"Do you ever miss him?" she asks me.

"Every day.  Every minute."

"Every minute," she says.  "Yes.  It's that way, isn't it?"  She turns on her side and burrows into the pillow.

"Goodnight," I say, turning out the lamp.  As I stand in the dark looking down at Grandma in the bed, self pity floods me as though I have been injected with it.  It's that way, isn't it?  Isn't it.

I'm rereading The Time Traveler's Wife and every few pages or so there's this big shuddering breath and I'm close to tears again, and I can't help thinking that somewhere there's a Henry and I'm that big missing chunk of his future, and all I have to do is be patient but I'm so tired with the waiting and missing him.  I think I am in love with a stranger, a ghost, someone without a name or a face but someone who is so entirely mine.  

I don't want to be alone.  I don't want to think about these days like giant puzzle pieces and going through the tedious process of fitting them all together until some day in the as-of-yet undetermined future when I can finally see the bigger picture, and I can delight in the completion of everything.

Today is a puzzle piece day.  It has no meaning so far out of context.  I am alone and missing him (whoever he is).  After class I will go out and get too inebriated to think clearly and maybe then it will make the burden of this longing a little easier to bear.