5 Days

Tonight I am looking at photos.

Of Before.

Of us smiling.

How handsome he was, and how full of hope and innocence we were.

I can't really recognize that girl. It is like looking at someone related to me, but generations removed.

I have the video from the first birthday of mine we spent together. 5 years ago.

We went to a State park and had a pic-nik. Salads and sparking sodas, ginger beer. Fruits.

Big blankets we used to spread out under the canopy of trees. Tee shirts and shorts weather. Kisses. 

He gave me the first season of Burn Notice on DVD and a card I still have.

We took a nap together until it was time to drive home. I believe it was a Sunday and I was working the next day.

We had been engaged 3 months then. Only a few people knew. We had decided to tell our families at the holidays in November.

I laughed so much that day.

I went so many years of my life with terrible birthdays. I even just stopped celebrating at one point.

But he gave me such a happy one that day.

My handsome man. My beautiful boy. My future. I could tell him anything and he still said, "I love you, darlin'. I'm not running."

I felt safe. I felt strong. I felt like I was balanced and truly loved and completely, unconditionally accepted.

I felt that anything was possible. Every good thought I had never dared to let myself contemplate was suddenly perhaps obtainable. 

Anything and Everything was possible.

He was my TimeLord that day. He made time stop. In that afternoon he gave me an eternity of joy, happiness, and love. Not just the tv show.

He helped me forget the stress of moving twice in two months. The hardness of some days only seeing him after his classes ended and coming to bed. 

That day was autumn air and sun, and the shadows of the trees moving in the wind.

That day was ours. 

That day was mine. 

That day was his gift. A love token. A foretelling of the good before the world crashed and stopped and burned. 

That last happy birthday I ever had.

The last one without the shadow of death. Just the trees.

The last one I did not wonder if I would be sharing my next year with him.

Just those long and everlasting happy hours.

That is what I mourn over. That is what comes to mind with the tears. That is the warmth I want when all I can think is the cold terror of the next birthday. Where it was unknown if he would live to see the next day. When everything odd and disturbing clicked together with his illness but in a horrid realization of how close to losing him I was. That long, long birthday night of forms, scans, doctors whispering, and for the first time seeing the tumor that had grown in his brain, and was going to eventually kill him.

That day, I longed for something simple like a DVD set. That day I wanted the trees and nap together, not the sounds of the Neuro ICU.

I think I would go back to that day, if I could. I would spend forever there, with him. 

Just us and the laughter and hope. The happiness. The wind. The silence. Being the only two people around in that wilderness that day.

He gave me that happy day. What I never thought possible. 

What seems lifetimes ago.

Maybe someday, this Girl Who Waits will see that magic blue box. I will know where to go. When to go. 

All of Time and Space... yes, I know when.

I will hear his voice whisper back to me, "As you wish. My darlin'. As you wish."