Listing

I tried to make a coherent post today, but instead, I found myself playing endless games of minesweeper, unable to focus. Instead, I will list, in no particular order, the things I miss the most about Keith:

The huge, messy plates of cheesy nachos that he would make, using all sorts of strange ingredients like ketchup and Doritos, or pepperoni, and how excited he would be about this, describing it as "bangin'" and assuring me that they would be the best nachos I had ever eaten. (Usually they were.)

Hearing country music played so loudly from his speakers in the garage that they would reach to the bedroom in the house, and knowing by this sound, that he was there, and happily engaged in some project.

Sitting outside on the front steps while he watered the lawn and hearing him talk earnestly and passionately about the best way to water a lawn; or equally often, watching him water the lawn from his seat on the four wheeler, and giving in and sitting on it with him after he pestered me long enough to do so, and then wondering what on earth the neighbors must think of us.

Him coming home from PT and throwing his huge and sweaty self across the bed to bury his face in my neck and declare that he must have kisses and that he lived for them.


The savory and smoky scent from the grill on summer evenings, with classic country songs playing, like Conway Twitty singing, "Hello Darling," and the dogs surging happily around under foot, looking for things to be dropped.

Waking up in the night to find that he had migrated all the way over to my side, where I lay, squashed between his heavy, sleeping self and the edge of the bed, and trying to wake him up enough to get him to roll over. (The only way to do this was to sweet talk him into it.)

Him telling me that he was absolutely going to say up til ten or more, and spend the entire time in the garage, only to find him in our bed at eight, talking to the dogs about my sneaky plan to domesticate him and how Abby would have to watch his back.

The way he could never experience anything good unless he were telling his friends about it, so that he was always on the phone, and hearing the incredibly cheerful and carelessly profane way he would greet them, with the usual, apparently necessary, round of profane insults exchanged before moving on to conversation.

Calling and talking with him on every one of my breaks at work and knowing that when I got home from my evening shift, I would find him there, all the lights on, and dinner saved for me in the refrigerator, sometimes with a message from him scrawled on it in marker.

Driving anywhere in the HD, feeling how solid and powerful it was, with the windows down, and watching his hands on the wheel, so large and capable, and feeling how content and at ease he was in those moments, and occasionally "eating"(passing) a Ford truck just because he could.

Brushing our teeth together and him insisting on kissing me despite toothpaste smeared lips and toothbrushes and his irrepressible grin afterward.

Oh, what the hell, I just miss everything.