Taylor Anne Leggett

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Dear Taylor,

 

My hope as I write these words is that I’m going to wake up from this nightmare. This obituary can’t be real. 

 

But this is your picture and that is your name. Just last year we were happily living together. I was so proud you were my girlfriend and that I was your boyfriend and we were practically inseparable. We were talking about our future, starting a family, and solving life’s problems that money can’t solve.

 

If this is real Taylor I have to remind the world what a magical, whimsical, and beautiful person you are: 

 

The face-painter at the picnic who would ride her scooter to get there. 

 

A true super-fan of this talking, 3 inch tall seashell, Marcel the Shell, which should be required YouTubing for every person in America. 

 

I cherish your little fetish for those crane arcade games you’d run up to at Walmart or a diner or a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike and we’d stuff dollar bills into these things until we finally won the stuffed animal. 

 

You had this fascination with water bottle thermoses long before it was a thing.

 

You love stickers. You have a subscription to a sticker of the month club that sends you sheets of random peel-and-stick stickers, every month,

in the mail.  It produced a chemical reaction in me watching your excitement while opening this envelope every month we lived together. 

 

I am still madly in love with all of this. 

 

You’re also a Pokémon pro, and I still don’t get how that game works because it’s just too adorable every time you try explaining it to me along with all the characters and their magic spells. 

 

Taylor, you’re the girlfriend who takes out a paintbrush and paints me a big, colorful cardboard sign that says “Go Chuck” and holds it up and cheers for me…Me: A recovering piece of shit, as I ran my sober ass down Monument Ave for my first 10k last year. There were thousands of runners and just as many watching, but very few hand-painted signs. And yours was a masterpiece that made one of the proudest days of my life even prouder.

 

Taylor, you should be running right next to me this year. But I know you still will, because even though I can’t see you, I can feel you. And I know you’ll be there by my side. 

 

You are my little sex kitten who laps me at Mario Kart almost every night and breaks my chops afterwards without saying a single word, just that beautiful easy grin.

 

You are Planet Earth’s best Smoothie maker. 

 

I have never been so turned on in my life than that night when we just started dating and played miniature golf. I experienced your competitive side. You had this quiet confidence in your eyes each time you lined up your little putter with the ball and I knew you wanted to win so bad.

 

You won the game that night. And you had won my heart.  I thought I had just won Life’s lottery.

 

And did I ever tell you how charming it still is to me that you have memorized the cash register code for every fruit and vegetable one could possibly buy inside of a grocery store?

 

Living with you Taylor was like living at a Willy Wonka factory. Apartment 1215 was filled to the rafters with your technicolored toy collection, trinkets, spinners, whizzy pops, dolls, artistry, and oversized lollipops. 

 

Our little toy palace was under constant patrol and surveillance by our two magnificent cats: Sweet Potato and Muttonchop. 

 

Remember the Halloween decorating contest? Our apartment came in second place and we won half off Novembers rent. (This we will never get over either Babygirl… ;-)

 

Taylor, you’d come to the gym with me every morning and it was the absolute nectar of my existence watching you become stronger than your demons, one day at a time. 

 

Just after we met I never told you how special it was that you were staying sober, for you not me, even on that cruise you had planned before me, and even after the person you were going with bought the all-you-can-drink package at the last minute.

 

Taylor, I know how hard you tried. And now so does everyone else. 

 

Life is messy and people are people, but we had the most spectacular relationship of all time and if anyone says different it’s a lie. 

 

I adore you and forgave you Taylor for how we ended but I will never forgive you for ending it all. 

 

Because now I can’t. 

 

I missed you so much before getting this horrifying news today. Since I haven’t woken up yet I now must miss you- and all of your beautiful quirks, forever girl…

 

I will spend a lifetime trying to figure you out, this out, and I hope I never will. 

 

The Universe saw to it that I wasn’t there to protect you that day. I realize I would have messed up your entire secret plan had I been with you, so I understand why you did what you did to me. I also understand that pain Taylor, because I once had a secret plan, too.  But beaming, beautiful 30-year-old people are not supposed to die, Babygirl... 

 

I pray you’re around strong people in Heaven, now that you know Heaven exists. 

 

I know how much you freaking loved me. But I love you more kid. And I’m so forever grateful those were my very last words to you. 

 

Who knows what might have been but I’m asking you to keep an eye on me.

And my kids. 

(Because you f’n owe me one. ;-)

 

My world is shattered right now and this world has lost a truly unique and special and beautiful and flawed human being who needs to be remembered properly.

 

So for now I’ll try to stop crying and maybe practice some Mario Kart. Just have my controller ready because I promise to come find you when I reach the other side.

 

Taylor, you are an absolute treasure forever residing within my soul. 

 

You will forever and always be my Beautiful Babygirl.

 

Thank you for making me a better human being.

 

I will Love You for eternity,

 

Chuck

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