362 Days Ago

I was sitting here checking email and Richie and I were watching tv. We had just gotten home from being in Carrollton for Easter. We had driven up to Home Depot to get some things to start working on our shoe mold around the dining room and hallways and saw that it was closed..so we were forced to go home and relax.

How has it been this long since I spoke to him? I played the message on our old answering machine a few times. I just stood there listening, remembering the night he recorded it. I had laughed at him because he was trying to be all serious as he said, "Hello, you've reached the Day's...we aren't in right now but leave a message and we'll call you back as soon as possible." His voice...wow, his voice...it rips me apart to hear it.

As I listened, I looked around and I realized that its been almost a year since I put all his pictures away. I haven't see his face in our living room smiling at me in our wedding photos in all that time. I still can't bear to look at the picture we had on the casket. It's in a drawer with the shirt he had on the night he died. I can't open that drawer any more which is different from a few months ago when I would pull the shirt out just to make what happened seem "real" to me. I would lay it on the bed and lay it out the way it should be and I would stare at it...and just try to "wish" him back into it if that makes sense? I would put my hand on it, close my eyes, and just pray to feel a breath or a heartbeat but it never happened, the shirt was just still flat on the bed.

On Wednesday I want to celebrate Richie's new birthday- the one that God gave him for Heaven- April 18th.

"During your times of suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you."