my wedding anniversary

"once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale." ~ anonymous

it's August 11th, my love. our anniversary. we always started it in each others arms so today is already a harsh jolt. i am alone.

i'd sit and watch you make breakfast for me. no breakfast in bed for then i wouldn't be able to watch you cook. we would talk or plan what we wanted to do with our day. i'd watch you, clean up a bit after you to help, but for the most part you wanted to wait on me. i got my own breakfast this morning, as i do every morning since you died.

on our anniversary we'd plan a long walk, whether through the woods, down on the beach, or across the rocks and cliffs high above the ocean, we walked. you'd find rocks, leaves, wildflowers, shells and sometimes the miracle sand dollar that is so difficult to find. we won't find anything together today. i'm not going anywhere today.

supper would be a repeat of breakfast. tonight, i can't think that far. i don't know what i'll do here alone tonight.

and after supper we always sat together and remembered our wedding vows. we'd get our saved little papers and read them again to each other. my vows were for the promise of my hand, my heart, and my thoughts, my whole life. i also promised you one more thing.

"all these things are mortal so i promise you one more thing. i promise to give my soul to you so that you are not alone. never alone."

you told me you were never good with words but, my dear, you were so very often better than i ever could hope to be. my writing is flowery, lyrical. yours is to the point and oh, so heartfelt. your vows to me were: "i love you. i want you. you are my whole world. i thought of you as mine the moment i saw you and held my breath until i saw myself in your eyes. i'll never leave you. i'll always be with you because i'll always want to be with you. you are the woman of my dreams, the one i've been waiting for. and now, i may call you what i've wanted to call you since the day we were introduced and have longed to say. wife."

you would gift me with a story from your secret past, speaking to the danger and adrenalin rush. you would see how in awe i am of you and shake your head and laugh. i'd tell you no spy novel could be better written than the story of your life. john le Carre would be envious of what you've seen and know.

then it would be my turn. i'd give you a book i'd written. a small thing, always a short story. the continuing tale of the Dragon and the womanNshadows, of their love and how a fairy tale could not speak to such a marriage. of how Shakespeare could only come close to describing the depth of our love.

i have kept them all. i haven't been able to read them and i doubt it would be good for me to do so today. it would be akin to a howitzer to the heart. but i took a photo of a few of them to post with my note to you. i couldn't let our anniversary go by without a bit of a story about us. it's too deeply ingrained. you deserve to have your memory honored, the story of our love and marriage told over and over. you deserve only the best because you are the best.

that you died did not mean you broke your promise to never leave me. my love for you is such that even the deep and abiding grief i feel could not tarnish it with anger towards you. you didn't want to go. you were taken from me.

i love you, Dragon. i miss you so terribly that the physical ache threatens to bring me to my knees with my head in the dirt. i may stop moving forward with any noticeable speed, but i'll never stop loving you, thinking only of you, or waiting for you. i may have been your world but you were my whole life.

happy anniversary, my Dragon. i'm alone and longing for you. loving you. unfaltering.