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overgrown vegetation, providing me a place to retreat undetected to suffer with the most excruciating pain I have ever experienced.
Hidden alone among the tall brush, I tried to make God have it not be true. I begged God to take me with him. I promised everything that was holy if only He would put us together again – here in life, or there in death. I wanted to be with him more than wanting life itself. Violent convulsions, my mind screaming in terror and grief, I prayed God to make me lose consciousness, to die, escape into nothingness where the pain couldn’t reach me. I wanted to go be with him. Yelling with such bile, I cursed God for taking him and begged Him to take me too. I’d make a deal with the devil if God didn’t come through for me.
My cursing at God continued to burst from my throat between calls to Anthony to come back to me. Each wail wrenched the strength from my body. I willed my heart to stop, my lungs to cease, for death to come to me. I had lost complete control.
I must have been there for hours. I just don’t know. I was completely drained of the will to go on. I knew I was alone with my grief. I knew that I couldn’t explain to anyone how I felt or why. I didn’t believe that anyone would understand how I felt or that they would care. I would be carrying this agonizing grief alone for always.
Daylight had turned to night, the moon nearly full, glowing in the violet sky, and the first stars glimmered. I must have lost consciousness. I had vomited on myself. My face was marked with tears and mucous and grief; raging that death didn’t come to me.
I was truly alone, as I had always expected to be before Anthony gave me a glimpse of what life could be like. I missed him so much. The light in his eyes, his low and soft voice, his tender lips, and the warmth of his embrace gave me hope that I too can be forever happy in this lifetime. But it wasn’t to be. Alone again with my demons, the same demons he had banished from my world for so short a time, the same demons that would cause him to take his own life.