Dearest Tsiki (From Susi)

Dearest Tsiki,

Next week marks a month since you've left us. The shock of your death
has passed and the pain in my heart becomes a physical reminder of the
unbelievable devastation your family, friends and myself have gone
through.

Every night I look forward to sleep, to temporarily numb myself from
the reality that I must wake up every morning knowing I won't have
your voice in my ear to make the day worth going through.

When I first met you and we parted, and every time thereafter, there
was an element of shock to accepting your absence. A week before you
died, we ecstatically looked forward to your trip to the Oklahoma. It
would have been the last time we would have to say goodbye to one
another, for I was moving to Israel and we were going to start
something we always dreamt together about, which was to never saying
goodbye again.

Tsiki, I still can't bear the thought that we will never have that day
where we never say goodbye That every moment I breath in or feel the
warm tears flowing from my cheeks it's another moment without you. And
every morning I wake up, it's another day farther from the last time I
saw you instead of towards the day I would see you again.

When I go to the bathroom, and wash my face. I am reminded when I
bought my face wash and think "this bottle was full before this all
happened". I look at my clothes and my books I brought and think "I
picked these out before this all happened". There are times where I
think: has it been already a month?? And then other times where my
tears are flowing and my heart is aching for the life you lost and the
life I lost with you when I don't remember what it was like before all
of this, before I lost my father and then you. You are everywhere with
me because I never imagined a day without you. I imagine and hope you
are sitting next to me on the swing at the park, that you are aching
and miss me as much as I do you. Are you?

Before all of this happened, I believed in a god, in spirituality. I
prayed every night and accepted all the hard things in life. I
accepted the challenges everyday life brought me. The solitude Peace
Corps life brought me, how I was forced to face myself in ways I never
knew how- throughout this year I have thought and thought and my
conclusion before your death was this: everything I chose in life
brought me to you.

This is why my days are empty. This is why the sun shines in my face
every morning and I don't feel it, and when the day ends I am simply
surprised that it completed itself.

I always told you my favorite quote: Tis' better to have loved and
lost than to have never loved at all. I always took that to mean any
relationship in general. Now, this quote has such a painful
connotation.

I never wanted to be the person I am right now. That girl, poor girl.
"She's young, she'll get over it, she'll move on" they say. They
didn't know our love did they? How we loved one another crazily and
passionately, perfectly. Do they know how we would argue the name of
our first born, or how you told me I could convert as a reform Jew and
we marry in Cyprus or to an Orthodox one and marry in Israel. Do they
know how we decided that we didn't have to wait until a ripe old age
to have children, that we were both ready for each other and a family
in the near future? Many did, many didn't. This heartache will never
cease my love. This heartache I welcome, I never want it to leave.

I never wanted to lose you, or have this pain of having to realize
each day that it is another day without the most blessed gift I have
ever known. You.

I miss you.

Susi