Rockwood

I look at your picture, and my heart overwhelms with grief. I still cannot accept it. I know that it is real, but somewhere, in the back of my mind, I still hold out some kind of dreadful hope that this has not really real. I am on the road today, not seeing clients, but working. I am in Rockwood, TN. So much intersects, here. I am putting brick in the number 2 kiln. The last job I did before I came home the last time, before you died.

   Today, I tried to tell myself this is just a place. Just a job. It's not. It's personal. I feel like I am going to leave here, and make that long, tired drive home some sleepless morning, and come stumbling in exhausted from the road, to your waiting arms. To your beautiful smile. To those fathomless brown eyes. I expect it. I yearn for it, more than life itself.

   I want you more than breath; more than existence. I cannot comprehend that, out of all the people on this planet, YOU, Christina. You, that perfect, childlike, beautiful mother, could be dead. What has meaning now?

   I want our children to grow up happy. I want them to be good mothers and wives. I want to start over. I want one more drive to Cloudland Canyon to listen to Bob Dylan's dreams and talk about midwifery and homeschooling. I want to reach across that van and feel that perfectly fitting hand in mine once more. I want the only person that understood why I could fall into the most peaceful sleep while they rubbed my face.

   I want your stress, I want your joy and pain and anger and laughter and depression. Anything and all. I lived to serve you, provide for you, to make you happy. My God, is there no mercy in life? How can a man fall this desperately in love and have that perfect twin of a soul stolen from him with no warning?

    I try to not be angry. I try to find meaning in it all. All I find is lonely desperation that I do not want to end.

   I am old now. Joy is something I cannot understand anymore. That body that always could give more so much feel tired, and the will that you thought so strong only wants to recede to quietness. Those steady hands tremble constantly. That quick smile is forced from politeness. I sympathize with those I used to pity. I fear for those that can't

   God, whatever you are, I force myself to bend my knee and lower my head. I paint pictures of you in the clouds. I speak for you in my mind. I find meaning for life in my thoughts. None of it comes automatically anymore. I am living to pass time, and life has lost dynamics. I find humor in the absurd, and sour at what makes sense to others. I cry like a baby when alone, and laugh like a fool around strangers. I mumble and talk to myself and carry on and fret...I am more lost as time passes. I will spend my days, weary, and haggard. I do not look to the future. I pass time...