Generally speaking I don't look too closely at the pictures around my house these days. I don't move them for the sake of my kids but it's also hard to look at them or think about them too much. Tonight I stood upstairs and stared at a picture of Joe for a long time. It's weird but I feel like I can practically hear his voice and feel his whiskery face. He's so alive. I can't believe I will not see him again.

It kills me that his face, along with the rest of his body is in a grave a mile from here. That sounds so harsh and awful but it is reality. Regardless of any beliefs anyone has about what happens to a soul when they die, there is no dispute about where the body goes.

That's my husband's body with no life in it. It's the body that used to walk through the door every night at 5:30 and yell "daddy's home!". The one that made fires for me in the living room. The one who's arms wrapped around my children every night. The body that held more knowledge about me than anyone else on this earth. The one that I was going to spend the rest of my life with.

The same body that I saw laying in a hospital bed one and only one time in all of the years that I knew him.

That's my husband's body with no life in it.

Why did I have to see that?