Dining for brinner. {letter edition}

Tonight we ate at Denny's because you loved brinner and we've been missing you extra. You know how much I hate brinner. How I hate that for days I feel like we smell of syrup and breakfast sausage. It drove you crazy that I hated breakfast food so much and it drove me crazy that you loved it so much. As you know, we fa-real fought about it. Such stupid fights we had. Stupid.

I said this from the beginning, I can't believe how much Kaleb has changed since you've been gone. For some reason, it's been weighing on me for weeks and tonight, watching him eat his pancakes with his over-sized toddler hands (that match yours to a tee), made it reality for me again.

Everytime he's coming up with his crazy shenangins and saying stuff like, BuzzLightYear is cool like me with 1 arm, I just can't fucking believe he was so little when you left us. Charles, he's like a grown damn kid. He's showering completely alone. Start to finish, this kid is showering like a man. Adjusting water temps, lathering up, washing his feet, his neck, his hiney, his hair, he does it all. Twice. Exactly how you did. He lathers and rinses twice. Are you hearing me?! Are you watching us live this life?? Because I look over at Kaleb taking his shower, and as he's doing it identical to how you did it, I wanna fall apart. Can you see that? Can you see how hard this is at times? Can you see me drowning, wondering if I'm fucking this up?

Not every day, not even every week is hard. Infact, we have more better times than hard, by far. But the hard times, babe, they are so rough. It's like, easy...laughs...smiles...easy...silver linings..easy...then BAM, bathroom floor tears...sleepless nights...24hr puffy eyes...doubts...questions...bathroom floor tears...then I end up here. Thank God I end up here and I'm decent with words and there are friends that listen and pray. Thank God for the friends we had when we were married because they tend to scrape me up from the bottom. Thank God for all of that. Without that, I'm certain I'd be living in the liquor store, or worse. And I'm not even kidding.

Why is it like this? Why is grieving so hard? I wish you could come visit me for 30 minutes. I need to talk to you for just 30 minutes. Of course Id want it to be longer but I try not to be greedy. I think 30 minutes would help. Probably just wishful thinking though. There's no way I'd be better after 30 minutes. See how I'm a mess? See what brinner did to me? I hate brinner.

I wanna hate you for not being here but then I see our 3yr old showering and I know you are here. Seeing you like that is so hard sometimes, but I'd rather see that, then nothing at all.

Please keep coming around in those ways and we'll keep dining for brinner every now and then. For you. For you we'll eat brinner and smell of syrup.