Dear Walt,

Yesterday I determined to have a good day. I posted a blog that was more upbeat, less depressing, yet the day was another one where the tears popped up at every turn. I am so effing frustrated over so many things. I think once I have the taxes finished some of that will ease but I keep running into receipts that ruin me. A restaurant we went to twice after you took me for my eye shot. The first time it was a really really good lunch. The second time… not so much.

I laugh at the memories and then I cry because you’re not here to share them with me. I want to look over at you at your desk and tell you what I’ve found, ask you if you remember. You would tell me you didn’t but that’s because you had this thing about pushing away what wasn’t worth thinking about. It aggravated me sometimes. Other times I admired your ability to do that because I would linger and worry about stuff that was over and done with and not worth it.

It’s funny that I rarely think about our life before we moved to the house that Amazon built. You called it that and named our original WiFi “JeffBezosIsMyBoyfriend” in honor of the Montlake book that allowed us to buy it. We had four and a half years here and those are the years I dwell on most. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re the most recent or because they truly were the best years of our shared life. I’m pretty sure it’s the latter. We were in our place, not the rental we’d lived in for sixteen years. We were living our dream and it was such a grand one.

I do think about the May before we moved in July. We went to Padre Island for a vacation that had nothing to do with a writer’s conference. Except it was a plotting vacation. We went to work out the details on Icefall. (It’s funny how little we accomplished that we actually used.) You determined while we were there to eat a different fish every night. I’m pretty sure you managed.

It was when swimming in the hotel pool that we first talked about wanting one of our own. Or maybe I was the one who wanted it and you humored me since I was the one who’d written the book that let us afford it. It was in our own pool that I had the brainstorm that turned Icefall on its head and changed everything. The day before December 21st happened, I asked you to heat it for me so I could swim on the 22nd. You asked me if my knees were worth the cost of the gas.

I said of course they were, as were my hips. I don’t remember if you turned it on. I do remember you spent some time in the spa that night relaxing. I set the spa to heat while eating dinner earlier. I haven’t been out there in ages, but tonight seems like a night I need the warm water and the cool air and the relaxing pulse of the jets to beat this frustration out of me.

Maybe it will loosen some plotting thoughts as well as my joints and dissolve away some stress. Water makes for the very best therapy… physical, mental, emotional. And I’ve spent time in the spa alone many times so it won’t be the first without you. Just the first time… without you.