Still Stunned

 I'm still having a hard time coming to grips with Simplicity's death; it's just so sudden and random from my point of view. I've been trying to remember our last conversations (via text) and what all she told me, and if that would give me any answers as to what might have happened. Unfortunately I just can't remember the details, and I never back up my text messages (for obvious reasons), and I clear them out pretty often.

More than anything I feel bad that it took over a month for me to recognize that something might be wrong and look into it. She died on the 16th of June, a Wednesday. Had we texted the Monday or Tuesday prior to that? I know we chatted the week before, because she was asking me how my vacation the previous week had been (the week after Memorial day.) It wasn't unusual to go a week or two without hearing from her, and there's always tomorrow to catch up, right?

Not that it would have made any difference if I had noticed earlier. She was gone before it would have ever occurred to me, even if I wasn't distracted by everything else.

I mentioned some of this to CR earlier, and he reminded me that it's the nature of online relationships to go periods of time without contact. Sometimes it drops altogether and you never know why even if you think to question it. It's only because she and I were a good bit closer that I even had the means to look into it; otherwise I might never have known.

Geez, that's a depressing thought.

I'm off work early today, and the wife is coming home an hour earlier too, and we're heading out for Myrtle Beach tonight. We're going to stop after a few hours drive and stay in a hotel, then get up fresh tomorrow for the last few hours drive. We booked this back in May, and we've both been looking forward to this week since then.

I'm excited about the trip, but then it hits me again that Simplicity won't be there next week asking about what all we did, where we ate, how much sun I got, and saying again how we need to go there sometime together. Clearly that wasn't going to be able to happen, but we kept up the fantasy.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. I'll try to get another update out this weekend after we get back.