Loss - Journaling Junkie challenge 78

Stefanie at http://journalingjunkie.blogspot.com has posted challenge 78, which is to do a LO focusing on grief or loss. Although I finished this LO a while ago, Stefanie was kind enough to let me enter it into the challenge. I am currently working on a memorial album of my husband, Rick, who died unexpectedly on September 18, 2009. He was just 38 years old. The challenge runs until May 1, I think (don't quote me...I suck at dates), for any of you who are interested in entering.


The journaling is long and has a bunch of private jokes in it, but if you want to read it, here it is:
Over the last four months, I've discovered that the loss of the little things is so much harder to process than the "big picture" ideas. It's the little day-to-day things that hit harder. You know, the little intimacies that are private and exclusive to who you are as a couple, to that relationship as not only husband and wife, but best friends. Things like: the feel of your skin under my hand when I touched your face, as I did several times each day; Gina speak; "boo!" "kitty!"; rubbing my hand through your hair; teasing you about your cute pj's; listening to you breathe beside me in bed each night; your occasional night terrors; waiting what felt like forever for you to finish your shower; that expectant look whenever you made us something new for dinner; your perfectionistic tendencies (over an hour to hang a few pictures? Really?!?); watching you fall asleep sitting up, then deny it; "Which way? Right or left?"; the way you closed your eyes whenever I put the car in reverse; "Do we have time?"; your love of British TV, the history channel, and Hogan's Heroes; listening to you laugh like a loon at Hogan's Heroes in German; anxious repetition of the same darned stuff; the look of concentration on your face when you were futzing about in the war room; your practical jokes; feeling your arms come around me when I was washing the dishes; "Could you use this for your scrapbook?"; "Hey, ooo! How is?"; "It's Rick's world."; your chicken peck typing; singing Sound of Music songs just to get on my nerves; your horrible timing; your inability to "say anything right"; gorilla cheeses; "Go ahead, be a mommy's girl!"; listening to your conversations with Athena each morning; the sound of your shaver; insisting on fixing things yourself; your total inability to judge time (30 minutes v. 3 hours!); crazy bike rides to God only knows where; you wash, I dry; "Honey, the cat licked my ice!" and other whiny sick bed complaints; my filter; "honey, where's our water?"; the smell of Dunkin' Donuts coffee; missions!; reading oh-so-boring educational materials to you in the car; your patience; your goofy sense of humor; we "acquire"; tighty-whities; the scar on your back that you refused to call a scar; hearing you dress in the dark each morning; forehead kisses and quick pecks; jewelry and Steiff for me, tools and WW2 for you; you unload, I put the groceries away; Gina's hair is everywhere; lit candles; cuckoo clock upkeep and repair; your insistence that I get what I want, but then your resistance to buy what you wanted; "I hear it calling you!"; the search for new members in the land of the misfit Steiff; messages from ebay; laughing at the butt songs; the "sexy" dance; rewriting history and rose-tinted glasses; "ooh...it's silky"; the way you'd laugh while telling a story that wasn't even remotely funny; "The iceberg sunk the Titanic!"; your absolute refusal to tell me what I said after you proposed; game pie; hoarding gifts; no bears left behind; definitely; your tendency to let me win and then play it off like you hadn't; "let me think about it....no."; innovative solutions to the strangest problems; chocolate cat prints and other kitty gifts; 831; how you always took in and tolerated even the most annoying people; the look on your face when we argued; different shades of blue; lists for everything; little things you'd pick up for me here and there, just because; your laugh...there are so many more things to list, but these are the first that cross my mind as I think about our daily lives. My life will never be the same without you. It, and I, are forever changed.