I went to Saint Patrick’s today, the day that was to be our wedding day. Silly of me I suppose, but I went anyway dressed in my tuxedo (you were right about the bow tie by the way) and I sat there amongst the elaborate statues of Saints and Mothers of Saviors and stained glass windows depicting stories of tragic proportions. I sat there in the eerily quiet church bathed in the flickering candlelight hoping that you would walk through those towering oak doors and down the aisle wearing your elegant flowing gown to meet me at the altar, even though I knew that you wouldn’t. I drew a few strange looks from a couple of nuns as they quietly hurried out into the rain after finishing their “Hail Mary’s.”

I was unexpectedly interrupted from my thoughts when Mrs. Kozlowski (you remember her, third floor of the apartment building) came to the church. I had forgotten to tell her the wedding was off and didn’t have the heart to explain when she apologized for my being left standing at the altar. Tears welled in my eyes as she shuffled down the aisle feeling sorry for me.

Oh Mel, I miss you so! And I’m so damned angry with you. I know I didn’t say so all those weeks in the hospital, but I am angry. The unfairness of it all! My God, it was just over a week ago I was at Saint Patrick’s carrying your coffin down the aisle. I’ll never understand how on a Friday night we could be making mad passionate love by the blue light of the television and to the noises of the city streets below, and on Sunday next I’m holding your hand as you lay in a hospital bed, tubes feeding chemicals into your veins. Chemicals that did nothing to stop the CANCER! What a dirty word, “cancer.”

I’m sorry baby, I’m trying to be strong, but today I just can’t. I don’t find the strength. Those two years we spent together dancing, laughing, loving, tasting, crying, smelling, and feeling our way through life together were, and will always be, the best two years of my life. I looked so forward to sharing that with you, as we grew old and, as you so often joked, “to making love in a wheelchair hoping we don’t forget to set the brake.”

I’m overcome with memories of our first meeting on that snowy day at Rockefeller Center watching the ice skaters, of our first kiss a week later and each and every kiss thereafter, of our first time making love, and our last, of our first fight, and our last. I feel so empty without you Mel. Who will laugh at me when I need to be laughed at? Who will hold me when I need to be held? I know I’m feeling selfish, but damn it I can’t help but to feel selfish right now.

I can almost hear your final words to me Melissa, words that caused me to smile amidst my tearful anguish as I walked home in the rain today. You squeezed my hand as best you could, and whispered in a voice as sexy as ever, “I hope it rains on our wedding day.” It did my love, it did. It rained beautifully on our wedding day.

I close this letter with just two words darling, the two I will long to whisper into your ear for the rest of my life. “I do Melissa, I DO.”