Dear Walt,
You’ve been gone now two weeks and yesterday was the worst day since December 21st happened. Logically, I know it was the release of the stress following your celebration but I would like to never spend that much time crying and unable to function again, please.
Today has been better. I had to deal with Snickers and the county license and rabies vaccination due by tomorrow. Our daughter and son in law went to Home Depot while I did that. He’s finishing the last of the sheetrock now. He’d been waiting as you and I hashed out the master bath.
Now to find a tub. Plus I have to order shoe rails and fillets for the balustrade as Home Depot canceled your order. Their supplier no longer manufactures them but I found another. And tomorrow I have to go to the pool supply store to see about getting a new one of 
whatever this is.
Adulting. Apparently, I still know how to do it.
I’m excited about the tub but I’m honestly unsure how I feel about moving from our cozy room in what had been your office before Hurricane Harvey sent us to live upstairs back to the bedroom we shared for four years. It won’t be our room, obviously; I have to replace all the furniture.
That should help. If anything will ever help.
I keep expecting you to walk in the back door with groceries. I look out my office window toward the garage and wait for you to come into view as you work. I watch every truck that drives past the house, thinking one will stop, shift into reverse, and back into our driveway, but none do.
This is my life. Expecting. Waiting. Watching.
Knowing deep in my heart that doing these things, though I can’t stop them, helps nothing.
I turn so many times wanting to tell you things. Expecting to see your eyes roll. Waiting for you to argue. Watching for the smile you try to hide. You made every day perfect. So very perfect.
This week I’ve watched Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility and I see these unmarried women cutting flowers and playing horseshoes and taking turns around the room. Playing the piano. Sewing. Reading.
Expecting. Waiting. Watching. This isn’t my life.
These aren’t my days. I don’t know what they are.
You are finding your way. You’re doing great, by the way. I doubt you want to hear that, because I suspect there’s a part of you that feels guilty for “adulting” without Walt. I imagine it feels wrong on some level.
It’s been almost 3 years for me, and when the phone rings sometimes I still think it’s him. You are not alone.
Keep pushing yourself to adult. Take it minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day. It’s the best advice I’ve received and I’m sure someone has already told you or you already knew it. I want to say that it helped me and I hope it helps you.
It will be like this for awhile. For everyone it is different. When I lost my beloved I felt I was the one lost but I needed to function because I had children, house, car payments, winter (we lived in Michigan at the time) — all the things that call one from the stupor of sitting in the corner and staring at the ceiling. Every swish of tires on the street. Surely he’s just downstairs when I’m up or up when I’m down. And I had time to prepare — otherwise called caretaking during cancer treatments. As my friend Sally (who lost her beloved George 3 years ago) says, grief does not go away, it simply becomes part of you. It’s a new part that doesn’t fit well. It will never fit well but you will be able to abide. The best thing though is that the love never diminishes. It’s there for you every day.