three

It has been three months today.  Three months.  Three.

We were a family of three.  When we went to restaurants, we asked for a table for three.  We could all fit into one big bed (michael in the center of it all, of course).  Rides for two always were Michael and I in one;  Stu in the other.  It was just the way it was.  Always.

The first time we went to a restaurant as two, I felt my stomach drop as they asked if there were just two of us that night.  And we said yes.  It felt like an admission.  That yes.  We have moved on.  Yes.  We are just a family of two.  Yes.  

But it is not true.  

No.  There is no moving on.  No.  We are a family of three.  Only one is not here physically.  Any longer.

Three months.  Many lifetimes have passed in those three months.   We have missed our first birthday together.  Two birthdays really.  Stu's was April 17.  We will celebrate his birthday on another day.  Our first Easter.  Our first wedding anniversary.

This coming month, we will see our first trip to the beach without.  My birthday will be on the fourth month.  Of Michael's passing.   We will miss all of those moments of the mundane tasks of the everyday.  Michael has missed over 90 days of feeding Nellie.  Of taking out the recyclables.  Of me asking him to pick up his room.  Or to pick up his figures from the living room.

I miss hearing him sing in the shower.  Or to see his sopping wet hair as he brushed his teeth.  I miss his grin.  I miss his voice.

I miss him.  

Three months without the center of my universe.

And I still do not have a better understanding of how this goes.

Of how we keep going.  But we do.

This family.  Of Three.