I love you...

Excerpts from “I Love You” - by Sarah McLachlan

and I forgot
to tell you
I love you
and the night's
too long
and cold here
without you
I grieve in my condition
for I cannot find the words to say I need you so

The night Andie died, I didn’t tell him I loved him before we went to bed. We said that to each other every night. I’m not sure why we didn’t that night; perhaps because we were on vacation and out of our routine, nevertheless, I didn’t say it. And he didn’t say it to me either.

Then when the chaos started and I knew the situation was serious, I kept telling him that I needed him. That the girls needed him. That he had to stay alive because I could not do this without him. But I still did not say that I loved him.

It’s strange how in the middle of chaos and trauma you can have moments of clarity- a stillness within when thoughts seem to flow calmly and rationally, and the world around you fades away. I remember a moment like this when I had an almost subconscious fleeting thought that if I acknowledged that this might be the last time I said I loved him, then that would make it true. So I didn’t say it. It was like I was afraid to jinx myself. That if I actually uttered the words, “I love you, don’t leave me” then I was accepting my fate. That if I said it, then that meant that I believed the very thing I could not make myself believe.

I even had a brief thought about the next day, when I thought it was all going to be okay and he was stable, how I was going to tell him how much he scared me. Admonish him not to ever do that to me again. I was going to tell him that I had been afraid he was going to die. I was going to tell him then how much I loved him.

I was going to tell him then…