The in-between

There is a moment every morning, the moment in-between sleep and awake, that everything is okay. I forget in that moment that you are gone. 

 

That in-between place is my favorite place to be. Those three or five seconds that I think this was all a crazy dream and you will appear around the corner. You can’t be dead, because dead is forever. I have so many years left without you and that simply cannot be.

 

I sit in the space where you died sometimes. It’s not scary or weird or gross. It’s just a room. It doesn’t represent you or your life. I talk to you there. I cry a lot and laugh a lot too. I swear I expect you to roll out from under the bed where you have been hiding this whole time. My brain still lets me pretend that this can somehow all be made okay.

 

I have always been able to make things okay. Sometimes not immediately and sometimes with so much work that I just physically don’t know how I keep going, but I have always been able to fix things. I know this isn’t fixible. I do. My brain tries to trick me into thinking it is. Just for little moments, in those in-between times.

 

I only miss you in-between.

 

In-between breaths and seconds and thoughts. In-between days and nights and moments.

 

It gets easier. People say this and I know it’s real. I have whole days when the tears won’t stop followed by whole weeks where none fall.

Give it time, people tell me. Six months on Tuesday. It’s alternately been a blink of my eye and an eternity on Tuesday. Endless lifetimes and less than a second in that in-between.

 

I don’t pick up my phone to text you as much now, although sometimes I will see a news story or a joke and my brain immediately thinks “Chris”. That in-between makes me either immeasurably sad (news story) or smile (joke). I text the jokes to your son, who appreciates them. I deal with the news stories alone.

 

That’s part of it too. The deep, dark, hurty alone. I have so many friends who love me, and I am so thankful and honestly flabbergasted by this. I have people to talk to. I am blessed beyond measure by these souls who hear me.

 

You were different though.

You and me were different.

 

It has always been hard to be the different one in a family. You made it easier because we could be different together. You always had my back and I always had yours. It feels impossibly lonely without you. I take all the burdens alone that we used to take together and it’s heavy. It’s just really, really heavy.

 

All of it is just so heavy.

 

 

I miss you. Yesterday, today, and every moment in-between.