Veronica Fish Illustration: The weight of loss and missing your other half

I felt Andy coming through this brilliant sunset. He loved watching the kids play, too.

With the funeral many days behind us and regular life settling in, the intense heaviness of being without Andy sets in.

Much of our 20+ year relationship have been spent constantly together, working, living, talking, traveling, everything. He was and is the love of my life and I'll never be the same.

I hate canceling his accounts, filling out paperwork to verify he no longer is on a policy, no longer drives our cars, that he isn't in this house anymore. That he isn't a person anymore. I hate it. I hate seeing his death certificates, hate mailing in his driver's license, hate saying over and over again to a credit card company, "No... he's not with me... I said he's deceased...no, that's ok..."

The kitchen table.

I always set a place for Andy, breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Thank you to everyone who sent us cards and flowers.

I hate not cooking meals together, I hate not hearing his laugh, I hate not hearing his wonderful stories, not being able to text him, or get a call from him.

I miss the way he'd put on cartoons on every Saturday morning before we went out, he'd choose to put on something like Rocky & Bullwinkle or The Superfriends. I miss his presence in the house. I miss the feeling of his hugs and his hand on my cheek. I miss the way his eyes smiled when he grinned. I miss the sound of his voice. I miss his love and affection.

Whatever we focus on expands, and it's very difficult not to focus on what is lost.

In the days following his burial I was overcome with intense guilt over all the ways I could've been a better wife, ruminating over wasted time, stupid things done and said, precious minutes one can never recover. There are no do-overs, only memories, and in my case, Andy always helped to reassure me of things, to help me remember, to help calm me down. I have to do that for myself now and it feels impossible.

And with memory comes the capacity to falsify records, to forget the other person's perspective while digging out from your own panic. I am so grateful and lucky our last words to each other were "I love you."

In marriage you often hear your partner's same stories and jokes. Suddenly, when they are not there to say them again, desperation kicks in. "Andy, tell that great story again about the supermarket... how does it go again? You have to tell it, you tell it so well..."

There is a part of me that doesn't believe it happened.

There was no wake, no funeral. No one was in that box.

This is all a nightmare and it will end soon.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I went through old emails we wrote each other in 2013 while I was away in Japan for a month, and the outpouring of love for each other was just so intense, the emotions just were all-consuming. Like the last letter he wrote me before we started cancer treatments. I kept sobbing and saying over and over again "Andy, I miss you please come home,..." and suddenly I felt like he was there. Warm red light filled the room, the wind kicked up and I felt like he reached out through the brilliant sunset out the studio window.