It's been five weeks and four days. 

I only got to have you for six years. 

I still think I hear your car at 4 pm, everyday, but it's always the guy that lives down the street with the chopped exhaust. I wish he would get a new car. I'm trying to take care of our cars, but I'm just not the mechanic that you were. Are. I don't know what tense to use these days. Shit keeps breaking, and the blue car is making a weird pulley noise.

I'm lying in our bed, and I'm crying, the loud ugly kind,  because the girlchild is at a sleepover. It's almost 1. No one knows but the cat. Yeah, I got a kitten for the girl almost a month ago, on your birthday. He helps, I guess. Like the way putting frosting on actual crap helps. But the purring lulls me to sleep eventually.

I hate being this lonely Aaron, I miss hearing you breathe, while I read until 1. I miss our daily chores and grocery shopping with you. I miss holding your hand while you drove my car up the coast. I miss hearing you and the girl laugh together. I miss your smell. I miss everything about a life that is gone now, over. It will never be the same. We will never be the same, the girl and I. I have to relearn how to be an adult now, I've been with you 24/7 since I was barely 19. What do I do? I long for you, so much, it's like my heart is going to squeeze out of existence. 

You took so much of us with you. Our daughter is obsessed with where your body is, and I have to constantly explain that we can't go get it, and make it live. I explained that the part that made you Daddy is gone out into the world now. I referenced Pochahantas.  But she's four and she doesn't understand. She thinks she can kiss you and you will wake up. I know we will talk about it again tomorrow, and the next day. It's hard. We sleep with your shirts and look at pictures and home videos, but it's a painful joy; to smell you, or see you, or hear you, knowing we will never really do those things ever again.

I wish I could un-see you dead. And un-hear the sound of the air I tried to pump into you coming out. I only want to remember you alive and warm. Not how I last saw you. I thought I could still save you. I'm drowning in guilt and pain, knowing that while I was making breakfast with the girl... while I was thinking I was letting you sleep in extra out in the shop... you were dying. Somehow. Just on the other side of the door. We still haven't had results on your cause of death, to date. Could I have stopped this? I try not to blame myself, but it's tough. It's not my fault, it's not yours either, but I feel I could have prevented it.

Nothing is okay, but I'm parenting. I'm working. I'm still taking our kid to Disneyland next week, for my twenty-fifth birthday, and I'm dreading it. All those Daddies. When people ask me how I am, I say Fine. Because I'm personable, and fake af. But I am not fine. I am empty and I need you. You were my life partner, and now I'm alone, with a whole empty, lackluster life ahead of me.