I do this every year. I still need my oxygen cart, but as I get older, I worry less and less about. This year I turned twenty. As I walk down the rode and think about all that has happened since his death. I find his fancy gravstone. I sit down in from of it and take the painfully orange flowers I had gotten, and I set them gently on the grave. I tell him about my year. How my parents are doing, and how this year, I got a job. I finished college a year early. I never did like anyone else. It was always about him. I felt like if I did fall in love with anyone else, I would be betraying him, and that was something I could never live with.
I sit and think and the tears are a steady stream sown my face. "Hey Augustus. Look I'm a year older. Mom and Dad are doing well. Dad still cries everytime I talk about another year without you. I can never bring myself to read An Imperial Affliction, but everytime I try to, gets slightly easier. I never stopped loving you , you know. I never really fully recover. I help Isaac, often enough, with his eyes, and we still talk, but it's always sad. The family we gave the swingset to, he came a year after you died and paid his respects. I never saw Peter again. He disappeared again. I never cared and I still don't. I'm okay though. But this will be the last time I visit you. We're moving. I'll never talk to you again. I'm not okay with moving, but I don't really have a choice. But I promise, no matter where you are, and no matter where I am, our infinity will last forever. I love you. Okay?"
I get up and I walk down the pavement back to my car. I cry as I look back, and the sun seems to shine down on his grave, as if it was the only thing that mattered. And it that moment, it was. I got to my car and sat there staring off into space. I set my head on the steering wheel as my mind wanders back, to that night at the gas station. I think about how he said he wanted to die. I usually never think about the bad things that happened between him and I. But this time I let it happen. The emotions I held in for so long, just came pouring out through my tears.
I think about the good things. I try and remember the smell of him. I remember the first year after he died, listening to his voicemail over and over and over again. Until finally one day the number no longer held his voice and it was just emptiness. I laugh a little when I remember funny things he said to me. I can remember the sound of his voice, broken, if you knew him well enough. Yes, broken, but strong, always strong. He loved me. I had heard this said to me so much that first terrible year without him. I start the car and cry drive away and when I look back, I watch it disappear.
Maybe I cared about him too much. Maybe not enough. But he knew-knows. I love him. Always will. I never actually and fully recovered. But I healed. And know I have a scar. He did leave a scar in the world, just like he wanted to. I chose him to hurt me. I chose him to break my heart. I would never have it any other way.