Our Honeymoon and Your Honda S2000

Dear Honey,

Well, going through your stuff was a major fail, or perhaps it was just part of the whole miserable grief thing. It started simply enough, I'm trying to get the studio in some semblance of order so I can paint and write. As it is now there are piles of boxes of family paraphernalia that are cluttering the open space because of the water damage to the storage, cork flooring tiles are pulled up and there is an actual mushroom bloom going on, boxes of new flooring are piled where I normally paint. Your desk got moved about and cables became disconnected and odds and ends that you were getting ready to sell or were for projects you were working on are all over the place. It's really disturbing my sense of calm and order—not to mention that I can no longer turn to see you working alongside me.

My thought was that Lisa, who is so good at this and such a wonderful best friend, could help me organize it all. We could go through some of your books on physics, math, writings on or by various geniuses - your two favorites Amela Earhart and Albert Einstein, coding, music theory, etc. to donate some and give some of the math books to Sarah as she and you shared that love. We were marveling over the books you read and the level of your genius. However we didn't get too far in when I shared with Lisa a patent you had authored a few years ago on color. You and I had loved talking color theory. It was then that Lisa found that you had saved all the travel documents from our honeymoon. The overwhelming realization of all I've lost in losing you felt like all the books dropped on top of me. 

It doesn't feel fair at all. You were such a humble genius, full of energy and vigor, with a joyful, playful, loving spirit. Why did you have to die so young? Why do I have to go through my life without you? What is the sense in that?

Lisa packed up the books for me, made me lunch, and we went for a walk instead. Just after she left, the jeweler called to say that the gold chain that you and I had bought for you on our honeymoon in Italy was repaired. It was a week early. All day I was filled with the memories of our hope and our love and my loss.

It seems to me that I've entered a new, darker place in my grief. I mean, I cared for you when you were dying, I held you as your heart stopped, I bathed and dressed you for your cremation. Along with our family, I planned your funeral service and spent that week in Rochester in a daze as we placed you beneath my parents in our tomb. I know you are dead but somehow this week, I'm coming to terms with the actuality that you will never ever return to me and my life will never ever be the same.

A bit ago, Lisa helped me clean out and organize the garage. My one intention was to bring your red Honda S2000 home from storage at Greg and Toni's. Normally we would store it there for the winter and retrieve in the spring. We'd take it for starlit drives, to the State Fair, and on vacations even up to Quebec City on a whim. You loved that little car. I didn't realize how lucky I was.

When we first started dating, you would travel to Vermont in a beat-up old Camry. One time I went to Rochester instead and you picked me up in the Honda which I've now come to realize was only a year old then. I teased you as I never was a car person, and I said that if we had started dating in that car, I wouldn't have fallen for you. That's not true of course as you had always loved little sports cars like that. I still remember you as a teen with your MG. I've enjoyed your road rally stories many times. It's all part of who you are—an engineer with a love of mechanics, design, and the open road.

So naturally when we got married in July, it was the little red Honda that we drove away in to begin our honeymoon.

Because it had been in storage so long due to your decline this spring and death this summer, the car needed a new battery, an inspection, and a few other odds and ends. Today I got the car throughly cleaned including the engine by Matt's Wash and Wax as I know mice had gotten into it during its extended hiatus. They just returned it. 

It's beautiful.

It's breaking my heart. 

I can't sell it because it's so embodies you. I hardly know how to drive it as it's a precision, one of a kind sort of car. Snow is expected tomorrow, so not a time to take it out anyway.

The thing is, I just want you in it, you driving us to some magical adventure together. Our life together was a magical adventure. Now it is all over. I don't know anymore who I am or how I'll go on. The younger woman in these pictures was beyond happy to be your wife. I don't know if she'll ever be happy again. Who will she be now without you? How will she get there? I am just beginning to realize the extent of my losses: of you, of our expectations and dreams, of our life together, and who I was. God, I hope I can make it.