Letters to Michael

I miss you.

I loved you.  It's so easy to forget that, because of the way that things were the last months.  I hope you knew that.  I hope that you could see me, and remember what you said about standing in the train station after your mother's death and feeling free, the weight of it all lifted from your shoulders.  I hope that you remember how it was with your mother, how you said in the end that it was her or you, and that when she understood, finally understood that... that was the end. 

I don't want to put it that way, because I don't want to draw those parallels.  I never did.  But it was the same in so many ways, the disease, the obligation, the mental illness, the grinding wearing days.  Knowing that whatever you do it not enough.  Trying to keep your head above water.

Except that I'm stronger that you, and I always was, and I am going to survive this. 

It's not a contest that I ever wanted to win.  I believed, right up to those last months, that there would be a future in which we sat on the front porch in rocking chairs and made chicken noises. 

And then I stopped believing.  And I started fighting, and I let you go.  It's the truth.  I could not have done anything different, but it still true that I let you go.  And that makes me so sad, because neither of us deserved any of this.  And I wish that it could have been somehow different.  I remember standing with my arms around you as you sat on the side of the bed and cried.  I would go back there in a heartbeat and hold you even tighter.

I never stopped loving you, even when I couldn't.  I know that makes no sense, but it's still true.

So many hopes and dreams and plans that never came true.  So much in the wonderful person that you were... when you could be that person.

I miss you so much. I would not go back, for either of our sakes.  But I don't think that there will be a moment of my life when I don't miss you in some way.