him for the employee discount."
Next come the trickle of tears. I remember all the nights staying up listening to her cough, the fights trying to get her to eat, the guilt anytime I left the hospital and something would go wrong and she called me crying. Watching her on a ventilator and hearing the Dr.'s tell me she wouldn't come off it. Seeing her fight and win so many times, and spending so many nights holding her while she cried. I'll never get to talk to her again, never get to take her walks by the lake and stop for ice cream, never get to see that smile or hear her laugh.
Some days I feel nothing, just blank. I'm not happy, I'm not sad, I just exist. The memories flow through my mind like a movie I'm watching. I dream about her, I miss my family, I miss my life, some days I just feel dead inside.
Other days, I feel like I'm crazy. I miss the hospital, sleeping on the stupid plastic beds, the horrible coffee, not sleeping for weeks on end. I miss the nurses and the Dr.'s. They were my 2nd family. I miss it all.
I held her while she took her first breath and her last breath. All she ever wanted was for everyone to get along and be happy. I was her momma bear and she was my baby bear. Thank you for teaching me how to be a better person, baby bear.
