Dear Chris,
Magnus still loves Buzz Lightyear & runs around with his arms reaching back like Buzz’s wings and says “space ranger!” and “to infinity & beyond!”.
I’m daunted by the task of not only raising him without you, his father, but also the task of telling him who his father was, and how much he loved him.
I’m listening to the Bill Callahan station on our Pandora and it’s mixing in stuff I don’t want. I want stripped bare Bill Callahan, not poppy Postal Service.
Magnus tells me he misses you. I tell him I miss you too. He asks me why I cry and I say because I’m sad and he says he’s sad too. I tell him it’s ok to be sad. He asks why you died and I tell him you had leukemia and he asks what that is and I tell him. He asks why you got leukemia and I say I don’t know.
I’ve slept every night since you died with the blanket that covered you in your last weeks and your last breath. I remember tucking you in before I would leave the hospital and it would make you feel better.
The words to describe the void escape me. My sorrow and grief can feel like a shadow that lurks just behind, a shadow I could fall and fall and fall into. Or maybe more a black space cut jaggedly and abrasively from the landscape of my life that I can’t look directly at yet.
Magnus’ counselor told me that even tho many people will say it, time does not heal all wounds. Time will just change the wound. Magnus will always have to figure out how to deal with your death and your absence from his life, as will I. But I knew you for so much longer than he got to have with you.
We’re going to move back to Kansas and I will go back to school and study my beloved physics and math. And because of the money you put into your social security when you worked Magnus and I are going to be just fine with money to pay for the cost of living. You fretted those things and you don’t have to baby, you don’t have to.
Angie and Brian came to visit. They had hoped to see you. They didn’t get to see you with our son.
I can’t write anymore baby. It’s too raw and I need to sleep.
du bist immer schwarz
love,
boks
ad astra per aspera 