A Letter to Edie

Well, now you remember that nice coat you got me that one Christmas during that endless winter; the same winter that whiskey Jack got sick and died? I really loved that coat and it's warm collar that secret pocket it had for my silver engraved flask to hide. I took that coat with its treated leather and folded its sleeves neat and placed it in a old priest trunk that I found in the rectory attic.  I took the parcels, pictures, post cards and letters that you sent over the years of our delusion, Edie, and I mixed them in with some of hers too and sprinkled them all over like grave dirt and used all that stuff and covered that old coat with the blood stain on the right sleeve that you gave me that one Christmas during that endless winter; the very same winter we snuggled away the cold while we sat around the open door of that electric stove. 
 Remember when the lights went out and there was only you and me and all that stuff we were so afraid of...And the thunder shook the window glass and you said something cool like it that it sounded like God was shuffling his feet?...And we huddled under that coat in front of the oven on the tile of the kitchen floor on top of the sleeping bag that was too close to the smelly cat box that we were too cold and lazy to change. I wore that coat like a badge. And now the coat you gave me that one Christmas during that cold winter, when John ran barefoot crazy in his underwear during the snow storm looking for a way to die, is under a blanket of love letters and Christmas cards and closed in an old wooden trunk. The kind of trunk that an old priest would take on across Atlantic cruise liner trip. To me you were like an addiction. Can you tell me, was it healthy, Edie? I used to care, but, things have changed.