To celebrate or not to celebrate

It would have been your 30th today.

I broke down yesterday in the car driving by myself. There are so many times during the day where for a split second I start to do something with you in mind. It might be reaching my hand for my phone because something just happened and I want to tell you about it. It might be the start of a sentence that includes you in some way and I catch myself not wanting to explain what I mean or the circumstance. It might be watching someone in front of me reach down and interlock their fingers. It might be a reference or a key word or an inside joke that flickers through my world on any given day. The worst is when I'm not expecting it and I catch a smell of you or a glimpse of a passing stranger. For just for a second the zone which employs logic is overwhelmingly flooded with an aura of hope.

Hope for just a second. And I miss you.

It's like being pricked with a needle every single time. Most of the time I just catch myself and I know, I mean know, that I can't keep going down that avenue of thoughts and imagination because it makes no sense. But when it happens it's this sad and lightly painful reminder that you are not available to me any longer. And most of the time it hits like a needle prick. And just like being picked on by a younger sibling or losing patience with any repeated aggravation, eventually that needle breaks the skin again and I have had enough. Then comes not just the light pain but the sobbing, visible, heart-destroying ache. Pain is never lost when you leave; it just splits into pieces and is distributed to those closest to you and always in varying intensity.

I've been fortunate that most of those episodes have not happened in the presence of another. Some of that is a constant mental guarding from walking down the path of reminiscing once that initial poke of the needle happens. If I block as much ruminating as I possibly can and leave those thoughts for periods of life's silence then I avoid the awkwardness of the public breakdown.

I think tonight I may not have the strength to guard. We should have been in Vegas, should have been around family and friends and those who love and appreciate you. I am lucky to still spend time with some of those people but I'd send them all packing on my own dime if it allowed it to just be you and me.

An empty wish - that will not be possible. I know...