Last day of the year, 2014.  Remembered as the worst year of my life. The entire year is forever tagged as the year of John’s death. Today I can think of no happy days.  RIP JAC 1992-2014.

I still can’t believe he’s not in Colorado.  Too busy, or somehow unable to be in Mexico with us.  I’ve tried to imagine him here with us, at the end of the table with his brother and his friends, but I really can’t. Maybe there is a slight glimmer of him.  Throwing the football on the beach with Casey and Jamie V. Having drinks in the sunset pool with the gang.  Dos per uno, horra feliz. Overindulging at dinner every night.  But he isn’t here.  His ghost isn’t even here. I can’t picture him here.  He must be in Colorado.  Maybe Colorado is his Heaven.  Maybe that is where I will always imagine him.

I picture him in Boulder.  He is riding his bike with Ally running alongside.  He’s getting ready for work or he’s heading to Japango for some sushi.  His tennis shoes are wet because he wore them in the few inches of snow that fell last night.  He was too lazy to look for his boots.

Missing him hurts.  But the pain is something I can feel.  It connects me to him and helps me remember him.  It keeps him here with me.  Forgetting him is worse. No mention of him creates a vacuum where I wonder if he ever existed.  Was his existence a long dream that is already fading? I think of the movie Back to the Future, when, if things were changed in the past, it altered the present and the person effected began to pixelate and gradually disintegrated away.  I don’t want John to pixelate or disintegrate away.

It’s all hard. Recently, there have been gatherings, first encounters, where he hasn’t been mentioned. His loss not acknowledged.  His absence denied.  Well meaning loved ones must somehow assume that no mention of John is protecting me, preventing me from remembering that he is dead.  Cheerful greetings and lively accounts of meaningless events are pushed to the front, creating a cushion, a protective barrier from any mention of him.  The toxic pain of his absence.  No eye contact with my grief.

I appreciate the friends and family who unblinkingly face their discomfort and my pain to ask the intimate and difficult questions. Those who bring him up.  We can discuss the larger life issues of love and loss, beauty and pain, altered futures, changed family structure.  We talk about the ghost in the chair at our table, the empty seat in the car, the unused airplane ticket.  It is a comfort to me to be able to process this with people who love me, who loved John.  Those who are “all in” with me.

I refuse to forget him.  Remember with me. Cry with me.   I would like to believe that is what will get me through.