Dear eema,

It's been fifteen days now and as I type this it occurs to me that maybe I should stop counting the days. I don't realize I'm doing it until I catch myself doing it. 

Five days since you've been gone, then one week, twelve days... thirteen days... 
fourteen... 
fifteen days. 
I mean, I get how time works. I don't need to do that to myself. 
Okay, no more counting. 
In the first week I had a creepy nightmare of your frail arm slowly reaching out to grab me from your hospital bed, exactly like something you'd see in a horror movie! It jolted me awake.

Death is many things and scary is one of them. 
At least parts of it. 
The dying part. 

I only had that one nightmare and then one brief dream the night you died. In that dream you were sitting in your favorite chair, smiling and clapping enthusiastically at me as I performed a ventriloquist act for you. Maybe I already wrote about this. No, I don't remember spellchecking ventriloquist before. I digress... back to the dream... that dream must have been all of two seconds. 

It took me awhile but I finally analyzed the dream to make some sense. Maybe you were applauding me because in the last week of your life, I spoke for you when you no longer could. I was your voice. I was the ventriloquist. Apparently you enjoyed that show. 
I'm happy for that. 

As far as how I'm doing... sometimes life now feels like this...



Then other times, it feels like this...



But mostly it's somewhere in between. 

I hope to dream of you soon. 
In a non-nightmarey or super short kinda way. 

I fluff you. (inside joke with a dead person now. i blame the grief.) 
:)

xo,
annie