It is the perfect morning to lie in bed and cuddle with the memory of you.  Through the window glass the trees shush, their leaves yielding to clear drops, one after the other, sometimes two together, as though you are watering my heart from your Heaven.

The roof dulls the sound for a moment until it spatters over the eaves and creates blistering drops on the deck, like sizzling bacon.  I think: bacon and three fried eggs and a sliced tomato.  A lazy weekend morning and I serve you one of the few gifts you would accept from me.

At this moment – right now – I feel your solid chest against my back, your right forearm and calloused hand resting on my hip, your knee pushing gently against the back of my thighs.  You are right here.  If I turned, I could lay my head against your shoulder, push my face into your smooth neck and know.  The knowing of nothingness and everything.

My eyes squeeze shut at the ache of pure sadness.  The missing your physical presence makes the windows shudder with a stomping rush of falling rain.  Is this your universal answer to my tears? You were never this dramatic on Earth.

You whisper: Get up and write this down.  I stretch against your memory like a waking child. I say: don’t tell me what to do.

If you were here to make me coffee I would hear the sound of six level scoops.  Water pouring – like this morning rain. The aroma of your love for me would seep into the bedroom like a stealth warrior.

I get up, wander into the kitchen and put six rounded scoops and one-half more, which I know would cause a morning spat.  Why do I so blatantly break the making coffee rules?  Because I like the way our spats end: You grab my hips and spin me into a bear hug and ardent kiss that even now – in the memory of it – leaves me breathless.

Still – probably surrounded by a Platoon of spirits – with each cup of coffee you pour – you add cream, a teaspoon of sugar and while you stir, you grumble to the cup, I can’t believe she is still such a rebel. They all chuckle.  I can hear you, you know, as though the words form a red neon ticker tape of commentary circling the tongue and groove pine of the kitchen ceiling.

I ask God: Do spirits laugh?  And I have this vision of you sitting around with God and Buddha, a few Mystics and all the Team guys who have so recently passed over.  You are all telling stories, animated hand gestures and colorful language and the laughter is so huge it sounds like thunder rumbling through the trees.

The passion with which we lived still resonates.  My ego starts to dream up God deals.

I’m sipping coffee laced with licorice tea.  I know… the oddity of me.  And I begin:  

Dear God, today is the 495^th day of this infinite deployment and really, I need him back now.  Here’s the deal….

God sighs… the infinite loving sigh.   No Deal.  He says this in capital letters.  And like I’m watching a You-Tube short I’m given a glimpse of you – vital and healthy, slipping through narrow gates, holding infants, holding moons, philosophizing with Emerson and St. Francis, building lavish parks, bending to take a toddler’s hand, telling sea stories with your Team mates, trimming your mustache, building houses, studying in a library that is endless and everything.   You are full of Joy.

When you stand, turn, and stare at me, through me, hands on hips, blue-green blazing eyes near maximum intensity I can hardly breathe through the realness:  I’m writing again, I say. The answer to the question you have not asked.

About damn time.  You think it.  I feel your thought and see it glisten through you just as the sun peaks through the cloud.  It’s your rare, reserved smile spilling over me.  I laugh aloud because even in Heaven you’re a smart ass.

It’s all about the Love… I hear you say, standing at the stove stirring your beef bourguignon and reminding me each time I walk into the room that it’s all about the love.  I wonder if you even had an inkling then of the absolute greatness of that simple lesson?

You wait patiently then – so unlike you – until my soul fills with a boundless blue love.  The rain begins again and it is here in this moment I feel your energy leave me – for now – standing in the perfect memory of you.

Lynnette Bukowski © 2011