The hardest part is not the funeral service. It's not even the wake. Don't get me wrong. These are excruciatingly painful moments, but usually one is still too numb to really appreciate what is going on. It's not greeting the mourners as they come through the line. It's not pretending to be hungry as you eat. Because it's easier to eat then to have to listen to those close to you tell you how important it is that you keep your strength up.

The hardest part is after days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months. One day something happens. It's almost always something trivial. A joke or a news story or something on talk radio has made you think of this someone and how they'd react if they'd heard what you heard. So in your mind you imagine how they'll react when you tell them.....

Or maybe you catch a glimpse of them either on the street or in a crowded store.....

Or either the telephone will ring and it sounds like their voice on the other end.....

But of course you catch yourself. For one moment, though, you had forgotten that they were gone. You had allowed yourself to believe they were alive. Or either you allow yourself to conjure up outlandish possibilities for their dissappearance. They're not really dead. They just had to pretend they were and they're off somewhere waiting for the day they can reclaim their lives.

But I'm not there yet. Days after the funeral, the hole is widening. My legs hurt. I can't focus my sight on anything. Food is tasteless. I don't want to listen to the radio or watch television. I force myself to go through the motions at the computer. I don't know why. I try to write. Maybe what has happened will lend itself to the story I am working on. Maybe if I see it in print, I can understand why I did the things I did over the past two years. I try to tell myself it is not all my fault. I don't listen.

We are all flawed beings. We should never expect one another to fully live up to how we think they should be. There is no guarantee that we have as long on this planet as we think we deserve.

I don't love myself tonight. Maybe I will tomorrow.

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1:31 a.m.