Inside Gigi's World

Dear Mikey,

Today is your 39th birthday.

365 days since your last.

So much has changed over the last year…

Richie is driving and at least a foot taller than I am now. He’s going into his junior year. He is kind and thoughtful and so far, he seems to be better behaved than we were as teenagers…even though his favorite pass time right seems to be trying to piss me off as much as humanly possible.

Jill will be 13 in a few weeks. She is not taller than me, although she was hopeful that someday she would be reaching things on the high shelf for me, that is no longer the case and she needs help reaching everything on the top shelf too. Her mouth is just like mine and her middle finger also seems to be favorite finger. Like mother, like daughter.

School is…different. If I told you about some of these kids, you’d probably be in as much disbelief as I am. Nothing screams excitement like homework on a Friday night (I forgot how much I hated that).

I wrote my first story, you were in it. I wrote an ending for you that I much preferred. You were a live and well and still part if everyone’s story, just as I imagine you are now.

I speak to you often, like you are sitting next to me because talking to you any other way just hurts. I like to think you get a kick out of life now and how it has turned out. Us as adults. Us with gray hairs and marriages and children and jobs and early nights because anything after 10pm just feels so late now. Some of us with teenagers that think they are so much cooler than what we were even though they are just like us…

I like to think, had life not played out the way it had, you may have had a kid or two running around. I like to think Rich and I and the kids would see you, your wife and however you structured your family, for cookouts and Christmas and everytime you came home to visit.

I also like to picture you with Amiee. I find comfort knowing the two of you are together, even though you two being together means something much more devastating for the people you have left behind.

We did not share a DNA bond or genetic markers but when someone helps carry you through adolescencs into adulthood, sees you through your traumas and successes, devastating losses and pulling you through your darkest moments, does sharing DNA really matter?

No, similarities in DNA does not make a family. The people that were there, the people that showed up, the people that shared your experiences, that know your life, that know the real you. That is your family. Not sharing a common relative didn’t lessen the blow or the devastation that the lose of your life created. He’ll, I have a ton of people that I share genetic makeup with, they know nothing of me or my life and if I never seen them again, I wouldn’t even bat an eye.

Today, on your 39th birthday, I wonder what you’d think of the world today. I wonder if you’d still wear your black pants with the chains on them. On your 39th birthday, I wonder if you’d still wear your mohawk. I wonder if you’d embrace your missing tooth or if you’d still wear your plate. I wonder how far your motorcycle would have taken you through this life. I wonder if you’d be annoyed with The Walking Dead as I have become. I wonder if who’d have more tattoos by now and I wonder how terrified you’d be, living in a world where I was actually given a LTC 😆…

I wonder if you realize how much you have missed since you have been gone. Now the amount of milestones you have missed are starting to become as plentiful as the ones you were here for. Or maybe you are here and we just don’t see you anymore but, instead, we hear your voice in the wind and the rain. When I think of you and Amiee and the breeze blows through the tree branches on a still day and two birds fly by my head together, maybe those ate just signs that neither of you are that far behind.

I lie to myself when I say I am not angry.

I would be lying if I said I don’t get anxious when times get hard and I need a friend, that I can’t call.

I lie to myself because it’s the only way I can move and navigate through the grief that still remains.

I see people that like to talk about you, tell fond memories. It makes me smile to see, that even after life you still bring smiles to the people you have touched in your lifetime, no matter how short that time may have been. It makes me proud to call you my friend.

Today, on your 39th birthday, not much is different than your 38th birthday or your 37th or 36th or the ones before that. We will eat some cake, I’ll say a little prayer and wish you well on your never ending flight in the wind and I will wish you a very Happy 39th Birthday.

Your Best Friend,

Me.