I don't want to write about death

I've been trying to write as I always do in the summer.  I finished my romance novel and am now letting it "stew" for a while before I reread it to see if it works on any level.  I am not sure if I made the man too angelic.  He's based on Mike and it is hard to think of anything negative about him now.  I just remember the lovely things and miss him so much.  (Today would have been my twenty-third wedding anniversary.)

I found out about this writing contest that is for very short stories -- three hundred words!  That is VERY short.  I tried to write one, and of course, it's semi- autobiographical, too, because I am in that place right now.  It's called "I don't want to write about death":

I don’t want to write about death.  I want to write about love and how I found it and how it felt and how pretty the flowers were that he gave me and how he always remembered my birthday and made me queen for the day.  I want to write about how he saw into the future and made sure I was safe.

I don’t want to write about death.  I don’t want to write about the coffin and the music we played and the speeches people made and how many people came to pay their respects.  I want to write about our twenty fifth anniversary party and how we danced all night and stood outside the hall and watched the stars and how Christine and Keith ordered cheeseburgers for the midnight snack and how they didn’t come on time and how mad Christine was about it and how Keith didn’t seem to care because he had a buzz on and how we laughed about them because they were always like this and how well we knew them because after all it had been thirty years since they started dating and we started dating.  Well, almost thirty.

I don’t want to write about death.  I want to write about our children and how beautiful they are and how much they look like him.  How Anthony wants to be a doctor and William wants to be a lifeguard and how proud I am.  How much I wish he could be proud with me.

I don’t want to write about death, but there it is.  Grim Death stares me in the face and won’t let me go.  I tried to hold onto you but you couldn’t hold onto me.  Grim Death pulled you away from me, no matter how hard I tried to hold on.  He peeled away my fingers and took you.   I told you I loved you long ago and yesterday.  I don’t want to talk about death.  I want to talk about life.  But there it is.