My beautiful and wonderful Sophia –

It was on a sunny afternoon when you asked me “that question.” Though said in jest, it brought my heart to its knees. You were not feeling well and I had brought you tea while you rested in bed. As I walked into the room, I asked where the honey was, and, as women often do, you said, “My God, what would you do if I were not here tomorrow?” I felt the cup drop from my hand and tears roll from my eyes; what indeed would I do.

You were amazed; as much as we loved each other, I don’t think it had ever occasioned to you the absolute depth of my love and my need for you. What would I do; I would surely die I suppose, because life would have no meaning at all to me. It caused me to remember winters when I was a child. The sound of grown men walking in heavy winter boots always fascinated me; as they walked up on the mix of ice and snow the sound always made me think of tiny bones being crushed beneath their stride, I hated the sound. Now, I felt life’s boot crunching atop me as if I were a small creature, unseen in the ice and snow on a winter's morning..

You think I would find someone else – I would not; there is only one you. You think I would “remember” you; you are me and I am you, it would be remembering of the most painful sort. You think a great many things would happen, they would not. Nothing at all would happen; I would simply sit down and one day, forget to breathe again.

Please Sophia, do not ever go away; do not leave me, do not die before I do, do not vanish into the night never to be seen again. I was speechless at that moment, I am speechless now. What would I do? What indeed, I would surely die I suppose; because a person cannot live without their heart and you have mine completely.

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