A year has passed.

Your sisters miss you too, babe.

Hello love,

A year has passed since we lost you to Cancer.  This has been the single hardest year of my life.  Not having you around has been terrible.  It’s been hard on all of us really.

I wonder if your spirit remains, or if it has moved on.  I wonder if we will ever get to see one another again.  Will we be able to share our experiences?  Because even with the progress I have made, not being able to share my experiences with you has been so very hard.

Your family still loves and misses you.  You will be happy to know that your sisters have adopted me as their brother, and I really couldn’t have asked for more supportive inlaws during this process.

I’ve spent most of the year trying to recover from the shock mostly.  This is really the first time I’ve been alone.  Remember our first apartment in Flushing?  It was the first time either of us moved from home.  We were engaged for a year.  We first made love as man and wife there.  I finished my graduate school classes online from that apartment.

And our apartment in Weehawken.  It was supposed to be the last apartment before buying a house.  Now, I’m moving soon.  Back to Brooklyn.  This apartment just isn’t home without you anymore.  We stayed here for so long because it was convenient.  But it was always supposed to be temporary.  I didn’t think my next step would be in reverse though, but I’m lost.  I need to go back to where I came from and find myself again.

You’d like the new neighborhood I’m moving into.  It is a real neighborhood, just far enough away from the trains that things are more or less quiet, but still very close to everything.

I thought after taking care of you that I wouldn’t want kids, but it turns out I’m terrified of giving up that chance.  But I’m not yet ready to just jump into things.  I want to heal some more.  Hopefully, moving to this new apartment will provide new opportunities to do just that.

I really wish I could tell you all of this in person.  I wish there was some way to talk to my best friend again.  Moreso than anything, losing my partner in crime has been so terribly hard.

I am unsure if I believe in God.  But I hope and pray that there is more to this life.  That you are out there somewhere free from Cancer and exploring things I couldn’t begin to understand.  I hope you feel my love for you in this letter, and that you know that your memory remains strong with me.

You above anyone else helped make me the person I am today.  It was an honor and a privilege to be your husband.  I hope you are out there somewhere, and that the love and emotion I feel right now while writing this letter is reaching you.

I wish we had more time.  I really believe we would have been one of those old couples that still love one another.  But we just didn’t get it.

I know I am rambling, but words are insufficient to express how I feel.  Just know that I miss you, and I am grateful for you having been in my life.  I miss you, and I hope that you are out there somewhere, waiting for me.

Mahal Kita.