So last night, while talking about all this wedding stuff I got to thinking about my father and how he wouldn't be there and about the fiance's parents being gone as well. I went into a long funk and secluded myself in the bedroom with a cup of valerian tea. It took my a few hours to stop the waterworks from turning on every time my thoughts drifted back to my dad and the huge hole his absence has put in our lives for the past six years.

Hate to say it, anyone who's recently lost someone close, it keeps on hurting. Not to say it doesn't get better–it most certainly does–but it feels worse before it feels better, and then you become so gradually used to it that the second you realize you are, it feels sudden. But there will always be those holes that no one else can fill–wedding dances to be skipped, grandchildren who will never get spoiled the way every grandkid ought to, deep conversations that can only be remembered… It's there with every meaningful event–that hole.

I don't know where I'd be right now without my other half–the only person the the planet wacky enough to understand my ups and downs for the ups and downs they are.

We're both Scorpios who know the pain of watching a parent die of cancer. We're both artistic and moderately liberal, terribly stubborn, and so quirky that we both recognize what a gem it is to find another person who hardly flinches at those idosincracies that have oftentimes made us into our own islands in a sea of "normal" people–but simply gives us reasons to tease one another in good nature. We both have ADHD–although mine is the innattentive sort and his is the hyperactive sort. We're two vanilla beans in a pod. (I hate peas.)

So last night, when I went into a bought of missing Dad, without warning–he knew to let me be until I got it under control, and then he wandered into the bedroom, gave me a single kiss on the cheek, said he loved me, and left me alone again.

Only a Scorpio.