Exactly one year ago, I lost the love of my life, my very best friend, my wife, Andrea Andrews Manoucheri. We lost so very much that, by all accounts, this could have been the year everything fell apart. Instead, it became the year our story began. We have not lost the feeling of loss, the hurt of missing her so very much. What we did learn, though, was that we are far better together than we ever are apart.
The kids and I did this video, with the pictures and words made by our own hands. It’s purposely low-tech. It’s meant to show you how we scratched our way up day by day on our own. We could have done a bigger, fancier, more produced version, but that’s just not us.
The one thing that’s not low tech is the song. When I started dating Andrea, she playfully said to me, “Write me a song!” When I looked at her flabbergasted, she simply said, “You’re a musician, they write songs for their girlfriends all the time. Don’t I rate a song?!” She was kidding, being silly and pushing my buttons with a mischievous grin. Two days later I played the song for her. While my brother and I recorded it for a previous incarnation of our band and it got minimal airplay years ago in the Midwest, I never felt like I’d gotten the song right, not really. So when I started this project, as hard as it was to do, I wanted to get it right. She deserved so much better. I changed the lyrics to match where we are today.
I miss her more than you can possibly imagine. It’s literally like a piece of myself, the part of my soul intertwined with hers, was ripped away. leaving a wound never heals. She wasn’t just my wife. She was my love, my life, and my best friend.
It’s like she came here long enough to give me what I needed then left, abruptly. But I hear my kids laugh together and the timbre of their giggles is her laugh. The smiles they have radiate their Mom.
I had it good and perfect for a while. It’s a hard life to come back down with the rest of the mortals. Particularly when she helped me learn to fly up with the angels.
We miss you, my love.
Fly on, my sweet angel.
More from Dave:
The Decisions That Break You In Two
Dave Manoucheri is a writer and journalist based in Sacramento, California. A father of four, two daughters and twin sons, his blog, Our Story Begins is a chronicle of their daily life after the loss of his wife Andrea, in March of 2011. Follow him on Twitter @InvProducerMan.
