In so many ways, I have recently grown to dislike April.  I’d never preferred spring in the first place, having always been more partial to the extremes of hot summers and chilly winters.  But lately it has become particularly unlucky.  In April of 2015 I experienced a miscarriage.  And in 2016, Beckett’s diagnosis fell in the last week of March, with April close behind to become the month when the full brunt of what we were taking on truly settled in.  But before these last few, I had many Aprils that started with a celebration for Tyler and I.  When we met each other over cups of coffee on a cool April night in 2004, tragedy was far and away from my mind.  I was falling in love.

I have made lots of new friends in the last year, but there wasn’t always a lot of time for pleasantries like “how did the two of you meet” with what was taking place in our lives.  Tyler and I’s relationship was more of a stated fact where Beckett and his situation were concerned.  For others who have known us longer, it’s something they may have read about many times before.  I almost always say something on each anniversary we share.  I’m not ashamed of it.  I really love Tyler and I love to commemorate my love for him.  He makes me feel something I want to commemorate all of the time.  Some have frequently thought we were a little obnoxious.  The truth is I just love him so astounding an amount that I can’t help it.  And that crazy love I feel isn’t for my spouse.  I feel it for Tyler.  Sure, they are one and the same, and I am keen on being married to him.  But what pounds through my heart for him started well before I called him husband.  He was seventeen, spontaneous, and bursting with energy.  I smile when I remember him how I met him.  I am smiling writing this now.

See?  Obnoxious.  If you think this is bad, you should have seen us then.  Teenagers and obsessed.  We couldn’t keep our hands off of each other and our friends were subjected to the result.  Endless phone calls and as many seconds as we could steal together.  When thinking about it now though, I still don’t fault us one bit.  I have an excuse now.  I had found my companion and I started living that truth the moment I laid eyes on Tyler.  He electrified me.

When a story takes a sad turn like the one ours did in 2016, you end up learning about a lot of other sad stories.  The most common comment that we received as we walked through Beckett’s life was “don’t let this effect you marriage.”  At first, it seemed like so outlandish a subject matter to discuss that I would literally laugh it off.  It has been said that this was a really inappropriate thing for people to be saying to us.  I guess I initially thought that too.  But then the fate of our marriage was discussed so frequently, by those close to us and by complete strangers, as becoming possible collateral damage that it became normal conversation in our abnormal situation.  The longer I am a part of the loss community, the more I realize that divorce and separation happen constantly in it.  The truth is that each person entered the situation as one person and a different person came out.  And sometimes two people who had entered together aren’t meant to be together anymore as the people they have become.  I know that the persons who warned us were looking out for us and had the best of intent.  It was real concern often borne of experience.

But it really was laughable to me.  Because my love for Tyler can’t be separated from me.  He is intertwined in to my soul now.  He laid his path in days long since past what happened this year.  Many of our new friends have often praised me for my relentlessness and my ability to inform.  Tyler is the true strength and courage though.  He believed Beckett would overcome at every turn.  Where I was left broken and struggling, Tyler was there to hold our family together and insist that everything was going to turn out alright.  My fear of Beckett’s death only benefited us during those few final days when my calculating mind had already made decisions and thought through horrifying circumstances.  Tyler’s encouragement is what had carried us the lion’s share of the way.  If you know Tyler, it can’t surprise you.  He is enthusiasm itself.  He is joy and the best kind of deviant.  He is mischief and fun.  He is warmth and goodness. I knew what I had then and I know what I have now.  So here it is, another love letter, after years of countless ones before.  Thirteen years of living my journey with the man I adore.

How many songs or poems or late night speeches between us darling?  But I will write them forever because you inspire them one by one.  Our life grows bigger each year together, and our garden blooms in new ways.  It’s a place we have built together and I am honored you choose always to tend to it with me.  It is a garden I am so grateful our daughter can dance in, and am so sorry we had to bury our son in.  But still each day we both come to it and work in it, side by side.  Thank you for carrying this sorrow with me now, but thank you even more for floating on this adulation with me first.  Happy anniversary.