When my dad died, I figured out this trick for dealing with the pain. Because it would come in waves, you know. And then, just like a wave, eventually it passed, so I'd just start to count. One, two, three, sometimes twenty sometimes a hundred. Sometimes I make it all the way up to three thousand. I knew if I could just keep on counting, that eventually it would pass. So when, when Gabriel died, I tried that again. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and I'd be sweating and I'd just feel that darkness bearing down on me and I'd try counting, but this time it just wouldn't work becasue it's too dark and I'd forget the numbers, and I'd forget what order they're supposed to come in and the only thing, the only thing that made it better for me, made it so I could just breathe, just for a second, was you. And I thought if we could just keep on moving forward, if we could just move forward that eventually everything was gonna get better. It didn't get better. It just got worse. Sometimes I wonder if it's him. That this is his way of telling us if he can't be there, then we can't either.

Cole