Eight Months

It's hard to believe it's been eight months. On January 2nd, Brent and I said our good-byes in a hotel parking lot in New York City.

His were silver, mine were gold. So corny. Fun times.

Exquisite subway station tile in the back. Ha.

And yeap. I made him the scarf.

We had spent New Year's Eve & Day there. We didn't "get in" to the Times Square festivities. Too many people. We sat in Central Park together on a park bench; snow falling; drinking hot tea & coffee. Well, I got to sit on his warm winter coat, he sat on the park bench. He'd point that out, I'm sure. We got back to the hotel by 11:45 p.m. and watched the Times Square countdown on television, glad that we were warm & cozy in bed. We laughed about it as a sign of getting (or being) old. 2010 had thus started with much joy & love. Surely a great year was ahead with news of a baby on the way followed by a fabulous New Year's Eve together. Little did I know that just three weeks later my world would fall apart.

I'll take you back to that hotel parking lot in a minute, but first this: I was always the one taking the pictures on our trips. Brent liked how the photos turned out, but he also knew that I had a tendency to delete freely, especially when it involved pictures of me. We generally uploaded them from the camera directly to both of our laptops, but we hadn't done that with the NYC pictures. I actually ended up e-mailing them to him in batches of five due to the large file size - all of them, well almost. Seven were apparently missing. And I got caught in the act.

Message from Brent

Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 6:32 PM [That was Monday around noon his time. He died two days later.]

Hi Baby. Just going through the pics from NYC. Thank you for your effort in sending them. The following appear absent. [He lists them by individual file number. Funny. Wonder how long that took.] Just wondering if you have them.

Message to Brent

Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 6:42 PM

I have them, but I don't like them.

Message from Brent

Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 6:43 PM

So it is censorship. What about the mural pics? And there are no pictures of you.

Okay, back to the parking lot. I was driving back to Richmond. Brent was planning on taking a shuttle to JFK to fly back to New Zealand later that afternoon. Yeap, one of those crazy long trips where they write your luggage tag by hand, because their computer system can't process more than two connections with different carriers.

We had said good-bye & Brent had gone back upstairs. It was cold. I sat in the car with the engine running & I just couldn't leave. When we were saying good-bye for the first time (a few months earlier at the airport in Richmond), Brent had told me that he didn't want me to look back; that he wouldn't look back. He wanted me to remember a smile on his face and he knew he would have tears in his eyes. So, I didn't look back. But then he called me from a layover destination & asked me why I hadn't looked back. I said, "You told me not to. How do you know I didn't look back? You must have looked back..." He said, "Of course I did. I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to look at your bum without you noticing what I was doing." Arghhh. Men! :-)

I sat there in NYC in the car & cried. I hated saying good-bye & these early pregnancy hormones were probably not working in my favor either. I knew that if I didn't leave then & there, I wouldn't get back to Richmond before late in the night & I hate driving in the night. But my emotional self won. I turned the engine off & went back upstairs.

I had an emotional meltdown in the hotel room. We spent some more time together. I felt better about leaving after that, but it was still hard. There was a fear in me that I wouldn't see him again. I knew it was crazy & irrational to have such a thought. I remember saying, "I don't think I will see you again." He looked at me like I was crazy. "Don't be silly. Of course we'll see each other again," is what he said.

I'm glad I did it. I'd take the stuck in traffic option & getting home late in the night again any day. Had I known then what I know now, I would have actually never left; I wouldn't have let him go. We never did see each other again & we never will. He died less than three weeks later. But eight months ago today we said good-bye.

Good-bye, my love. Thanks for everything, especially for that most special gift of all...