I wrote another letter to Danielle today.
Merry Christmas, my love.
It’s been way longer than I intended since I last wrote to you. I kinda feel like I just need the day with nothing else going on to devote to writing, because it can be an emotional rollercoaster. I had actually taken a day off work for my birthday, but then Torin was sick and had to stay home that day, so I was busy being a daddy instead.
Anyways, I miss you. It’s the little things that are hitting me now. The other week, I activated a free few months of satellite radio that I got from having Stevahn serviced at the dealership, and hearing 90s music made me think of listening to music with you, and I cried the whole way home from my parents’. And just yesterday, I went to pick up the Doat from Pet Supplies Plus where my mom had dropped him off to get groomed, and the last time I’d been there was when you and I were taking him there for puppy school, and I had to pull myself together before walking in.
Not all car-related remembrances are hard, though. Sometimes while I’m driving, I reach my hand over the center console as if I can hold your hand, like we always would do. And it’s… nice. It makes me happy and sad at the same time.
Halloween and Christmas are your two favorites, and they’ve been hard to celebrate without you. But it warmed my heart to see Torin really get into the decorations and things that you enjoyed. He loooved Halloween, especially ghosts (and he can spell “BOO”!), and Christmas lights might be even higher on his list.
My parents helped us set up the tree. I’ve never been big on tree decorating, as you’ll recall, but for the first time ever, it felt very important. I found all your sentimental ornaments, the ones you had kept aside for the small tree a couple years ago so that the big tree could have a consistent aesthetic, and those are all I cared about decorating with.
Torin and I took a trip up north last weekend to see your parents and have an early Christmas with them. He did really well in the car, which I had been stressing about, and he had a great time at Meema’s and then Grandpa’s. We’ll keep taking trips up on occasion. In addition to the obvious - seeing his grandparents - I look forward to showing him all your old stomping grounds. I want him to know you, even the you from before we met. He’ll get a kick out of Old Face-full!
I’m gonna switch gears a bit. I want to talk about some things that have been weighing on me lately, things that I wish had been different. I’ve always told you that I have no regrets regarding our life together, even knowing early on that you had been sick and would very likely someday get sick again, and that is absolutely true and always will be. It’s not anything I did do that I regret, but what I didn’t.
I wish I had spoken more openly with you about your fears, about what it was like for you to go through this. I know you spent some of those late nights in that last year after I’d gone to bed crying. I asked you to share with me instead, but I never pressed the issue and I should have. You accepted the likelihood of what eventually happened long, long before I ever did - had done so eleven years earlier, in fact. My… naïveté? Blind optimism? Call it what you will, but in a way, it left you alone. When reality struck in a way not even I could ignore, your strength in the face of it is what kept the rest of us strong too. I am in awe of you.
I wish I had struck a better work-life balance. For most of the year+ you were sick, I was working at a job that frustrated the hell out of me, but I was still giving it my all and working long hours. Sure, those hours were on the couch in the same room as Torin and you, but it’s not the same as being with you. And what do I have to show for it? I guess they gave me a $1000 Grubhub gift card when I left as thanks for my hard work, but that hardly compares with time I could have spent with you. Nowadays, I don’t have a choice - there aren’t enough hours in the day. I get Torin to daycare around 9:00am, and I pick him up around 5:20pm. And in those hours, I still need to walk the dog, eat lunch, take care of random life business, and occasionally take a nap - and I’m still considered highly productive.
I wish I had gone out of my way to do more trips or have more quality family time. Yes, we were paralyzed with fear and indecision due to COVID and what it could do to your compromised immune system. But your treatments were on a somewhat predictable schedule, and we could have figured something out. We took that little trip in September, after all - imagine if we’d been doing that all summer! Such a wasted opportunity. And I blame myself: I don’t like trip planning, and I get frustrated easily when doing things I don’t like, so I didn’t try very hard. You do like planning, and if you had my support and efforts, I think we could have found more things that weren’t too far away that felt safe for you, COVID-wise. But even all that aside? We could have done more to have more quality experiences at home. But you felt like crap all the time, so this is on me - I should have been going out of my way to, I dunno, set up dinners that were fancier than take-out-on-the-couch.
I wish I had watched Deadpool with you. This is a small thing, but it still bothers me. Once your downturn began, things were changing very quickly, with a lot of stress, so there’s not much I can beat myself up about… except this. It was very early on - you had trouble with stability when walking, but nothing else - and I had no idea how quickly things would be progressing. You asked your dear hubband to watch a silly movie with you, and he declined, ‘cuz he had seen it before, and he was in the other room playing a videogame or something. What an asshole. And to think… only a few weeks later, he came to the conclusion that every moment you were awake was a moment he was by your side. Hey jerk! (Me, I’m the jerk.) When your dying wife, no matter how many months you think she has left at the time, asks you to <insert activity here> with her, do it! At least I watched the sequel with you the next day…
I wish I had taken more videos of you and Torin. You sang “You Are My Sunshine” to him every single night before bed while holding him to your chest, and it was the sweetest thing ever, and I never got a video. I never recorded anything for the express purpose of having to show Torin when you were gone, because that would be (emotionally) hard, and I tend not to do things that are hard until I have to. The Goodnight video that I play for him every night is absolutely beautiful, but I would guess that, all things being equal, you’d rather it be a healthy (or healthier) Mama singing to him rather than a very sick Mama.
The common thread among these wishes is that all of them stem from me trying really hard to carry on with life as normal, with your illness as just a hurdle to overcome. This was a defense mechanism, of course, as was my exceedingly high hopefulness - especially early on. (Gosh, I remember getting flustered when I heard you describe yourself as “terminally ill” to someone, because I didn’t think you should consider yourself that. Wowza.) There’s nothing wrong with having hope - in fact, I think it’s essential. But it needs to be tempered with realism. Bets must be hedged.
Going above and beyond the norm to make our time together count would have felt like I was acknowledging that I was going to lose you, and I just wasn’t ready to do that. That’s the long and short of it. I guess what I’m trying to say is… I’m sorry. I am so, so, so sorry, Danielle. I could have been better, and I wasn’t, and there’s nothing I can ever do to make it up to you. I can only promise that I won’t make the same mistakes with Torin. I don’t mean if he gets sick - I mean getting complacent or taking him for granted as he grows up, up, up before my eyes.
One last thing I want to mention. Throughout the years, you’ve brought up the high probability that you wouldn’t be around as long as me, and how that might affect this or that. My usual response was to joke that you were on the hook for fifty years. This, of course, was another defense mechanism, which can be lumped in with my first wish. I just want you to know that I did internalize it, though, even if I didn’t have the strength to talk about it like you. I’ve thought about it a lot, throughout the years. I decided early on that having a child with you was of the utmost importance for this reason, even though I didn’t muster the courage to tell you this until years later, and even then, only through tears.
People tell me I’m coping well, all things considered, and I think I am too. It’s only because you prepared me, gently, with tiny nudges, all throughout our life together. I will continue to raise our son, who will keep you with me all my life… This was always the plan for if/when you got sick again. It just happened much, much sooner than I thought.
I love you. I love you I love you I love you.
-Aaron
Perfect!☺️
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