April 18, 2006

Dear Gabriella,

Well, it's been a year.  Tomorrow is the first anniversary of your death.  I 
can't even think about that right now.  All I can think about is the last time 
that I saw you alive.  You were at the Princeton Place nursing home, lying on 
your bed.  You were crying because you didn't want to be there.  I'm sorry, 
baby.  I'm sorry that you died in a place where you did not feel comfortable.

You would be so proud of Dominic.  He is so smart.  He is skipping his 7'th 
grade math class and going directly into 8'th grade enriched math.  He's 
nervous about it, but he is also excited.  Dominic misses you very much.  He 
was crying against my shoulder last night while we were on the couch and I 
didn't know what to say.  He said that he wished you were still alive.  He said 
that even though he understood people have to die, he wished that it didn't 
have to happen.

It's so hard living without you, Gabriella.  It's not like you've just gone 
away on vacation and I'll see you again someday.  If that were true, then I 
could look forward to that day, a year or five years from now, when you'd show 
up again.  But there is no such day when you'll come back again.  There is only 
the memory of you that I have, that I have with Dominic, and that I have with 
friends.  While your memory is special and something to hold onto, it isn't 
you.

Tomorrow is our tenth wedding anniversary.  Imagine that!  Remember Stacie 
crying on the day that we got married?  Stacie, of all people, crying.  I 
couldn't believe it!  She never struck me as the marriage-crying type.  Now, 
every April nineteenth is going to be a day of tears for me.  It's almost as 
though those tears that Stacie shed ten years ago were a harbinger of the tears 
that I shed now.  While her tears were tears of happiness and mine are tears of 
sadness and loss, perhaps I can bring them together by thinking about the 
goodness that you and I and Dominic all shared.

I love and miss you, Gabriella.

Your husband,
Adam