Today began like any other day. Things to do, kids to watch, stuff to cook except this is not just another day. Remember the band Extreme? The song “Hole Hearted” and the lyric “there’s a hole in my heart that can only be filled by you?” Well after 14 years these are the days where I really feel the hole in my heart even though she is still here, the pieces of her are everywhere.

My memories are far away as I travel down a road that was unlooked for and unplanned. Sometimes I have to remind myself that these things happened and it becomes a story I tell myself.

These are the days I cook, it is practical as well as engrossing. Today I made hamburger soup and I realized it is a recipe of halves. I make it half when I am feeling cozy and good and half when I feel like shit. I guess it was meant to be on a rainy summer day that happens to be my anniversary. However The Captain and I also have a thing about cake. Perhaps it is a way to figuratively as well as literally sweeten the sour. Today is a peach upside down cake. It will be half right side up and half right side down.

I am at the stage today that I am also of halves. Half of me knows I can smile, and laugh at funny things but the other half of me always knows and the hole in my heart travels from my chest all the way down to my stomach. It aches and I want to curl around it but I can’t. I have to stand up and walk, and laugh and smile and take deep breaths and cook because I know it is what she would want.