Second holiday without him

No smell of coffee when I woke this morning

No dogs barking

No smell of his holiday surprise cooking

No daughter to ease my memories

She is off on her own journey

The house is as silent and quiet as my thoughts

I shuffle into the kitchen set the pot to brew

Walk to that porch and light up my smoke

Turn the music up

I brace my self

A chore of self flagellation I do every year

I open my memory box

First memory comes to hand

My eyes glazed and blurry I look at the first picture

Our wedding day we were so scared

Our whole life in front of us

Hopes and dreams

Our wedding night where we both just passed out

Our first house together

Our first anniversary

The day our daughter was born

The grin on his face engraved in time with her in his arms

Her fist birthday

Her first christmas

Thanksgivings, christmases, easters, birthdays, anniversaries

All those questionable gifts he use to buy us

A pantheon of memories march across my mind

And the ache of a lifetime sets in

For I miss his heart the most

His easy laugh and that damn silly smile of his

Sitting there on this cold morning

Holding the years of our life in my hands

The joys

The heartaches

Sitting there as the cold settles in

Thinking of the small life we created together

The way it crumbled

I feel cheated

The thing bout memories its always a mixture

Life gave me so many things then she took it away

Maybe to reforge me

To enlighten me

To prepare me

Who knows

One hell of a aphony

Finally I am at peace

Packing my memories back into that box

I think of his final words to me

Words a cannot share

Words maybe he should have said years ago

I would have fought harder

Words to help me understand my place in his life

But he was a simple man

A honest man

A quiet man

In the end he became my best friend

There will always be a empty ache

Not for the bad moments but the good ones

When a young couple dreamed of a life together...