Good morning Sunshine,
I went fishing with my dad today. I caught the most beautiful fish. I immediately thought you would love it. You would have loved where we went. You would have loved the fish. You would have loved I was spending time with my dad.

My mom and I have been watching a couple of new tv shows. I think you would have liked one of them. Maybe both. Sometimes you surprised me with the shows you liked.

Golf was back on tv! Oh you would have been so excited. Tiger/Peyton beat Phil/Tom. Some things are hard to watch without you. Golf is one of them.

I slept in our bed last night. The first time since you passed. Me and the boys are trying to make a home without you here. It’s hard. And I hate it.

Sometimes you’re in my dreams. I hate waking up. You’re so close there.

I miss you. I love you.

Good morning Sunshine,
Sometimes I see you everywhere and it makes me sad. Sometimes I see you no where and it devastates me.

I went through the closet today. I packed your stuff away. There’s no handbook. There’s no best practices here. I wish you were here to still wear all of this. It just started hurting more to see it every day than it did to pack it away. You would have preferred to donate it all. I know that’s what you would have wanted. You were always a giving person. I wish I could be that way. Even just a little. I’m trying. I’m trying all over. Trying to keep the house up. Trying to get the garden going. Trying to be a good person even though I feel like a shell.

I was scrolling through Instagram stories and recognized a name one of the local garden centers had re-posted. We would have been rolling. My jaw dropped. I wanted to call you. Then I remembered I can’t. I want to call you so badly. I want to talk. What I wouldn’t do to have one more conversation. Then that wouldn’t be enough, would it? Even when you were here and we were coming home to each other, we’d check in mid day. We missed each other. We felt a pull to share our day a couple hours in. I wanted to share it all with you forever. I wish you were here next to me. I wish I could watch you play with the dogs again. I wish I could take some more pictures of the dogs and you passed out on the couch.

I love you.

Good morning Sunshine,
It was your birthday yesterday. It was my least motivated day so far. I just wanted to sit and mourn. I wanted to be sad and cry. I didn’t want to be productive. I tried to be anyway. I planted bulbs. I watered plants. I made a trip and donated to Goodwill. Maybe I’ll start teaching myself to play the guitar. You had two, so now I have two.

Remember when I was in college and you let me borrow one for a bit? I’m not sure I ever did anything productive on it but it was fun to try. Maybe I’ll go get it restrung and tuned. YouTube my way through this.

I lit the tiki torches and had some merlot for you last night. I thought about calling off work today. It’s been an emotional week. But you would have told me to go to work. So that’s what I’m trying to do.

I love you.

Good morning Sunshine,
It’s almost six. I’ve been up for three hours because I can’t fall back asleep. Normally, I’d roll over and snuggle up. You’re not here to do that’s. What’s normal now? Just be awake at 3 am?

I think the garden beds are finally finished. The plants are in, the hail netting is up. That’s right, I finally thought ahead and was able to get hail netting.

I had to go to the bank yesterday and get a death certificate on file with them. Then I was going through your golf stuff. It’s hard. It’s like getting rid of pieces of you. If you were here you’d tell me it’s just stuff. You’d be happy it was going some place to be used and loved by someone else. Stuff and memories are all I have now, though. Nearly 9 years of a relationship reduced to what I can remember. My memory has never been great. I hope I can forever remember your voice saying my name or “hello beautiful” or “I love you more”.

The new kind of fuchsias I bought opened yesterday! Oh hun, they’re beautiful. I’m not sure they’d be your favorite but they are so unique.

It’s grilling season. It’s soon to be tiki torch season. I want you here more than anything. I crave to see you walk through the front door. Some times, it just feels like you’ve gone on a trip and I’ll see you soon. Then it all crashes down on me at once: you’re never walking through the front door again.

I love you.

Good morning Sunshine,
It’s my birthday today. Yours is in 5 days. Two years ago I convinced you we should go to Chicago, watch baseball, eat good food. Another one of my large plans that you said okay to. Why? You could have said “no” so many times. You rarely did. I had an idea and you always made it seem like the best idea on earth and helped me make it reality. So two years ago we were sitting in Wrigley Field watching some of the coldest damn baseball I have ever watched. Wilson Contreras had the frickin weekend of his life. We got a bobble head. We ate at Low Country which was some of the best damn food we’d ever had ever.

It was the best.

I want to go back. Not to Wrigley. Just to two years ago. Wake up in that Air BnB to you saying “happy birthday beautiful”. To us wondering and finding breakfast biscuit sandwiches. To us snuggling under the overhang hoping the rain delay didn’t turn into a rain reschedule. It didn’t. We bought hot chocolate and beer and hotdogs.

My heart is breaking every day I wake up and you’re not here. Today is especially hard. Your birthday will be absolutely devastating. When they diagnosed you, they said a year. We got 6 weeks. 6 weeks. I thought I’d at least celebrate another birthday, celebrate yours, maybe get another thanksgiving and Christmas in. I thought we would just have more time. I feel robbed and there’s no one to be angry at. So I’m just sad. All the damn time. Crying sporadically. Then I remember how much pain you were in and how uncomfortable you were and I become thankful you aren’t suffering. You were the best person and to suffer should have never been in the cards for you.

I love you.

Good morning Sunshine,
I keep weeding the yard. You would have had it done by now. I think the yard was loved at some point before us. We would have poured so much of ourselves into that yard. I’m pouring all of myself into it. It’s where I feel like I’m near you. Each day I go out I get a bag full of weeds before I call it. I’ve been running the sprinklers and I think we only have a minor leak. I know we were nervous about it when we moved in. I think it’s going to be okay though. I have a temporary fix until the guy gets out here.

I haven’t been able to sleep in our room since you died. I’ve been sleeping on the couch or in the guest room. When you were in the hospital the thing I missed was laying next to you. You used to roll over and hold me. I miss that still but I think I’d give anything to be able to have these conversations with you rather than on a blog.

I feel like the only thing keeping your memory from resting peacefully is all the phone calls I’m still having to make: medical bills, insurance changes, credit card cancelations. There’s no easy button. I wish their was. It’s exhausting having to say you’re dead over and over again. People saying sorry. I just keep trying to wake up every morning and eat. Remind myself to put one foot in front of the other. I don’t want to do this without you, but the dogs need me. Good thing probably, or I’d just sleep every day away. I love you so much. (This is where you’d tell me you love me more if you were here)

Good morning sunshine,
We had plans. We had so many plans.

I don’t have regrets. None. I didn’t have anything left on the table that I had never told you. We lived and loved. We always said what we needed to and wanted to. We had a life together and a love for each other that I felt so lucky to have.

The only plans we didn’t do were things we were planning this year.

In our new home, we had many plans for this place. Garden beds. You were so excited to build them. You’d be so excited. My parents and I built them today. I hope to have a beautiful, bountiful garden in those raised beds. I’ll miss you next to me; pruning, weeding, watering.

I grilled today. Beats and pineapple and it all turned out great. Corn too! God you loved corn. You ate more corn than anyone I’ve ever met. You would have loved this corn, though. It was the best corn I’ve had in a very long time.

I wish you were here so badly. We got such good news from some billing departments. It would have put your mind at ease. I got a great deal on replacing those shitty fence posts and cutting a tree down. You would have liked the guy. He was honest, and fair.

You always used to scold me when I told you to raise your prices for lessons or watch your time more closely. You said that it was okay. You could give a kid or family a break so they could afford to get better. You always said that you got back what you gave, it was all okay. Honey. You must have given a hell of a lot, because I feel like I am receiving on your behalf and I feel like the good is raining down at times.

I cry a lot, but there have been happy tears too. You were a good man. My birthday is coming up, which means so is yours. I had a plan. I had a plan to order Bone Fish to go. It was our favorite place to celebrate. I had plans to a gift you would have loved. I had plans to be with you for the rest of my life.

I’m going to be okay baby. I’m going to make it work.

Good morning sunshine,

Sometimes I lay awake thinking about you. Like right now. It’s 3 am, I can’t sleep.

Tonight, everything I remember seems to be around our kitchen. We spent a lot of time cooking and eating together. You told me once that you didn’t like to eat alone. Me either. Turns out I also don’t really like cooking for just me. I’ve been preparing meals for almost 9 years for the two of us. I’ve been grocery shopping for two of us. Every time I’m at the store, I keep picking up things I think you would like, just like I did when you were alive. I know it hasn’t been long but I wonder if I’ll ever stop shopping for you.
I keep thinking about those times in the kitchen when you were cooking and I would sneak up behind you and squeeze your butt. You’d always chuckle.
And all the things you used to cook for me. Things I’m not sure I can recreate without you. I remember the last time you made salsa and the smell of the roasting tomatoes and onions.

When you were in the hospital and food was not sounding good, you wanted me to cook for you. Some kind of amazing that it was my cooking you wanted. I’ve never been a great cook. Although, even you admitted I had gotten better over the years.

I keep wondering if I’ll ever stop crying. Or will I stop wanting to call you to tell you stories? That’s why I started this. I just want to talk to you again. I want your opinion. Right now I can hear you saying “stop crying, it’s going to be okay”. I never imagined life without you. I’m not sure how it can be okay. I lost my life partner. I told you I didn’t know if I could do this without you that day in the hospital. You looked at me and said “of course you can”. I keep thinking I just want to ask you what to do. What do I do? That day in the hospital when I asked you, you said “stop crying”, so I guess I could start there.

The sprinkler is fucking leaking. Otherwise, the house is doing well. I think we got rid of the raccoon.  The dogs are doing great. Hamilton scratched his neck on something the other day. Crazy mutt. They hate the sprinklers. The first time I turned them on Hamilton got stuck on the other side of the yard from the door because he refused to run through the water. Oh you would have laughed!

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo. I went to our favorite taco place, drank some tequila, and watched Coco (even though that’s about Dia de los Muertos). We normally made tacos and margaritas. I’m not sure if I didn’t have the energy or heart but I just bought food this year. You would have been okay with it, because you love the damn place. I love that we found it together.

I miss you.

Good morning Sunshine,
I lost you two weeks ago.

I used to come down the stairs and greet you in the kitchen with “good morning sunshine” and you’d say “hello beautiful”. I miss coming down and turning the coffee pot on for you and the teapot on for me.

I miss the small things. And the big things.

Today I bought new patio chairs for our new deck we only bought 5 months ago. You had wanted to build planter boxes. It’s okay. I told you I’d be okay and I’m going to hold to that. My dad is coming up to build them for me. We had such plans for this huge yard. You would have been proud of me. I mowed it. I even bought an edger like you wanted. The grass looks great!

We had talked about lilacs and hibiscus plants. I got them and transplanted them. They are growing! The lilacs are even going to bloom this year I think!

Oh man I miss you. I miss picking out dinner or a tv show. I miss laying my head on your chest. I miss hearing your voice.