I Still Miss You

Not a day goes by where I don’t think about you or miss you

I still expect to see you some days when I get home

I still hope to hear you call I haven’t been able to bring myself to delete your number from my phone

It feels like a last nail in the coffin you didn’t have

Since you were cremated according to your wishes

I long to hear your voice again

But instead, I’m just haunted by memories and pictures

Trying to live up to the faith and pride you had in me

I’ll never see your face again on this earth

I’ll never be wrapped up again in your warm embrace while I still live

I have hope for the future when we shall be reunited

But I’m stuck here in this never-ending life that rushes on without you

But I still miss you

It’s a bittersweet thing to still be here without you

When I was young I thought you would live forever

As I grew older, I realized that wasn’t true

I realized that you would die before me and I’d have to live without you

I just didn’t think it’d be so soon

I hate not having you here I hate not being able to see you or hang out with you

As much as I raged against it I knew the cancer would be the thing to steal you from us

I got angry and I cried but nothing prepared me for that last week

For those last few days in hospice

Where you no longer responded

Where you were no longer conscious

Where you just stayed unconscious and cried out in pain

Nothing prepared me for the loss of you or that waking nightmare I found myself in while you were in hospice

Where we kept telling you it was okay to let go but your body didn’t know how to give up

Thos long anxious days where nothing could distract me enough those long anxious nights filled with the knowledge that you were slipping away from me

All the wasted time and missed opportunities

Now forever beyond my reach

As you lay dying in a hospital bed so near yet so far away

Unresponsive and unknowable

Every day I miss you and wish I could turn the clock back and just spend more time with you

Every day my heart aches and I just keep on

Keeping on

I have only 1 real regret and that’s that I didn’t spend more time with you

In memory of Jimmy Francis 09/25/1958-10/14/2024