DIJA'S SECOND ACT

Dear Lorenzo, As well you know (because I brag about it as much as is humanly possible) I have better than 20/20 vision. I've been tested more than once and each time the results are the same: in spite of my age, MS diagnosis, and years of reading in the dark, my eyesight is really, really good.  It is good enough to clearly make out the list of daily disciplines I keep taped to the mirror atop my bureau. And it is good enough to glean the disappointment reflected back at me each and every time I don't accomplish these tasks. The first four items on my list are the easiest of the day: "three things, vitamin, antidepressant, 40 minutes". In the almost four years since you've been gone, or rather, in the almost three years since I've been able to get off of the futon again, I've made a habit of starting my day by writing down three things for which I am grateful. After that, I eat a banana (your breakfast of choice every single day for the alm...

Dear Lorenzo, I'm starting to forget you. You've been gone almost four years now and it no longer feels like it happened "just yesterday". I no longer anticipate the sounds of you talking to Dwight on speaker phone to awaken me from a deep slumber. I no longer remember the order in which you ate your cereals, one right after the other, from the large blue plastic bowl I now use to dress my salads. I no longer remember your smell, it having been laundered out of your clothing long ago. I am starting to forget the details of our life. It doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would and maybe that's what sucks the most. The...ordinariness of my forgetting you. It's just another indication of time's passage. We have a dog now, Butters, and Amira has a cell phone and a social group to which she belongs and... We're moving on. I didn't want it to happen but... We're moving on. You're in our hearts but no longer a part of our dai...