Happy Birthday, Darlin'

Dear Allan,

Happy birthday, sweetheart. I find it easier to write to you rather than about you, though even you'd find it strange that I would write a letter to eyes that would never see it. However, you, better than anyone else, knew I was a few cards short of a full deck, so it should come as no surprise. You loved me unflinchingly, without reservation, and fully accepting of all my flaws. I miss you every day. You knew I would.

You should be 23 today. Instead, you are forever 20. I remember wandering around a drugstore with you one day of that glorious summer we spent together, waiting for your prescriptions to be filled. You had found some trick candles in the birthday card section, laughed, and remarked on how cruel it would be to put them on the cake of someone with a lung illness. I donned my most evil grin and told you that you shouldn't be giving me any ideas.

It didn't even cross my mind that you might not make it to that day. I never got to spend one of your birthdays with you. I am sorry. I've been without you now longer than I was ever with you, and on occasion it hits me--we were given so little time. Yet you have been the greatest influence in my life. The little time we were allotted--though I would have loved to have had much, much more--doesn't matter. We lived and loved a lifetime in those 18 months.

You wrote that you worried that it may have been better if I had never known you at all. I hope you heard me, those last few days of your life, when I told you over and over that I was so glad to have known you and grateful that you had come into my life. You knew you were everything to me, and that I'd be devastated. But when I mourn, I mourn the loss of the most wonderful person I have ever known.

To quote one of the famous poems that you had loved, and had IM'ed to Hannah (but which I have just recently rediscovered):

A Reminiscence

Yes, thou art gone! and never more
Thy sunny smile shall gladden me;
But I may pass the old church door,
And pace the floor that covers thee.

May stand upon the cold, damp stone,
And think that, frozen, lies below
The lightest heart that I have known,
The kindest I shall ever know.

Yet, though I cannot see thee more,
'Tis still a comfort to have seen;
And though thy transient life is o'er,
'Tis sweet to think that thou hast been.

To think a soul so near divine,
Within a form so angel fair,
United to a heart like thine,
Has gladdened once our humble sphere.

--Anne Bronte

I miss you and love you. You'll always mean the world to me. I wish you were here, gorging on cake. I'll try to do what you asked, and live for both of us. Sometimes I feel as though I'm not doing a very good job, but I'll keep trying. You made your life spectacular, and in your honor I'll try to do the same.

Happy birthday.