missing you – aliciajoseph

You used to be my Valentine. For fourteen years, the sweetest and most loyal Valentine a girl could want. Always ready for a cuddle. Never backing away from a kiss– And there were many of those cuddles and kisses. Yet, somehow, they now don’t feel like enough.

You used to love me. I used to be your world. Your every day revolved around me. You hated when I’d leave the house, even for a quick grocery run. You waited for me anxiously, as if worried you’d never see me again, and then greeted me as though years had passed since you watched me walk out the door.

That’s a hard love to get over, but I’ve been without you for exactly two months. There are moments I still expect to see your beautiful face in your usual spots, but then reality slaps me in the face, reminding me that you’re no longer here.

It’s a heartbreaking moment because my every day also revolved around you. You also used to be my world, and I miss you so fucking much.

The night after your suffering had ended, I went outside in the front yard. I walked around the trees and imagined your body in front of me. I even looked out for coyotes that I was always certain at any moment would jump out of the shadows and attack you.

I was your protector as much as you were mine.

I imagined us walking back to the front door together and then I headed to the place on the counter where your jar of treats used to be. No matter how sick you were in the end, you never forgot that you were due a treat every time you came in from outside, whether you did anything or not.

Uncle had moved those treats immediately after your body left the house, as well as your dish bowls. It was too hard to see any reminder of you, even though your presence had lingered so heavily in the house in those immediate days after.

Months later, you’re still there.

That night, I brought your bed and favorite blankie downstairs to my room. You hadn’t slept down there in many months.

I had washed your bed after I was sure this was the end. I wanted you to die in a freshly cleaned bed. After a week of lying in it and then dying in it, the bed smelled comfortably like you. So distinct. So safe.

Two months later, with the bed remaining in its place in my room, your scent still keeps me close to you.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.

You used to be my Valentine.

For the first time in fourteen years, I won’t have my Valentine cuddling next to me. But I’m in no hurry to find a new one.

You can’t replace perfection.

Phil, you were your Mama’s greatest love, and I can’t wait to see you again and give you a kiss on the top of your nose.

Happy Valentine’s Day, my love. My boy. My Angel.

The basement ceiling is still streaked with marks from when we used to play football. Made-up goal lines, just in front of the bar. I really don’t know how we didn’t break the glass case, shelved with wine and beer glasses, in the corner behind the bar. It’s a good thing. Grandma would have lost her shit.

How many touchdown passes had been thrown in that basement from when you kids used to live here? So many the Bears would have been envious.

The bin of swords we used to fight with, sometimes against each other, other times against imagined zombies, has been packed away a long time ago. That time I took your swords from you and hid them in my closet because you scared the dog, chasing him with a raised sword in your hands. Phil didn’t understand the game. You were young, but old enough to understand the innocence of a dog. You were just being mean, because you were the youngest and used to being a menace.

So, I had to take your swords away. Not forever. Just for a little while. Your older sister, always the protective Mother Bear, tried to sneak and steal them back, but I wouldn’t let her. She was mad at me. Her little brother could do no wrong. Ever. I used to always say that you could burn the house down and she’d yell at me if I gave you the slightest sideways look.

She used to knock on my door late at night. Two o’clock in the morning was nothing to that nine-year-old girl. I’d stop writing and we’d talk on my bed, mostly about the divorce, sometimes about other things. But we talked. The divorce happened when you were so young, and you were forgetting the memories you had of your mother and father being together. That was sad for you.

So, we talked through some memories. Popcorn movie nights with your parents. Watching Elf with your dad. That Thanksgiving at your house, when I came covered in puke because I’d thrown up with my head out the window, while Grandma sped down I55. A mixture of motion sickness and being hungover. Your oldest brother, just a young boy then, yelled out “Auntie!” and ran to greet me at the door. I shot my arm up and stopped him like a traffic patrol. “Don’t! Auntie has throw-up all over her.” Your father hosed the car down in your driveway, as I hosed myself down in his shower.

Birthday parties at the house you grew up, with the backyard you missed so much. The giant trampoline. The swing set you loved to hang upside down from that always pulled at my nerves. But you were fearless.

The day you came home from school after learning I was writing a lesbian book, because you’d crept up behind me the night before and read over my shoulder as I wrote on my computer, and shouted, with your backpack on your shoulders, “How’s your lesbian story coming, Auntie?”

I laughed. Your mother laughed. You were a funny nine-year-old girl.

Your other brother, just a few years older than you, was a homebody. He loved nothing more than cuddling on the couch with me watching sports or shows, mostly Pitbulls and Parolees and the Friday Night Lights series. “Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t lose.” You loved that.

In public, you were never the kid we had to worry about running off. You were a scared and anxious kid at times. You never strayed from my side. Ever. But your older brother, I’d lost him once at a Blockbuster on a busy Saturday night, and it was the most terrifying thirty-seven seconds of my life. I eventually found him kneeling at the end of an aisle, going through stacks of videos and DVD’s.

But you would never scare me like that. You were the boy who would take my hand in a parking lot before I even had to tell you, because you were scared of getting hit by a car. You told me your entire school schedule so that at any time during the day I could look at the clock and know what you were doing, what class you were in. You then wanted to know my daily schedule so that you could do the same with me.

That was the cutest thing. Well, maybe not as cute as the love notes you would write me when you happened to be over, and I wasn’t home. Sometimes you’d leave the notes right on top my desk, so I’d see it right away. Other times, you’d put it into a drawer and sometimes days or weeks would go by before I found the note telling me you love me. How happy you are to have me as an aunt. You’d tell me that I’m a great writer. I have all of them. All your notes. You’d ask me how many nephews love their Aunties as much as you love me. I’d say, “Probably not many.”

But you’ve all grown up and moved on with grown up lives, as children tend to do. We can’t go back in time or relive the past, but if we could, 2014 was a good year to live again. You guys still lived here. We were so close and spent so much time together. I was healthier. Happier. I hadn’t yet known the stress of a Donald Trump presidency. And covid was nothing but a word.

We can’t go back in time and relive the past. We can only hold our most cherished memories close to us and relive them in our hearts by never forgetting them.