I Won't See You Tonight

Cry alone, I've gone away.
No more nights, no more pain.

She wanted to be in the dress I bought her when she died. The pretty red dress that she loved. The dress I bought her for our housewarming party. I didn’t think it’d be so soon, I didn‘t think I‘d see that dress again until we we‘re both old and to frail to remember our promises that we made, except for the ones that we made that afternoon. ‘for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.’

I've gone alone, took all my strength.
But I've made the change, I won't see you tonight.

Our story was all over the news ‘Tragedy strikes for newlyweds in fatal head-on collision’. He was drunk, I wasn’t paying attention. It was my fault, I killed Kathryn Linn Sanders. We never had a chance together, it all happened to quickly. I was so happy to finally be married, Kate was the love of my life. We we’re joined in a courtyard of a hotel, overlooking the rolling waves of the sparkling pacific ocean. It was beautiful, what we didn’t know, is that this would be the last time we’d ever feel like this. That night was the final moment I would ever be truly happy.

Sorrow, sank deep inside my blood
All the ones around me, I cared for and loved.

We hurried home after the reception, wanting every moment of or new life together. Kate’s beautiful smile laced from ear to ear. I could have seen the car coming, but I was to busy laughing and telling Kate how she had made me the luckiest, and happiest man in the world. The collision came in an instant. I instantly blacked. They said if I hadn’t, I probably would have been dead. I would have over corrected, I would have fucked something else up for myself. The engine was hissing and sirens we’re off in the distance, that’s all I heard when I came to. I whispered her name, my voice horse and cracked. But, she wouldn’t respond, I couldn’t find her. My eyes burned as I reached for her hand through the tangled dashboard. Shards of plastic and metal tangled around my outstretched limb like thistles. The window was obliterated, chips of glass strewn across the asphalt. I screamed her name for what seemed like a lifetime. But, Kate was missing from the passenger seat.

But I can't see myself that way.
Please don't forget me or cry while I'm away.

They found her behind the guardrail twenty-feet from the car, A final resting place she didn’t deserve. She had been ejected from the vehicle on impact and died instantly. The restraints had failed. It was a cocktail for disaster. I was told that Kate died with a smile on her face, she hadn’t see the car coming in our lane. She didn’t feel the impact of the glass against her skull. She didn’t feel the pavement and the metal scraping against her back. But she felt me, she held my hand only moments before her final breath. And even if I had remembered that moment, even if Kate had seen the car, it wouldn’t have mattered. The smile she left for me was from a force stronger than death. The simple love we possessed stopped her heart with such joy, something that is unheard of in tragedy. Still, I laid in bed at night, holding a picture to my chest, a picture of us. Phone calls poured in from family and friends, I didn’t want to talk. I couldn’t tell them she had died and why I continued to lay in this bed without her by my side.

Building up inside of me.
A place so dark, so cold, I had to set me free.

I told her mother about her wish, to be buried in the red dress and she was. On a muggy Sunday morning, Kate was buried alongside her father. I kept trying to convincing myself that this was all an act. She would open her eyes, and say that she loved me, that we could start our life together. We could start this over, without flaw. The way marriage was suppose to be, the way we were suppose to be.

Don't mourn for me, you're not the one to place the blame.
As bottles called my name, I won't see you tonight.

Requested during the burial, I stood at the foot of her casket, surrounded by her family and some of mine. Slowly, my love descended into the earth, where everything is created, and everything returns. I wasn’t ready to give her up, she hadn’t seen the world, she barely got a glimpse. Her mother cried a river that afternoon, her only daughter was taken on the happiest day of her life. I clutched behind my folded hands, an envelope. Something you might see everyday that held the power to shatter lives. I presented her mother, Mrs. Porter, with the contents. The grim results of an autopsy she had once seen so many years before, with the header under her sweet child’s name. Kate was pregnant, that was her secret. Her best friend was the one who had broken the news after the service. She was waiting until we arrived home to tell me. Her message was never delivered, our future forever stunted in one, painless second.

So far away, I'm gone. Please don't follow me tonight.
And while I'm gone, everything will be alright.

Every day Kathryn was gone, I became less of a human. I eliminated myself from the outside, leaving no explanation to my disappearance. I couldn’t eat, sleep, or even get out of bed for that fact. I stayed in bed for days at a time, watching our wedding video or staring at the ceiling. My physique withered away to nothing from deprivation of both food and energy. I was in a downward spiral without her, deep into depression, to far in to claw my way out. Prescription pills became the next obsession, and I took them by the bottleload. Taking the right amount at the right time, I never seemed to go over the mental, or physical, capacity line. Once coming off, I couldn’t help but think of her, and how she must be ashamed. Popping pills to ease the pain, or to leave it behind. I’d become nothing but another junkie rockstar, calming himself with an artificial substance.

No more breath inside
Essence left my heart tonight.

They found my body on the morning of March 5th, 115 pounds, a mixture of white and sage hued vomit streaming down my cheek. A bottle of Vicodin capsules completely empty on the side desk along with a note, a note I had typed the night before on Kate’s typewriter. The police department cited my case as a suicide. Yet, I can assure you, it was no suicide, this was a death wish. When you die, there is no tunnel, there is no white light. There are only memories, only the good, only the life changing.

That is heaven.

Those final seconds, the tiny gasps of air, the oxygen racing from the brain. The slow cool of organs, the images, the simple fade to black.

Wise men have looked for years to the answer of what happens after life, where we go when we die. That place is far from a paradise with golden gates, heaven is here on earth. Heaven are the moments that take your breath away. And every breath you lose is replaced in the fade. Like falling into the ocean, floating to the dark.

Love is heaven, and that I will never forget as I sink.