Ten and thirty years

Ten years since our "Happily Ever After" was taken away.

We had just sent in the last payment on your car and we were supposed to go to Outback later that night to celebrate.

Instead, the sheriff's deputy and I were in the apartment, going through the medication lockbox that I insisted on having installed due to then-recent events, counting all the patches, pills, and bottles, as paramedics took you to the nearby emergency room from which you never returned, and I had to call your kids from the hospital to tell them I found their mother unconscious and unresponsive on the floor and that she might not make it. Ten years ago this happened. It was June 10, 1996, when you were finally allowed to pass on.

The medical examiner's report a week or so later concluded accidental overdose. I concluded a body that just couldn't take any more and gave up. Either way, the result is the same: gone far too soon when there were so many happier days together yet to be lived. You were Belle with that tiara on every time we went to the parks; and I always had to answer with a slightly growled but gentle 'yes' when Belle would point at me during the meet 'n' greet and ask, "Oh, and is that your Beast?" 

The two plushes in the center of the photo above are from the two leading ladies of my life.

The Belle toy I bought for V. during one of my many times in the Disney parks. 

The Mickey Mouse just to the right of her, the story is that my dad bought it for Mom while he was deployed in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. I ended up with it when Mom passed away on December 14, 1996—thirty years ago this year—at the age of 49 from cancer.

Dad and I both lost loves too soon. Fortunately for him, he was granted a new one, and they've celebrated 28 years together.

For a number of reasons, I won't have another one.