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Dear Lorenzo,

It's Monday, 9:31 p.m. and I'm just finishing up a late dinner of Amy's No-Chicken Noodle soup, eight Wheat Thins and half an ounce of cheese. (Not exactly fine dining, I know, but since I don't often eat dinner, this is still an improvement.)

While some parts of my life have markedly changed (new job, newfound ability to go outside in clothes that didn't once belong to you) others remain the same. I wake up every morning at around 6:00 a.m. and turn on the TV to catch the weather, before eventually making my way to the dining room to work out. By the time I get on the elliptical at 7:00 a.m., the TV is on and the channel has been changed to ESPN, where it will remain for the entirety of my workday. 

This habit started out of necessity. Until the day you died it never actually occurred to me that you might not be coming home from the rehab facility. And so, even though the DVR was still recording all of your daily sports shows, I began watching them in earnest, preparing for your homecoming, when I'd be able to catch you up on everything you'd missed since the accident. 

It never occurred to me that I'd never get that chance. 

After you died I couldn't sleep in our bedroom anymore, electing instead to relocate all of my heartbreak and despair to the futon in our dining room.

This is where I would remain for the next year of my life. 

I kept the door to our bedroom closed, venturing in only to get dressed or to put away clean laundry. I fell asleep, as I still do, with the TV on ESPN because it's what we did when you were still here. In the mornings, I'd awaken to the sounds of Mike and Mike discussing the day's biggest sports stories and in those moments...I still had a small piece of you to which I could hold on. While I would never again hear you and Dwight discussing the draft, or the Bear's chances of making it to the playoffs, while I would never again laugh at you for analyzing the games as though you were about to take the field yourself... for two hours every morning, I could listen to Mike and Mike and pretend that you were still here. 

By the time the shock had begun to wear off I was addicted to ESPN. Mike and Mike had been replaced by a new show hosted by Michael Greenberg called Get Up.

A show co-hosted by a rotating panel of Black men. 

Black men who talk about football, every, single day.

I'd watch that show and I'd let myself remember.

I'd watch that show and let myself pretend that you were still here, still staying at the rehab facility, still waiting to come home so that I could fill you in on the day's top stories.

Lorenzo, I don't know that I will ever get over this.

Get over you.

People say, "Don't cry, he's in a better place" and I get that, hell I say it too. But whenever I HEAR it, whenever someone attempts to placate me with that idiotic, BULLSHIT ASS platitude, my response, uttered only in my head of course, is always the same. 

"But what about me? He may be in a better place, but I'm not. What about me? What the fuck am I supposed to do now?"

It's been damn near five years and I still don't have the answer to that question.

I have absolutely no idea what comes next.