We are getting close to a year. I can feel it. I know it’s coming, not from the season change, the start of a school year, but from the ache in my heart.

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The tension grows in my shoulders.

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Each morning that you sleep late, I grow anxious. Do I go check, and wake you, or do I trust, and wait?

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Damn pinwheels. I’ll never look at one the same. Each time we do the test, you have to blow on a pinwheel. Last year, the front porch looked cute, decorated in pinwheels. No one knew they came from the hospital. No one knew they helped show activity in your brain.

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I still worry when you say odd things. You tell me some fantastical story, animated, excited, I ask questions, trying to determine if it is your imagination or if the hallucinations somehow came back.

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The hallucinations.

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I would have never survived that night if you hadn’t come to help. The terror in his eyes. The calm I tried to produce. The real calm you brought with you. The peace of Christ you prayed over us as we slept. You sat guard. Graham Crackers and Dance Moves. You had a way of showing up on the days I needed you most.

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Now you sit with him when he blows on the pinwheels. Me in the chair, you two sitting in the bed, all of us laughing with the tech. We take turns snuggling with him, playing games with him, making him comfortable, you making me comfortable. By my side. Now I have someone to help me carry those damn pinwheels home.