My mind, so fragile and unstable, replayed the procession over and over again.  I wanted to forget.  I didn't want to remember.  I didn't want to feel.  The ache, the burn that made its way slowly through my heart refused to relent.

I would do anything to prevent those memories from flooding in and drowning all the remaining purpose I had to continue living.

Grief, with its hungry, greedy jaws, latched onto me.  It blinded my sight, numbed my senses, and delivered to me indescribable pain.

I imagined what would happen if I lost control; if my grip on the present and past started to slip, overwhelming bitterness finally taking over and launching me off the edge of sanity.

I imagined myself, lost in my world of pure misery, ripping at my own chest to tear out my smoldering heart.  My heart, his heart.

I imagined myself on the ground, far beyond the outmost borders of sanity, cursing the world for everything it had bestowed on me.  Life played me like a game.  It knew my weaknesses; it knew just how vulnerable I was; it knew how to win; it knew how to cheat.

Sadness, anger, bitterness...I was a slave to all of those emotions, unable to free myself, yet lacking the will to try or even care.

I would beg on my knees at the feet of the devil; beg him to grant me death, beg for him to strip me of the unbearable, endless waves of grief that had my world bursting at the already broken seams.

Each blow to my heart was just as violent and painful as the previous, if not more.  It didn't end.  It refused to give me respite.  It took all I had left in me to endure the excruciating pain silently.

Inside, I was crying.

Inside, I was dying.

Inside, I was screaming, falling, breaking.

I was crumbling to pieces, and he wasn't there to help hold me together.  He was gone.

I lifted my head, momentarily surfacing from my miserable sea of tears, to gaze once again at his face; the face that had for so long lit up my life and given purpose to my existence.

He was so beautiful, even in death.  His face, sweet and smiling, was utterly peaceful.  Though I knew he wasn't hurting, though I knew he was no longer in pain, the knowledge was not enough to distract me from the reality that I was hurting; that I was in pain.

I let my eyes savor the sight of him, refusing to accept the fact that it was the last time I would be able to do so.  I marveled at the perfection of his full lips, his high cheekbones, his long, tapered eyelashes.

I pictured him as he was when he was alive - radiating happiness and spreading it like a disease.  His death only brought on a contagious round of heartsickness that, once infected with, you couldn't get rid of.  I was on the brink of depression, not knowing when I might just tip.

I had never been identified as a martyr.  I had no right to be.  Now, I wished I were.

Maybe then I would have the strength to move on and endure the pain; endure the endless suffering that my world, void of his face, his voice, his laugh, his love, would curse me with.

To be at his side, simply happy to be with him, I would do anything.

The casket lid began to close, and a creature deep within the depths of my soul, began to howl and keen in absolute agony.  I couldn't go on.  I couldn't bear it.  The curtain of death closing on his perfect face sent my mind into swirling nothingness.  It was dark, cold, and empty.

I had to rekindle any feeling that would remind me that I was alive.  I had to do something that would destroy the impression I gave myself that without him, I was dysfunctional and pathetic.  I had to feel something.

Realization pounded into me, sending my mind wheeling for an anchor.  That anchor, the one thing that could possibly ease all of my pain...it was so simple.

I could join him and release the emotions that were beginning to overflow.  I was suffocating in my own flaming, scorching pain.  I needed to escape, and I knew what I had to do.

I could once again be comforted by the mere fact of knowing we were together.

I could once again hear his laugh, not a memory of it or the ghost of it.

I could once again see his smile; the shining beacon that would continue to be my everything.

I could once again feel him safe in my arms, warming my heart just knowing he belonged to me.

With every ticking second, the answer to my worries drawing near, I see us - happy, together, in love - more and more clearly. 

I'm drawing the curtain on my own life, hitting the spotlights and shining them on the future; the future where he and I are once again side by side.