Call it home.

Song of the story: To Build A Home

My beautiful Natalie Rose Levitt, cold and lifeless in a hospital bed. The doctors said that there was almost no chance of survival and I'm just starting to realise that maybe they were right.

She was driving the normal route back from work, never giving a second thought to what she was doing, when she sent a quick text:

-I'm on the freeway
Traffic sucks

I can't look at that text without my eyes tearing up.

The paramedics said that they found her upside down in a ditch just off the freeway, along with another car. When they looked at the traffic cameras they saw her car spiral out of control. Eventually, the car started to seem controlled before it went tumbling into a ditch. She had countless surgeries and was put on countless drugs, but the situation didn't seem to get any better, she was still dying.

About three weeks after the wreck they pulled her life support, telling me that she wouldn't make it through. They tried to talk to me but their words seemed to bounce around my head, a million voices all at once, drowning each other out. I felt weak, exposed as I entered into a deep state of absolutely nothing.

All eyes were on me, but they saw nothing. I lost my wife, the only person that ever made me feel worth it. The only person who kept me living. Now I can't seem to live anymore.

I'll never see her beautiful auburn hair fall softly onto her shoulders again, or her bright, dazzling smile fill an entire room with sudden happiness. Her laugh is only a memory. I wish that I could've just bottled it up and kept it forever, but the sound was long-gone. Our late night conversations about geek culture when we couldn't sleep at night would never happen again. She could never sing me to sleep again when the dreams took over my night. I was everything when I was with her and now I don't seem to be anything.

Friends and colleagues have stopped by to bring flowers and sympathy cards, but it seems that nobody was affected as much as I was. They had spilt a few tears and offered to help with the funeral but they didn't really seem sad.

Was I overreacting? I thought that this feeling was normal; feeling like there's nothing real anymore like everything is waiting until the worst possible moment to drop the feelings on me.

People told me to go home, I hadn't had a proper night's sleep since I heard she was in the accident so I might as well take a shower and try to rest my eyes. I knew that they were right but our house wouldn't feel like home anymore especially since it wasn't "Ours," not without her.

The rooms were all covered in dust after weeks of abandonment and the tears wouldn't stop falling from my eyes as I fell to the floor, reduced to a sobbing mess. The rooms still had a lingering smell of her perfume and it didn't help to know that as soon as a door was left open for a little too long that smell would be long gone.

Sometimes I wished that I could believe in a god. If I did maybe all of this could've been avoided, I'd be praying that she would just wake up and none of this would have happened.

I finally managed to compose myself, pulling myself up off the ground and taking a look around the house. The house that we slowly made ours. The smooth trimming and random decorations that had no meaning to anybody but us. The sunlight beaming through the delicate windows and the dying houseplants browning. The kitchen that was there for every home cooked meal she spent hours perfecting.

Why did she have to leave?

I couldn't keep myself standing in the shower as the hot water seeped into my skin; beating into my pores washing the grease from my hair. When I got out I actually felt slightly better. I was slowly making progress. I took a moment to shave my face before I went into the guest room to crash on the bed, I couldn't bear sleeping knowing that her side of the bed would never be filled with her warm figure again.

I will never be able to deal with the loss. I miss her more than I could ever have imagined, but maybe one day soon I'll get to join her and find a place where I could become "We" again. We would find ourselves again. We could find each other and even without a house, we would have a special place.

We could call it home.