For You

...tell you all the things I still hold in my heart for - and think about - you. I let all the chances to do so slip quietly by - for you.

If I could, I would tell you that I loved you even before I met you. I fell in love with the man behind the words so eloquently written in your first email to me. I knew then that you were compassionate, intelligent and funny. When we stood face-to-face that very first time, your eyes, your awkwardness and the sound of your voice only reinforced what I already knew: I loved you.

I would tell you that I was I was so scared to love you the way you deserved to be loved, and that I had wasted so much time trying not to love you and by keeping you at arm's length I had wasted precious time when I should have been loving you.

If I could go back to those very first moments of the HCA, I would have trusted you more instead of holding so much back.

I would have firmly said 'no' when you asked me about dinners and snacks. Every trial before that, for me, ended disasterously. I even told YOU that it should NOT be done. That it was an enormous risk to take, and if my history repeated itself, HCA would not survive.

If I could take back all the demons I tried to drown us with, and kept them in my head, I would turn back time right this second and kept them locked up some place else.

I would thank you for all the patience and kindness you had so selflessly shared with me if I could, and to try to make us right again.

I could tell you that YOU are always the FIRST person who comes to mind when I see, hear, touch, taste and feel something - because I want to share all of it with you.

I would tell you that I frequently listen to the HCA CD you created for us. I find it more comforting than sad because it reminds me that, at one point in my life, I was loved and cherished by someone, and that someone was you. It is a perfect collection of music that fits our first years together.

I could tell you that when I see the sun or the moon, I know that wherever you are, you can see them too. You are my first thought every morning and my last thought at night when I drift off to sleep.

I would tell you that I miss the way you smiled at me when you were thrilled about something. The way you tilted your head with kind of this bobble thing, and your eyes had a golden sparkle. It was if you your whole body was lit with sunshine.

I could tell you how I have always been enormously proud of you for your intelligence, compassion, selflessness, humor and generosity. The way you were always helping people, never expecting anything in return. You always treated others with respect, regardless of who they were or where they came from. 

I would tell you that I recently saw a television show where a man bent down to smell the hair of the woman he was madly in love with. She asked him what he was doing he replied, "I'm breathing you in".

I could tell you that, until I left the area where we lived together, I still looked for you to be sitting in the parking lot waiting for me to come home.

I would tell you that in June 2013, when I was hospitalized and scared to death about the diagnosis and upcoming surgery, I thought afterwards that if anything could bring you home, it would have been that.

I could tell you that I no longer love you or miss you. However, I would be lying to you if I did that.

There are so many things I could say to you, and I would if given the chance, for now though, I will continue to let the chances pass by - for you.