To The Love Of My Life Who Died

When you died, I was furious.

I was angry at everything. My friends, your team of oncologists, random couples on Facebook, God – or whatever it is I believe in. The concept is a little fuzzy right now. I was just so mad. It consumed me. It was seeping out every pore.

But weirdly enough, the person I was the most angry with was the one person I wanted more than anything. You.

And that’s so fucked up, isn’t it? I imagine wherever you are shaking your head and shouting, “You’re mad at me?!?! I’M THE ONE WHO DIED.” And you’re right, you’re right. It’s completely insane. I can’t explain it.

But I was. I was just so mad at you. I was mad that you left and I stayed. I was so mad that your life ended and mine continued – but had to continue without you.

Grief does weird things. I think my anger was some defense mechanism. If I spent time being furious with you, with your ghost, I couldn’t collapse in on myself.

Nobody prepares you for death, not in any way. But especially not when you’re 27 and everyone keeps telling you how young you are. You can’t escape it. How much of your life you’ve got left, all the exploring you’ve yet to do. And we were luckier than most. We didn’t waste away our twenties swiping on Tinder and drinking our way through mediocre dates. We got it right. We got it right early!

The night we spent at your parent’s cabin in Tahoe was when I knew it. I’d been in love with you long before, but that was the specific night I understood the gravity of it. I didn’t just love you. You were love. You were love personified. You were everything I wanted, then and the rest of my days. And had the cancer diagnosis not come the following week, I would have proposed.

But chemotherapy and hospital waiting rooms aren’t romantic, no matter what bullshit John Green tries to convince you of.

I once jokingly (but seriously) asked you if you wanted to get married. Without missing a beat you responded, “This is not A Walk To Remember.” You were weakened from the treatment, but your sense of humor somehow remained sharper than everyone else. I’ll never get how you did that. But it just made me love you all the more.

Learning to live without you has been like asking a fish to learn how to breathe oxygen. I drown a bit each day. I gasp for air. I beg to be returned to the ocean, to be anywhere that might mean I’m with you.

But you wouldn’t want that. You were always the more inspirational one of us two. My Marathon-running Baby. My full moon smiled Baby. I am forever yours and hope some of you rubbed off on me.

You’d say something like, “I hope you fall in love again.” And maybe I will. But should that ever happen, the person I meet will be falling in love with you too. Because I’m so full of you and what we had. It will never leave me.

You will never really leave me. So here’s to you, Blue. I hope those eyes of yours are causing traffic jams up in Heaven. Or wherever you’re traipsing about.

Thank you for being mine. There will never be enough words in the English language to explain how much I adored loving you.