A memory popped up on Facebook tonight. The pumpkins Ben and I carved in 2019. Our last pumpkins. I shared it with an “I miss him.” People responded with kind words. One part of me is grateful for it, another part of me screams “It’s not enough!”

All the kind words in the world don’t make me feel better. I’m ungrateful for this life and ungrateful for people’s big patient hearts.

I’d give them all up for one hour with him. I’d give the rest of my life for one hour with him.

I hate the phrase “I think of him every minute of every day.” People say it all the time in grief groups, and it’s not true. You can’t think of them every minute of every day.

But when CS Lewis said their absence is like the sky, spread over everything, he was right.

Everything I do is colored by grief. It paints a bluish purple hue across my life. Intruding on thoughts. On plans. On quiet time. On conversations and emails, doctor visits and garbage runs. It’s all different now.

I have to actively watch my thought processes. Suicide hovers, beckoning. “But he needs me,” I say to myself about Beau. “They need me,” I say to myself about my family and friends.

I can’t be that selfish, can I? The question lingers. I push it back and find busy work for my hands. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

I’m planning the Christmas Pageant for Oak Hill Baptist Church. I’ve been teaching Children’s Church there for the past year or so. I’m excited for the kids. And feel like I’m doing a good thing.

I am doing a good thing. It’s enough, isn’t it? It has to be enough. Beau is enough. He has to be enough. My family is enough. They have to be enough.

I’m just so lonely for Ben. Life isn’t right without him. It all feels so wrong.

I tell myself, get a good nights sleep. Get some sunshine tomorrow. Paste on a smile. Keep moving. Say yes to everything.

It’s a plan.

God, I hate this life without him. Every minute of it.