The day a loved one dies is weird. When you get the phone call, you’re numb. You’re in shock. It almost doesn’t feel real. Your body is moving, but you feel like everything around you has stopped. Like maybe it was some kind of cruel joke, and they really aren’t gone. Maybe it was all a mistake, but it’s not. They’re really, truly gone. Forever.

After it finally sets in, it’s like your world collapses. Your heart is shattered and you don’t know if you can pick up the pieces. You don’t have any energy or motivation. All you want to do is lay in bed and cry. You don’t want to face the outside world. That’s the strangest part though, there is an outside world. It’s going on without you, not affected at all. It doesn’t even know or understand what you are going, though. It’s just carrying on without you and it will continue carrying on without your loved one. That’s the sickening part. That the world carries on without such a wonderful person. You were such a big part of my life, how can it just carry on like you were nothing?

My biggest regret is not appreciating you enough. What I wouldn’t give to hear another one of your stories. I’d hang on to every word. I’d write it down, even record you maybe. I’d watch the way your eyes lit up when you got to your favorite part, laughing too hard to finish (even though it was usually the same story every time). I’d hug you more. I’d hug you longer. I can’t remember how you smell. I took that for granted too. I’d hug you so tight and for so long that your smell would be embedded in every part of my brain, and I would never be able to forget. I would tell you I love you a million times, and just when you would get so tired of hearing it, I’d tell you once more. (Just for good measure.) I would remind you every single day how much you mean to me, because you meant so much to me.

I keep going through our old pictures and messages. I keep re-reading every word, and taking it all in. Hearing your laugh as you stumble over the keyboard typing. I wish that I could call you one more time and take in your voice. Take in your laugh. Take in all of it. I look through your pictures and try to memorize your smile, because I'll never see that smile again.

Although I can no longer see you or hear you, I can feel you. I feel you all around me at all times. Even though you left this world, you never left my side. You’ve become my guardian angel. I hope that you guide me in the right direction. Till we meet again.

Love,

Me