I Swear You Will Be Fine

Dear Josh,

It was April Fool’s Day yesterday. One year ago yesterday, I started writing on this blog. You might have to check the facts and do the math for me because it might have been more than 365 days ago. What would we have done for this year’s April Fool’s? I think we would have done small, harmless pranks on each other. Though I would say we do that quite frequently. Like when I told you that all TADA drivers say “Tadaaaa!!!” at the start of every ride. Or when I asked you to guess the uses of “girl things” and then pretended everything you said was right. You rolled your eyes when I told you that you got them all wrong, but you did find that quite amusing. It really tickled you when you did it back to me – made me guess the uses of “boy things” and pretended I got them all right – because I genuinely thought I was guessing everything correctly. When you told me I’d been completely wrong and I gasped, you said, “You just did the exact same thing to me!!! Why would you not catch on?”

We might have played a small harmless prank on your family too. We all know you can say the funniest things sometimes – things that I dare not repeat on this blog. It really would have been fun. We really had some good laughs, didn’t we? Remember when I showed you this couple gymnastics exercise thing that looked really easy and then made us try it? I don’t know if I can describe it well, but the guy was supposed to pull the girl up from the ground and it would end in a really cool pose. We got the dogs out of your room to try this. You were holding onto my foot and I was lying on the floor – this position already made us laugh so much my stomach hurt. When you started pulling me, instead of rising up coolly like the girl in the video, I just got dragged on the floor – which also made us laugh. We had to take pauses in between to catch our breath because of how hard we were laughing. We gave up eventually – you kept telling me to use my abs to pull myself up, or crunch and rise up, and I just couldn’t. The laughing also made it extra hard to concentrate.

I worry that I will forget things about us, about you. I worry that new memories will take over our memories. It’s conflicting because some say that that’s how memory works – the new replaces the old – and some say everything you’ve heard and seen is retained in your brain, you just have to access it. I’m hoping it’s the latter but I fear it might be the former. It’s not difficult to relive a memory we have, but sometimes I trip up and say “last year” when I really mean “two years ago”. We already physically lost you last year, but I forget that. I think I just blocked out the whole of last year. I wrote a line in my little notebook the other day that said “I will remember you longer than I will know you”.

I think that’s how grief works. Although it is dependent on how long you live and how long you’ve known the person, you will likely remember the person you lost for longer than you’ve known them. What a sad thought – that you will be living in my memory longer than you will live beside me. I wish it was the other way around. I wish it wasn’t any way around. I wish that we got to live together for so long that we wouldn’t be without each other at all. I’ve read of old couples who passed soon after each other. How lucky that they get to live with each other for so long.

A lot of people say that being with someone is a choice you have to actively take and it’s a lot of work. I agree, but many don’t talk about the luck involved too. They say it’s not luck. I beg to differ. They’re lucky they’re both alive, that they both have time.

I miss you very much. I don’t blame you for many things but I do feel upset at you for one thing – leaving me to deal with things we should be dealing with together. How are you not here to listen to me rant about someone we both know? Just know that I will keep ranting and I hope you’re ready because when we meet again, I’m going to need to hear your opinions. Write ‘em all down so you don’t forget!

I can’t wait to see you again. I love you more, always, and forever.

Love always,
Sha