An Old Email That Was Never Sent

Mickey has had a hotmail email account for eight years. It just mostly fills up with junk. I decided I should probably clean it out since it had 400 emails in it. After I cleaned out all of the junk I checked the draft folder and it was a letter to me that had never been sent. It was from October, two years ago. It was from around the same time I got pregnant with Owen. Mickey had come home for a brief leave because we didn't know when they would finally let him out of the Army. We had left in May because we thought it would be any time. Three weeks later he came home for good, but at that time we had no clue. In the email he said it had only been one day but he missed me and that he hated being away from me. He just wanted to tell me loved me and missed me. He signed it, your husband Mickey.

I miss you too Mickey. I love you too and it has been four and a half months, and I don't like to be away from you either. I know you are in a better place, and I try to remember that. You were supposed to be here to help me raise the boys. Not sure why God wanted you home so soon. I know you had a lot of pain here, maybe God didn't want you to go through that anymore. I don't know how Heaven works exactly, but I can't wait to see you there. I can't wait to hug you again and we can sit and talk about our boys for an eternity. I am okay most of the time. I know I have a big long future ahead of me, and I try to remember that God will take care of me. It really feels empty without you and sometimes it is still hard to believe that I will not see you again. I have been separated from you before for this amount of time, but never without seeing you or talking to you, but then I also knew that you would come back. This time the wait is going to be much longer before I will see you. I wonder if you would want me to remarry. I think you would. I think you would want me to have someone to help me raise the boys. I know that you don't have worries in heaven anyway. I will never stop loving you. They try to compare being divorced to being widowed sometimes, but there isn't a comparison. In a divorce there are hurt feelings, and a loss of love and affection. I loved you with my whole heart the day that you died, and I will never stop loving you like that. You will always be my husband, and the father of my sons. God can do amazing things with the heart, and I expect that someday there will be room for me to love someone else. I don't think I will have issues about comparing them to you, but I will have issues with comparing my life with you, to what I may have with them. We had a pretty dynamic life together. It wasn't always easy, but it was good. You were someone that I loved completely and could spend hours doing nothing with and still have a good time. I miss just watching TV with you, and rubbing your back. I can still hear you ask me to rub your back and complaining about the cold lotion hitting your back. I can still hear you say "Hello dear". I still pray for a dream with you. People have them all the time. I had them when Grandpa B died. I have been praying since the day you died for a dream like that so I could day good bye to you, to see you one last time, but I haven't had one. I don't think it is a dream either, but for some reason God hasn't sent you. If I could only see you again and talk to you, even if it is a dream, I think it would be very healing for me. The email I found in your draft box in your email was good.

Mickey, I know things weren't always easy for us. I know that I made it harder for you sometimes because I didn't know how to deal with your PTSD. We had a really rough patch there, but we both loved eachother enough, respected eachother enough, and were good enough friends to sit down and deal with it. It wasn't easy was it? You made me talk to you though, and I am thankful for that. We were really starting back out in a wonderful place again, and then you died. I am glad it was after we dealt with things, but why did you have to go so soon? I don't want to be the strong woman. I want to be your wife who leans on your for help. I don't want to be someone everyone is proud of for doing so well. I want to be your wife and running the house and taking care of you and planning our lives together. We didn't get to take all of the boys camping. We never even used the RV together. We had such nice plans.

I thought I was ready to say good bye to you, I thought I had. But I haven't, and I'm not. I can't even watch a video of you without feeling like I want life to end right now so I can be with you. I know that you wouldn't want that because there is something here for me to do, including taking care of our boys and who knows what God has in store for them. Talk to God about making life easier for me with them huh? He gave us three beautiful, smart and rambunctious boys, and I just want to keep them away from all of the bad things in life like every parent. I just pray that I can be the mom they need to help them develop the character and faith they need to make it. If they have half of what you had, they will be fine. You made it through a lot of junk to become a strong, proud, loving, and honorable man, and I expect they will too. I just hope that it isn't through too many trials both for their sake and mine. We talk about you all the time, and the boys remember things they did with you, or that you said to them. It makes me happy to hear them remember you. We pray every night that we remember you from day to day. You are still a very big part of our lives though you aren't here. We haven't been through every season and holiday without you yet. Something will come up and it will feel like yesterday. Especially things that happend this summer, when you were still here, very much alive and we had big plans. Mickey, you were so full of life and love, we could never forget you. I pray that at least one of the boys have your sense of humor and goofiness. It was made you you.

I make some plans. I am going to get a pole barn like we had planned. I need a place to put the boat, and the car or truck, the paddle boat, the RV. I want to take care of those things and I don't have the help to do what I need to do with them during the change of seasons. Shane agreed to finish the floor of the boat and I will hold him to that. I won't be able to do much with it by myself I don't think, but I can learn. I want to have the boys out fishing and playing in the water as we would have had been doing. I will take them camping as much as I can. I will take them to Maine to experience where you grew up and all the adventures you had there, all of your old camping spots and stomping grounds. Someday I will finish the garage for another bedroom and a family room. I will still need the space with three teenage boys. You wanted them to all have their own rooms anyway. I think that I might adopt another boy someday though. I thought about that before you died, and I think that it would be a good thing to do. I don't know what God has in store for me, but I will just trust that He knows what He is doing and accept what He sends my way.

It feels good to write to you like this Mickey. I wish that you could write back. I feel better receiving that email from you though it was from two years ago, I know that it did and does still ring true. I have all of the letters you sent from Kuwait the first time, and the emails we exchanged before we got married, and then all of the Iraq letters. I will always cherish those. They will always be a testament and a reminder of the love that we shared with eachother. I will take good care of your boys honey. They are my world, my life and they are more precious to me than anything. I will always remind them of you and how much you loved and enjoyed them. I love seeing pictures of you guys together. I love Mickey Lee.