The Haunting.

Babes, It is Halloween and I've made plans. I make future plans like in the future I'll be excited for them, only the future comes and I'm not. Sometimes I cancel, I try not too. Either way is brutal. Tonight I will read a poem at an art exhibit's open evening. It is odd to me, this poem only exists because you don't. It came through me in an effort to make sense of this, to somehow find a way out of the pain.

I am sadly realizing that this will be a very long process. I guess some part of me thought one day I'd be over it and be fine. Only now I am not sure. It is no better than that hellish night I found out. Only in those early moments massive confusion dulled the sensation. A primal blend of dissociation and shock took the edge off. I am no more at peace with your death today than I was that first day and it hurts like hell.

Like I am possessed. The pain eating me from the inside, the anger thrashing around deep down, and sometimes when I cry it feels like an exorcism, as though there were literally something forcing itself from my soul. I grab at my heart and lay in the fetal position at its mercy until it moves through.

Babes, I feel like there is a part of me that could make peace with this, but most of the time I’m missing the mark. Two years ago we went as dead people for Halloween. Not so cute now…now most representations of death send me right back to the moment I was alone with your body. The scariest thing I have ever done. I had absolutely no idea what it was going to be like, I didn't even know enough to know to be scared going in. My Dad went and saw you first, when he came out he said to me, Chels, it's ok. He looks good.

I had picked out your outfit. Black golf shorts and a blue golf shirt. Nothing could have prepared me for walking into a room and seeing you like that. Opening the door and seeing you there, I was so scared. Your body didn't look quite right. Like the wax statues, they sort of look alive but the mind knows something is a bit off. Honestly babe I kind of thought you were just going to pop up and scare me. You looked like you but not, I couldn’t make any sense of what I was seeing. Only 3 days before that you were so alive. Then there you were, your nail beds and the corners of your lips bluish, and you were still wearing your bracelet. Mine is still on to this day.

Rene, my Dad was right, all considering you did look good, but I knew there was no trace of you in that rigid cold body. I read you a letter I had wrote, but the whole time I was speaking to your lifeless body I knew you weren't there. You, no longer of the body. Now I get flashbacks to that, the most scary experience of my life.

For Halloween this year I'm going as a witch. The perfect costume really, my disdain for happy people can be masked,  'in character'. Yea I know, our friends are really lucky to have me around right now.

Rene I'm not doing well without you. Into year two and I don't feel like I am any further along. Your missing from me has created a void so big I get lost in it. I am now haunted by the life that once was.

Babes, come visit, haunt us, and help me with my witchcraft tonight.

Xoxo Loving you