Text messages on my heart

"How can you be gone?"  I find myself asking his picture when I wake up and when I go to bed.  Some days I assault his picture with a more harsh version, "How can you be dead?"  Dead, gone, left, disappeared, missing, abandoned; the verbs change based on how large the fissure through my heart is at the moment. The paper version of him propped up in my makeshift shrine never answers.

And that is the worst part of this journey; him not answering.  I am so reliant on his answers.  That is what I miss the most. 

Just a few short weeks back, Leonard answered everything I threw his way.  I remember a couple of years ago, the boys and I went on a vacation with my parents.  Leonard stayed behind to work and planned on meeting up with us on the later portion of the three week escape to the Rockies.  But I had him in my pocket the whole time.  When Kirby said something funny, I grabbed my phone and called Leonard.  When Carter caught a fish with his grandpa, out came the phone.  When I went to bed, ring-a-ding ding, I called him.  All day long I would reach out to him in his absence.  Then one afternoon we were all sitting on a boat dock on the side of a lake in Colorado.  It was raining slightly but we were sure just a few more minutes would result in that elusive "big catch" all fishers long for.  I watched my line with lazy intent.  And all of the sudden I saw what I thought was a bobber go under water.  I quickly realized I wasn't watching a red bobber get pulled under by a big catch but witnessing my red cell phone going to a watery grave.

MY LIFE LINE TO HIM WAS GONE.  I reassured myself it was no big deal.  He would be coming out in a few days and my dad had a cell phone I could borrow.  Breathe in, breathe out, no need to panic.  So I proceeded to borrow Dad's phone for all the trivial happenings I knew Leonard would want to know about.  On about my third request of the morning, Dad said "Don't you think you have called that boy enough?"  THAT BOY?!?!  That 35 year old MAN I love?  Don't you mean my husband of over 10 years?  The father of my children?  My co-pilot to eternity? How quickly my dad and I returned to the time of my early adolescence  when I needed to be taught the social expectancies of a girl with a silly crush.  JUST GIVE ME THE PHONE, I wanted to scream.

And it all worked out.  My sweetheart joined me a few days later with a new cell phone in hand.  We reunited in person and continued with the reassurance that technology offers to parted lovers in the modern day.  We were connected again.

And that is what I miss.  The non-stop everywhere connection. Maybe that is why I continue to pay for a cell phone that won't be used anytime soon.  703-1317 still works even if its owner doesn't. 

Shout as I may, that polaroid likeness that stares back at me from my bedside table never answers.  I gave up daily texts of him reminding me he was there the minute he was diagnosed with a horrible disease that would take with it our connection.

Now I strive to feel him in my life instead of feel him buzzing in my pocket.  And I do.  I feel his love for our children emanating from my little heart.  I hear his voice when acquaintances enter the realm of dear friends.  I sense his love for me when coincidences can only be contributed to his orchestration of getting us through this.  I get his messages through simple truths uttered by his progeny.  He IS still here but I don't need to use my cell phone minutes anymore to know that.