Your Valentines Day Gift Surprised Me!

Good morning, my precious husband,
Thank you for the Valentines Day card and gift you gave me last night.  You know the one.  The unsigned card I found in your night stand drawer when I was packing to move?  I found it in November and put it in my box of all the cards you gave me over the years.  It was right on top, so I pulled it out in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep.  It was cute.
On the front, it has a picture of a pink poodle in a big bathtub of bubbles and it says that you were giving me something to add to my bubble bath for Valentines Day.  And -- as if I would be surprised by the inside -- it had a picture of a gray poodle popping up out of the water saying, "Me!"
I remember how we would do that every once in a while, and it is such a good memory of being so comfortable, so close and so alive... and how we said we would do it more often if had been a little more comfortable in that big tub!
You didn't sign the card.  I imagine you bought it early, tucked in the nightstand and forgot about it.  You never missed a Valentines Day, so I guess you bought another card at some point and gave it to me instead... But when you DID sign the card, it was always with two words, "Love, Me."  This card just happens to have the word "Me" in really big letters on the inside, so it kind of feels like you sent it!
And thank you for the gift.  It is precious to me.  When I was looking for a bag for an overnight business trip, I decided to use the small carry-on bag we used when you would go to the hospital.  I remember packing it that last time, knowing that it was gong to kill me to unpack it.  And I thought at the time, "Why would I think that?"  We were going to the hospital so you would feel BETTER, so why would I think such a thing?  I think God was preparing me with a moment of clarity that they were going to send you home to die that day.  But it didn't make sense!  They told us just six weeks earlier that the cancer had not grown and had not spread!  But why were you feeling so weak?  We were going to get checked in to the hospital so they could drain the fluid off your heart so you could recover from that and feel stronger.  And then we were going to keep dealing with that damn cancer.
But they sent you home.  You decided you were done.  Dying peacefully of fluid around the heart in a couple of weeks, you said, was better than dying in pain and misery of cancer in months.  You looked up at me and asked, "Is that okay with you?"
"No!" I shouted in my head, while I held your hand and nodded "Yes."  You looked so pitiful.  You were begging me to let you die.  On the way home that day, as we talked about all the legal and financial arrangements that needed to be taken care of in the next few days, I remember shaking my head at the surrealness of it all.  I remember thinking about unpacking that bag and how it was going to be the first of many, many, many hard things I was going to have to do.
And you know how many there have been.  It's a wonder anyone survives this insane nightmare of being left behind.
So back to the present.  It is nearly 6 months later and I pull out that bag in the wee hours of the morning of Valentines Day to pack.  Now, I KNOW I fully unpacked that bag.  But there it was in the bottom.  Your comb.  The comb you used to comb that gorgeous hair of yours.  Thank you, my sweet loving husband.  And I laughed out loud through the tears when I thought a moment later, "But I didn't get YOU anything!"
I will love you always and I pray every night before going to sleep that I will see you again soon in heaven and this time there will be no death or separation.  Until then, my love...
Love, Me