Dream, Think, Cry. Repeat.

The last couple of weeks have been very difficult.

My grief weighs me down.

I cry every day.

Missing Michael is everything. It's a part of everything I do.

I dream of him almost every night. So many dreams that I can't remember them all. But they are the only way I get to spend time with him now, so I welcome them. They don't really make sense, but I don't care.

He's there.

He's healthy.

He loves me.

I can feel him.

Talk to him.

See him smile.

Hear his voice.

But dreams don't last, and I wake up in our bed alone and face another day without him.

I spend a lot of time thinking about what the Bible says awaits us in Heaven, and what Michael may be experiencing there now. I wonder how long it will be until we are reunited. How many more weeks, months, years, decades until this awful separation is over? I know that even if the Lord delays His return and I live another fifty years that it's really nothing compared to the eternity to come - an eternity in which we may not spend every moment together, but one in which our reunion is always for certain. I will never again have to worry for his safety or worry about his health, nor he for me.

I contemplate what Jesus said in Matthew 22:30:

At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage;

they will be like the angels in heaven.

And that makes me a bit sad because there's nothing I'd like more than to resume my life in eternity as Michael's wife. But, I'm sure that Heaven will not disappoint me because of that, or anything else for that matter. I cannot make it what I want it to be. If I were able to, it wouldn't be Heaven.

I extrapolate (with a little help from Randy Alcorn) from Revelation 6:9-11 that if the martyrs in Heaven are "fully conscious, rational, and aware of each other, God, and the situation on Earth" that Michael is too. While I believe he is well and living in peace, I am certain that he remembers his loved ones and misses us as much we miss him. The other night on Facebook, Michael's teenaged, Christian niece posted that she was missing him right after I'd had a good hard cry over him. I responded to her post, letting her know about my crying episode, and she wrote the following to me:

so did i.i watched the video aunt cathy made from the funeral about his music.

sometimes i just listen to that or one of his albums just to hear his voice again.and even though it makes me cry and makes me sad, i think to myslef that its better then not hearing him at all.

it's funny that i keep thinking he's gonna be there this summer, or christmas, or just to visit, or that he'll sign us into disneyland....

but i know that he's here.watching over us all.and even though we cant see him it doesnt mean he wont be there.and no matter how much we miss him, he misses us just as much if not more.

and i know for a fact that he misses you the most.

i'm always here to talk. or if you ever want to hear a story about him for when you werent with us.

i'm just a phone call away.

love,

kiana

I was amazed at her ability to echo my own thoughts and comfort me. She's only 14 or 15 years old, but she gets it. Out of all Michael's nieces and nephews, she was the one who would call him in the last weeks of his life just to tell him that she loved him. She's a neat girl.

I leave you with this, because it sums up my life these days:

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

C. S. Lewis

"Borelando"

That's what my friend Shelly calls her town. You and I know it as Orlando, and I just returned home after spending a few days there with Shelly and her family. While I can't say I was anywhere near as smitten with Orlando as I was with Houston, I definitely did not have a boring time thanks to Shelly's wonderful hospitality.

I wanted to go see Shelly because she had known Michael forever, and she had also become a widow in her forties. I figured we'd have lots to talk about, and we did. Shelly has a way with words, and although we had not met each other but once before Michael's passing, she reached out to me during his illness and was a wonderful source of encouragement to us both. I felt drawn to her kindness, and thus made plans to visit her shortly after he passed.

I'm still processing all the emotions my visit with her brought up - things I would never have expected to surface as a result of spending time with friends of Michael's. Mostly longings for him to be present with us, and for things to have been different in the past sixteen years so that we would have had more shared experiences with friends and family in that time. It's surprising to me how painful those squandered years/opportunities are now, but my grief seems to have many tendrils extended back to years gone by, the present day, and to some extent my uncertain future.

Besides that, my time with Shelly was a real blessing. She is an incredible hostess, a fabulous cook, a good listener, full of loving wisdom, and now I know why she was such a dear friend of Michael's.

Dreams

I have dreamed of Michael twice in the last week.

The first dream was heartbreaking and I woke up crying. He was healthy and all I wanted to do was to feel his skin, his hair, his face. I kept saying Let me do this so that I can remember what you feel like. Michael didn't understand why I was saying that, so I explained that I knew that he was going to get cancer and die. Then he cried and the dream was over.

It was so real. I could really feel him.

Two nights ago the dream was not a tear jerker. I don't think I realized at first that he was even in the dream. He just sort of seeped into it or something. Dreams are weird. My dreams are weird anyway. We had stumbled upon a little place to eat, and we were having breakfast with another couple. I have no idea who they were. I was cutting up a pancake into little, eensy, weensy bites. Michael was sitting next to me, but I don't think I looked over at him even once. I was engrossed with cutting up the pancake. See, I told you my dreams are weird.

Weirder still is the dream I just woke up from in which I was a host on the Today show. We were having to do some really ridiculous stuff in Halloween costumes, but it was my birthday. My birthday is three days before Christmas so how that all goes together I don't know. I remember thinking Is this really my job? This is stupid. I can't believe I have to do this. When the show was over, I was walking down some street in New York City with Meredith Viera and I was telling her about Jesus. Oh, my...