This is a Really Real Widow Post.

Laying in bed, flipping through the pictures from 6 years ago today.

Wedding photos, taken at the court house, my mother behind the camera taking a dozen shots for every pose to make sure she got the perfect one.

I have over 100 edited pictures from that day, saying our vows . . . standing around with family and friends . . . Parker and Draven and I holding the marriage licence that meant so much to us . . . cutting the rainbow cake and feeding it to each other, almost neatly.

I’m in a shirt with huge flowers that I said was perfect, but really, it was the only thing in my budget that I could find last minute that had any green in it.  Green was my favorite color back then.  The shirt is not my favorite, but it worked, and I still have it and will never get rid of it.

We were smiling, real smiles that went all the way to our eyes.

Flipping through the phone and looking at the pictures on Timehop I wonder if the people in those pictures have any idea how much life can change in 6 short years.

Parker and I thought we knew.  We had been through so much in the 6 years we had been together at that point.  But really, we had no idea.

She was such a light in this world and it’s hard, sometimes, to look at those pictures and realize that it’s a light that’s gone out.

It’s hard to see the smile that goes to her eyes and realize those eyes are shut forever.

Those lips will never form that smile.

And I found myself looking through the pictures and ignoring her part in them all.  I couldn’t look at her face, her eyes almost shut because her smile was so big.  I couldn’t look at the way she was looking at me with adoration.  I couldn’t let myself see what was really there because seeing that meant realizing what’s really gone.

Today I have been replaying that day in my mind, over, and over, and over.  It was the bright spot in the middle of some really dark times for us.  I look at those pictures and see how much joy there is on her face and it’s so hard to believe that the depression won.

How?

How did something manage to put out that bright light of hers?

I thought I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with Parker, and I wasn’t.  But she was supposed to spend the rest of her life with me.

I miss my ghost wife.  I miss her smile, the way here eyes squinted and you knew it was a real smile.  I miss a lot of little things that most people don’t even think about.

I even miss our fights.

I want her back in this world.

The world deserves her light.

Happy Anniversary up there my firefly.