Summer has a feel,
for all who love it’s rays
of sunshine
family vacations
lounging by the pool
warm nights with just a twist
of warm breezes.
Ice-cream dripping
down the cone,
car rides with the top down,
and tunes blasting.
Carefree and endless guilt-free hours,
sipping on tall iced-teas.
Summer has a feel
of drive-in movies
and walking the dog
in the park
with Italian ices or lemonades,
to stay cool.
Staying up late,
road trips and reunions,
graduation parties
and weddings.
Flip-flops and
water parks
and
looking at the stars.
And summer has a feel,
for those of us who know
that summers are no longer
what they used to be,
what they always were,
before death stole that
carefree life.
Summer has a feel
of guilty nights ,
not sleeping ,
having nightmares,
counting down the days and hours,
remembering all the time that was,
the time that existed,
in the moments and minutes and months
before they died.
I can feel it in the air,
literally.
That humid hot air,
that instantly takes me back,
to the day he died,
and the 95 degree heat.
The heat
that would burn
into my memory,
and sting into my eyes.
The sweltering hot air at his funeral,
causing one of the Air Force men
holding the flags,
to faint,
and a room filled with EMS workers
and nurses
and doctors
all reacted,
as my husband’s supervior joked:
“Are there any paramedics here?”
These are the kinds of memories
that I have
surrounding summer.
Choosing a coffin,
or the funeral director handing me my wedding ring,
off my husband’s hand,
and saying,
“He can’t take it with him. It belongs with you.”
Or how my husband,
looked nothing like my husband,
lying there
in that box.
Or how I felt nauseous
and kept getting sick
at the thought of returning
to our apartment,
and leaving him there,
in that box.
These are my thoughts
of summer.
Right around now,
it starts.
June.
The first days of summer.
My body starts to feel shaky
and worn,
and my neck and back is extra achey,
the muscles just knowing,
that he will be soon be dead,
again,
forever.
Yes,
it happened eight years ago,
but each time these months
roll around,
the pieces of time that existed
before his sudden death,
get re-lived,
and analyzed,
and broken down,
and looked at with a microscope,
to try and find any new clues,
to the many unanswered questions,
that all lead to the inevitable.
That constant beat
of the drum
that is death.
July 13th.
I woke up,
and the new reality has already happened.
He is dead.
He was perfectly fine,
and then,
he was dead.
And I,
was forever changed,
and my heart,
was forever different,
and I wont ever stop asking myself
WHY
What could I have done?
Why didnt I know?
Did he know?
Was he struggling more than he led on?
Could I have been a better wife?
Could he have lived
another 5 years
or 10?
The drumbeat
that is death,
never stops.
It takes breaks,
it slows down,
it goes on hiatus for awhile.
But it never stops.
And in these days and weeks,
leading up to that awful morning,
that drumbeat is louder,
and it pounds
like a migraine
stabbing into the heart.
The families smile,
and the children giggle
and splash in the ocean,
and the world lives brightly
in the Sunshine.
And my darkness,
has only
just begun.
Summer has a feel …..