I keep telling myself that you are not gone. That somehow you'll find your way back me as somehow everything you loved remains here yet everything I loved left with you.
I watched your favorite film last night. I tried to smile when I remembered the first time we saw it together. I know you never said anything, but it was easy to figure out when you seemed to know every line by heart. You were so happy when Dorothy clicked her heels and it all went away like a bad dream. I wanted to feel that joy again, but the heat of tears on my cheeks did not come from joy.
I remembered how much you loved the cowardly Lion and the years it took for me to understand why. I can still see you sitting there, looking like a stranger in your own home, scared to move and barely saying a word. It wasn't until I saw the ring that I realized you were trying to find the courage to do what we always feared.
The ring would change everything. They wouldn't ignore it, not when they worked so hard to keep us apart. Still, it filled my heart with such love to answer yes. I had the idea that once we found each other that would end any separation, but never like this.
I don't have your courage to stay strong. I merely followed you into the dark knowing that my lioness would be there to protect me. I'm not Dorothy, I tried click my heels to wake up from this bad dream and find you standing over me, but I opened my eyes to see this is what is real.
With you gone I have lost all courage to try to sleep. I just can't, not with your face haunting my dreams. Our home sees less and less of me because I couldn't take seeing you there only to blink and find you had disappeared.
You would not want this pain to overtake me and that only makes it worse. To know that if you were here there would comforting words that would make it okay. That you would hold me until it stopped.
Yesterday if someone had granted me one wish I would have asked that we be free. That they take my heart and I could find eternal rest in your arms. The Tin Man needed one and maybe a broken one would do.
Today I realize this heart is all I have left. I remembered that at the end of the film it isn't the evil witch that wins.
They think I'm delirious when I tell them that your heart is stronger than your head. As a doctor they expect me to accept their idea of the truth. They might believe there are somethings in this world that even you cannot defeat, deals that cannot be changed, but I don't. Not why your heart still beats.
No. Your story isn't done. Ethan and Charlotte will be here in nine months to carry it on. They'll know you and love you as I do. When their old enough we'll sit down and watch your favorite movie and when the memories start to overtake me I will them the story of their mother, the courageous Bo, who risked everything for them to apart of the world. That's when you'll walk in and smile as if I'm making it up. You'll be there because you promised you would never leave us.
All you have to do is come back.
And Aunt Kenzi is already heading to the hardware store. You wouldn't miss Kenzi preparing their room would you?