Tonight's Pain

I am aching tonight, an ache that I thought was relinquished or at least quieted in months and weeks past. I have become so adept at pasting on a smile, laughing and conversing like a functional human being, that for a time I actually believed that I could become a functional human being. Tonight, wounds that I thought were reasonably healed over are gaping open. They are pulsing and raw. The dull ache of missing Ammon, the burden that I quietly carry with me through my daily life, tonight that ache is a stabbing pain in my chest. The physical pain of it surprises me, after all this time. The threat of tears hovers. My heart is heavy inside my chest, and I know a long night of tears awaits me when I finally choose to turn out the light. Perhaps I will take a sleeping pill and pray that sleep takes me quickly and deeply into it's embrace. Perhaps I'll give myself over to the abyss of grief that yawns open before me tonight.

The grief is truly an abyss. It is a wide open cavern of pain and agony. The depth and breadth of the pit is indescribable to those that don't look through a widow's eyes. The bleakness of my future is blacker than the darkest night, more hopeless than a world without sunshine. I feel, tonight, that Ammon was the sunshine of my life. I feel that he was my center, my orbit centered around his light, and now that he is gone, my orbit hovers without the pull of gravity.

I know that tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow is always better, and the morning light always brings with it a renewed hope that someday, somehow, I will find the strength to stagger through whatever stretch of time is placed before. Really, on nights like tonight--and even on the good days--that is how I number my existence. Today? Just one more day out of the way until I can be reunited with him. Last week? Just another milestone out of the way until I can join him beyond this earthly realm. Oh, how it aches. How the grief and loneliness grips uncomfortably at my heart and my soul. Every day, I choose life. I choose to get out of bed, care for my children, and find the strength within myself to excel in so many areas of my life. As I knelt at Ammon's side-even as he drew his final breath--I desperately plead with him to live. I told him I couldn't go on without him. The reality? I am. No matter the agony that shadows my every step, I am going on without him. April 12th 2008, and every day since then, the sun has continued to rise, and so have I. Tonight, I don't feel like rising. I feel like, if it were an option, I would simply crawl into bed and take my last breath. I would make this journal entry my last living act, and go be reunited with my love.

God, how I miss him. How I long, with every cell and synapse in my body, that I could turn back the hands of time and bring him back into my life. Tonight is not one of the nights that I feel as though our marriage didn't exist. Tonight, I can hear the texture of his voice in my mind, and feel the caress of his hands through my hair. On my skin. His breath on my ear as he whispers his love to me. It's only a figment of my imagination. He isn't here, his presence doesn't warm my room or my body. Will I ever be able to move throughout a day and not long for what was once mine?