Looking back

I came across my journal from a year ago, and I read entries from our anniversary weekend. It's evident to me that, even with apparently good news with each test result, I was living with a mixture of hope and fear.

On our anniversary last year, I wrote:

I want desperately to find out this was all a bad dream, that in fact Sandy had a mild case of pneumonia and we were able to treat it and now she's fine. 

But that's not going to happen. Here's what is going to happen: we're going to live every day to the fullest, pursue every healing opportunity, and assume, for now, that there will be a tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. I want as many tomorrows with Sandy as I can get.

The next day, I wrote:

Fifteen years, and I swear I love Sandy more every year, possibly every week, maybe even every day. 

When we're together, she's so real that I can't imagine her gone. That's much better than when we're apart and I look ahead to the bleakest of our possible futures, fearing the need to face life without her. We're working to keep our future brighter — and when she's slept well and the mountains are clear and striking in the sunshine, a brighter future seems not only possible but likely.

Whidbey Island, 2005, for our 10th anniversary. Though it
looks like she's got no hair, she's not in the middle of chemo;
this was six months before her biopsy; her ears were just cold!

Now, even though she's dead, she is so real to me that I can't imagine her gone. I picture her so clearly, even without photographic evidence. I can hear her voice and her laugh, her sighs of irritation, and the way she sang when amused or just content. That I haven't seen her in five months is inconceivable when she's been in so many dreams, so many visions, so many thoughts, and so many memories. I'm slowly learning to accept and embrace this level of presence, even while I crave the life we had before.