The Aftermath

Nowadays, when people ask me how I'm doing, I no longer answer them with the standard, "Fine thanks, and you?" that I'd been doling out for the past 30 plus years and instead, give my new stock answer of: "We're doing as well as can be expected thanks, just taking it one day at a time."

Which is true in some sense, and total bullshit in another.

We ARE doing as well as one would reasonably expect, in that, I still wake up every morning, workout, get my daughter's breakfast together and get us dressed before taking her to the park, museum, movies or wherever else she may want to go that day. We still laugh together every night while watching Liv and Maddie; Amira still makes "experiments" out of old, about-to-be-discarded food that she finds in the back of the fridge; and she still cheats her ass off during Uno, sneaking Draw Fours out of the deck while I look the other way and pretend not to notice. We say our prayers at bedtime and tell Lorenzo how much we love him and then we go to sleep.

We are functioning well I think. We are hanging in there.

We talk about our feelings. We talk about how much we miss him. We listen to his favorite songs, we point out Highlanders on the street, we share our favorite memories: Lorenzo playing Madden on the elliptical to make the time go faster, Lorenzo and Amira singing 2 Chainz together at the the tops of their lungs, Lorenzo proclaiming that he'd never change another dirty diaper after baby Amira got poop all over him on one of the rare times I left her solely in his care. We're doing well, and that IS the truth. But the other truth is that on most days, I'm so preoccupied, so easily distracted, I spend countless minutes trying to locate lost cell phones, lost house keys and lost whatever else I just had my hands on and now has seemingly disappeared in the blink of an eye. There are days (like yesterday) when Amira will climb onto my lap and say that she misses Daddy so much, she wishes he could come down from heaven, just for a little while, just to visit her before he has to go again. There are days when I go down to the basement, to his theater, and sit in darkness on one of the plush leather recliners because the theater is where I can feel his presence the most. There are days, moments really, when I wish I didn't have to get off of the couch. Moments when I wonder what comes next, what I'm supposed to do with my life now because ALL of my plans died with Lorenzo. For better or worse. In good times and bad, he was always here. Here to help me figure shit out. Here to listen. Here even when he was getting on my nerves and I wished he'd take his ass downstairs and put on the game or something. Lorenzo was always, ALWAYS here. Now that he's not, I don't know what to do. I realize that I am probably not supposed to say this. I am supposed to pretend that everything's great and I have it all figured out because as the oldest child, the oldest DAUGHTER at that, that's what you do. You make nice for everyone else so you're one less thing they have to worry about and of course I know that eventually I WILL be okay. Eventually, I WILL figure it out. But right now, today, in this moment, I wish I didn't have to because I wish he were still here. I wish I still had him to plan the rest of my life with.