Sunflowers Are My Favorite

We’re driving down the road just me and you like we always do. Did. You keep looking at me but don’t ever say a word. We pass the little gas station in Hamburg with yellow pumps all rusted and the most expensive gas in the whole state. You’re the one driving but you keep staring at me. I’m holding the tool of chaos, an instrument of death, one that defeated my soul. I’ve never been diabetic. It’s just what I said at Rite Aid to get the necessary evil from behind the pharmacy desk.

I look down and I see the poison inside, brown like muddy water; ready to bring me to my knees again. The same demon that took you away. The thing that took you away from me and our kids forever, and if I were awake, I’d be lying here all alone, praying to fall back to sleep to see your face for

just one more second.

And we’re driving. I’m trying to get high, and I can’t because my brain won’t talk to my arms, my arms to my hands, they just won’t move. I’m thinking and commanding every neuron to move but they just will not move. It was like your enchanting blue eyes were shooting out laser beams stopping me. I’m unable to react, unable to perform the movements required to do this thing that I haven’t done in almost a decade, the thing that held me down,

rendered me far more immobile than your laser-beam eyes.

But right now, we’re just driving and you’re just looking at me in a way that no one has looked at me since the day you left this Earth. You know me better than anyone ever will. You know better, I’m not religious, I think it’s all bull shit, but I hope I’m wrong.

I really hope I’m wrong and Heaven is real, and God is real, and Angels are real.

I hope it’s like an airport when I finally make it there and it will be you waiting with my name on a posterboard, sunflowers in hand. Only you know I hate roses. You’re the only one who knows sunflowers are my favorite and you’re the only one who has ever cared about me enough to even ask. And God (if there is a God) do I miss you. But tonight, we are driving in this perfect dream, and I’ll never forget those eyes.

Or those highs.

And here in the car while you visit me in my dreams, giving me the strength to wake up, letting me know I’ll never be alone, I feel just like I felt when you were alive and healthy, happy, and content. And just like I always did when you were here, I succeed. I succeed in not setting off an earthquake or opening Pandora’s box. I succeed in saying no. I bear the pain. I don’t numb no matter how many times my mind wanders.

And it’s all because of those blue eyes.

We’re on a hill. We’re walking with bikes. I look up, the hill is so steep it looks like we’re going straight to Heaven. Every step takes every ounce of strength I have, my muscles are burning like acid, my bones cracking and grinding under the intense pressure. The bike seemed like a crutch at first, but ended up adding to the weight, the pressure. It just added more baggage to try to drag to the top.

I stop.

Your crystal eyes are still locked onto me but now you’re smiling. You know I understand, now, why we are here. That smile when you watched me think, you always thought I was cute when I was deep in thought. You said you could see in my face when the lightbulb had turned on, an epiphany, the answer popped up. You were smiling and my God (if there is a God) do I miss you and that damn smile. I love that smile; you shared it with our son. I still see you every day.

So, I stop.

I look at you and say, “I can’t do this again! It’s too hard! I cannot do this again! I can’t go through that again!” Big, beautiful blue eyes. Heart-melting smile, shared between father and son. You look at me, so deeply because you know my soul and you see me, you always have. You finally speak and you say-

“Then don’t.”

And I haven’t. And I won’t. Intense power flowed through those two words. Two simple words attached to a war that almost no one wins. I keep winning because winning is my only option.

Because I still see you. I see you every day on the faces of our children. And when I get to the airport in Heaven, I will see you, and hold you, and be with you again. Until then,

I will still see you. Every. Day.