Coming Home

I traveled this week for the first time since Curtis passed. It was an excruciating week. Tonight, I will go home and it will be the first time I will not send him my itinerary. We will not see each other. He will not be waiting at my house and we will not pick up my girls. We will not have dinner together and we will not play on the PS4 later. It will not be a normal Friday night. We will not tuck in the girls. He will not go down to the living room and wait for me while I sing them the normal lullaby. I won't walk into the living room and hear him say, "I love hearing you sing to them." We will not sit on the couch and watch TV. He will not run his fingers through my hair. We will not stay up too late and whisper, as to not wake up the girls upstairs. I will not walk him to the door and he will not kiss me goodnight.

That part of my life is over. It is a mere memory. Years of Friday nights exist only in my dreams now.

I just want one more moment. One moment to tell him goodbye. To make sure he knows I love him. To kiss him one last time. To hold his warm hand in mine and make sure he knows I will be okay.

But I don't know if I will be okay without him. I don't know if I can take another step forward. For three weeks, I have put one foot in front of another and my broken heart has trudged through the muck of every day. The finality of his death is setting in and I am just left with this emptiness. This horrible sense of loss and grief. I don't know how to look forward and I don't want to. Not yet. I want to go back to January 25th. To when I could change things.

So, I sit here, on the plane from Cincinnati to Dallas, and try to hide my tears because I dread walking into my house. It will be cold and dark and there will be no Curtis. That house will never be the same to me. The home I was starting to build there will never truly feel like home. That house feels empty. My heart feels empty. I know now no one will ever love me the way he did. I was so blessed to have him. He was a gift. A gift I will treasure in my memory forever. However long my forever lasts.