Three Years

 Three years I have awakened on August 31st, opened my eyes and remembered. His birthday and he isn't here. Three years I have picked up my phone to find hugs and tears and love from my sisters who are holding my pieces before I even wake up and remember I'm still broken. Three years my eyes have flooded over with waves of water. Not tear drops, those are little droplets. This is more like water over a cliff. Multnomah Falls pouring and nothing I do will stop it.
  I get out of bed in the dark room and hear my boy playing. He's gleefully blabbering on about something to his daddy, and I hear the silence of my other boy who would most likely be fighting for his turn in the speechification. I go brush my teeth and that waterfall pours into my mouth around the toothbrush. I wash my face and it's still wet after I dry it. I've done this for three years.
  I didn't actually think this whole business was gonna last for three years. I was pretty sure I'd just wake up dead some morning from a broken heart because it hurts so bad some days. But I'm here.
  They say I'm strong. They don't know how I've done it. I'm not strong. I'm just really good at pretending. I've learned how long the mask will hold and I leave the public before it's breaking point is reached. I hate crying in public because it makes me feel like I'm some attention seeking freako, so in August I stay home and avoid people with eyes or any sort of sympathetic looks. Nice people make me cry like a fountain in August.
  I'm still here and I have kept going because there is technically nothing else to do. It's not some superhuman form of strength that keeps me upright and mobile. It's the fact I have kids I got to keep, and they eat food and get dirty and I need to provide food and bathing at certain intervals in the days. I get dressed in the morning unless I have something dreadful like the flu or a migraine happening. Because, like I said in the decades past when it had been three weeks instead of three years, "Just because I feel like shit doesn't mean I have to dress like shit." Plus it makes me feel worse if I don't have real clothes on. Not only that, but when I'm dressed I can wear my Trucker wife shirt that reminds me I'm brave and fierce and purposeful.
  So today, when it's been three years since I met my boy and almost three years since I watched him breathe on the webcam and had hope, I'm dressed and wearing my shirt. The only thing tougher than a trucker is a trucker's wife. Besides all the good things this shirt does, it makes me laugh and that's a good thing when it's been three years.