My Valentine’s Day Love Letter to Cassidy

My Dearest Cassidy,

I’m sitting next to you in a rehab facility on Valentine’s Day. There are no flowers, no dinner reservations, no cards waiting to be opened tonight. Just the low hum of fluorescent lights and the steady rhythm of machines in the hallway.

You’re right beside me and I miss you so fucking much.

It’s the strangest thing in the world to miss someone who is physically inches away from you. I can reach out and touch your hand. I can hear you breathing. I can feel the warmth of you next to me.

But I miss us.

I miss the way we used to talk…the easy, back and forth conversations that could last for hours. I miss the jokes that didn’t need explaining. The shared looks across a room. The way you’d say something ridiculous just to make me laugh or roll my eyes.

Now, sometimes you’re here in a way that feels so normal it almost tricks me. And then the sentence shifts. The thought wanders. The words don’t land where they used to. And I feel it all over again — that quiet ache of loving someone whose brain is fighting a battle neither of us asked for.

I miss the version of you before LMD took up space in your mind. I miss being able to assume you’re fully here. I miss not having to wonder what you’re seeing, what you’re thinking, where your thoughts might drift next.

And yet here you are. Still you, still mine, still the man who squeezes my hand when I lean in close. Still the one who tries, the one who fights through exhaustion to sit up during therapy, and the one who smiles when I tell you I love you.

Today, on Valentine’s Day, love looks different. It looks like helping you adjust in your bed, therapy schedules taped to the wall, and celebrating small victories like standing a few extra seconds, finishing a sentence clearly, staying awake a little longer.

It looks like grieving and hoping at the same time.

Because here’s the part I’m holding onto…I’m so very hopeful that treatment can bring pieces of you back. I hope that radiation and chemo can quiet the storm in your brain enough for more of you to shine through. I don’t want this version of you to be the final version. I don’t need everything to go back to the way it was. I just want more of you. More full conversations. More clarity. More of that spark that has always been yours.

It’s hard to miss someone who’s right next to you, but I do.

But I need you to know that I love you in this version, too. Even in the confusion. Even in the silence. Even in the spaces where I have to hold both grief, frustration, and gratitude at the same time.

This isn’t the Valentine’s Day we imagined. But I would still choose you…Every version, every time.

Forever & Always,
Leah