Each day that passes brings me further from the only life I knew.  And the only man I wanted to spend it with.  On my way to work this morning, I started thinking about all the things I missed from that life.

Some of the things are simple, some are silly, and some are quite serious.  But the sum total of all of them adds up to the creation of this gaping, cavernous hole where my heart used to be.  It makes me wonder if it will ever feel full again.  The list is a long one, and certainly cannot be written in its entirety in one small blog, yet I’m going to try to give you a sampling of the things I miss.

I miss “Good Morning, Beautiful” and “Night, Beautiful” being the first and last things I hear every day.

I miss how my shoulder used to fit just so beneath his arm and how my head tucked beneath his chin perfectly.

I miss his smell, that unique scent of his back as I cuddled up to him in the early morning.  His cologne when he sprayed himself before we left the house. Whatever cologne sample he would douse himself with as we passed any department store make-up counter.

I miss having someone who eats the heels of my bread and my pizza crusts because, while I hate them, he liked them best.

I miss being looked at every day as if I am the most beautiful woman on the planet, no matter what I was wearing or if I had on makeup or not.  (Well… except when I had what he liked to refer to as the “Rowlf ‘Do” when I would tuck my hair behind my ears and he thought I looked like Rowlf on The Muppets.)

I miss his humor and the way he could make me laugh even when I was angry.  Especially when I was angry.  Because he truly believed Marilyn Monroe when she said, “If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything.”  They were both right.

I miss his childish pranks.  From the constant attempts at pantsing (or skirting) me wherever we were, to his long-awaited and better planned (yet perverted and so, so wrong) recreation of Mickey Rourke’s infamous popcorn scene in Diner.  (Yes, he really did that.  It was a bag of Doritos at the drive-in, but close enough.  I obviously loved the creep, because even that didn’t break us up…)

I miss having him check my oil and shine the tires before I leave in the morning, and I miss him hanging inside the passenger window saying he wished he were going with me.

I miss his touch.  Not just sex (although, yes, I miss that, too), but his touch – holding hands, his hand on my thigh, foot rubs and back rubs and neck rubs, his hand on my hip while we laid in bed or his arm draped across my shoulder while we snuggled up in front of the TV.

I miss Friday nights or Saturday mornings lounging in front of TCM watching some classic film or another.  Cary Grant was one of our favorite actors, but we would watch anything with Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Stewart, Olivia de Havilland, Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward, Gary Cooper, Katherine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, or Lauren Bacall.

I miss listening to some random 80s hair band cranked up over the speakers while he played “air guitar” with a golf club (or would that be “golf guitar”?) in the living room and I baked in the kitchen.

I miss having a sounding board about anything and everything.

I miss my sous chef who happily peeled potatoes for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.  (No, really… I would insist I didn’t need help, yet he would take it all from my hands and peel potatoes or carrots or apples in front of ESPN, saying it was the least he could do.)

I miss my walking partner.  (And I miss walking because I can’t seem to bring myself to do it without him.)

It all boils down to the fact that I miss my husband, my bed partner, my best friend, my confidante, my co-parent, my plus one.  He was the keeper of my secrets, cheering squad of one, booster of my morale, road trip co-pilot.

When he left, I didn’t just lose one person.  He didn’t fit just one tick-box in my life.  He was my life, and navigating this sometimes cold, cruel world without him isn’t something I was prepared to do.  Certainly not at this stage in my life.  We had plans.  We were looking forward to our soon-to-be empty nest.

Now it seems that each day, rather than making those plans a reality, I’m simply adding to the list of the things I miss.

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