I dreamt last night that Ted left me.  He felt like he wasn’t making me as happy as I deserved to be, so he thought he should go.

My heart was torn because this couldn’t have been further from the truth.  I was desperate to tell him this and searching for him everywhere.

Then he came to me and I told him how I’ve never been so happy in my life.  I was clutching onto his hand as I pleaded with him, trying to make him understand that he was the best man I’ve ever known.  I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone else’s in the world.

He looked relieved and for a brief moment in time, everything was perfect again.  And then I awoke.

My reality crept back into my conscious.  The pain that swelled up within me felt like frigid water filling up around my heart trying to freeze it until the point of shattering.

Once again, I was left to face another day alone.

Six weeks ago today, my husband was alive.  He wasn’t just alive, he was alive.  Before the clock struck 7 a.m., he had already been to the gym.  Before he even got to his desk at work, he had invariably answered numerous questions, likely solving just as many problems.

By the time I sent him a picture from my and Eleanor’s walk on the beach that morning, he was well into the thick of things, but he gladly talked to me about the seagulls that captured her attention and how curious she was when I dipped her little foot into the water.  He was tickled by the image of her precious baby toes fanning out when she felt the warm water and he wanted us to take her swimming in the gulf that weekend.

We had so many plans.  So very many plans.

On Thursday mornings, I find myself glancing at the clock and thinking, “at this time, X weeks ago, he was alive.”  Every time I’ve done something for the first time after the accident, even running the dish washer, I think, “last time I did this, Ted was here, on this earth – he was with me.”

For a few weeks after the accident, I begged God to let me go back to the morning of September 24^th so I could tell Ted how these last six years have been the best years of my life.  How I’ve never known a more loving husband and father, and that I don’t know what I did to deserve him.

God didn’t change the clock back for me but he did allow me to tell Ted that in a dream.

In the dream, it was a Thursday and I only had until 12:20, the time he was pronounced dead, before he would be taken back.  I told him everything I felt and he smiled sweetly.  He said he knew, that he always knew.

That morning – and that morning only – I awoke with a sense of peace.