Three weeks came and went and still there was nothing but the lonely lines on an empty page. Last night, I was fed up. I didn't yell. I didn't scream. I didn't make him feel like the shittest father in the world. I calmly explained why it was so important to me. You see, Anthony's father was tragically murdered when Anthony was a mere 2 years old. Needless to say, he never knew his father and I don't think he has one single memory of him alive. He has nothing but old, torn pictures to look back on. "Anthony, what if, God forbid, you were to die tomorrow? Wouldn't you want Vincent to know, in your own words, how much he meant to you? How much he changed your life for the better? How you could never describe in a million words how much you love him?" I think I finally struck a cord.
Anthony's lack of expressing his emotions with the written word in no way is to say he is not a loving person. I know that my husband would die a thousand times over for me and for Vincent. He does, however, suffer from the inability to wear his feelings/emotions on his sleeve. But the thought of him not leaving behind anything for his son to read, to feel, left him feeling rather guilty.
Late in the evening I found him at the kitchen table, with a pen in hand and the baby book wide open. I saw his thoughts reeling in his head. I didn't dare speak a word. I didn't want to disrupt his emotional breakthrough. He only wrote a little, and he said he needed to think about it more. And that's all I could have asked of him, at that very moment, when I marveled at how much he has changed over the years....how far he has come...
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