Joe 16

This is my 516th post.

Today is 05.16.2010. That means it's been one month and 12 days since Joe passed away.

It still seems so surreal. I caught a glimpse of a man in the grocery store the other day, and thought for a moment it was him. Then I remembered. And then I cried standing next to the frozen food section.

Last Thursday night I had a dream about him. It was one of those third-party dreams where you watch yourself but have no control over what's going on. I was watching myself watch a video of Joe and Sarah, another friend from high school, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. I spent the entire dream trying to isolate their voices, blocking out the wind and the distance and whatever else was hindering my listening capabilities.

Finally, right before I woke up, I heard his voice. I heard Joe's voice for the first time in over a month, in my sleep, right around 5AM. He was proposing to Sarah in the dream, which seems comical and bittersweet seeing as how they were best friends in real life, band buddies but deeper than that still.

I'm pretty sure I woke up crying. Or maybe I was sweating. Either way, it was a startling way to start the day and I spent the rest of Friday trying to hear him again in my head. It never happened.

More and more days pass by where I find myself thinking about him without tearing up. I want to go visit his grave. I meant to go on his birthday. I still think about his family, still try to send whatever vibes of love and remorse I can their way. It's still hard to grasp, that he's gone. That he's not coming back home for the summer.

School will be over soon for big and little kids alike. I still expect to see his little gray car zooming down the road. I want to see him again. I want to be able to bump into him at the grocery store or at the park or at a football game. I want to sit down with him again and talk, just talk about anything and everything. It's never going to happen. Never again.

And that's the hardest part. Knowing that the only times I'll talk to him will be in my sleep, in those dreams that come and go, where I have no control over the time, the movies playing out in my head. I hope it doesn't take another month for me to see or hear him again. I hope the dreams come sooner than that.

Because the days in between the dreams seem to be ticking by slower and slower than ever.