“Did you hurt anything?” Katy asked me in concern when
I told her what happened.
“My knee. And my pride,” I said. But the other thing
that hurt is that I couldn’t tell you about it. There are so many things I’ve
been saving up to tell you, but short of writing you letters here or making
people think I’m crazy by talking to you in an empty room, I can’t really talk
to you about anything, good or bad. You were usually the one to take Brody to
get groomed, you know. Because we both know he’s a bruiser with big clumsy feet
and no sense of direction. You could handle him. I fall on my face.
I checked my emotions while the store manager appeared
along with a cashier and two other customers, all wanting to know if I was all
right. I laughed it off and held my breath until I got outside where no one
could see me. “Why aren’t you here?” I accused, tears running down my face as I
let go of the frustration. All these things I have to do on my own now. Why aren’t
you here?
It was another rough day. Days are like that now. I
cry every morning, which is as normal as brushing my teeth, and then I get
dressed, open the blinds to let in the sun, and some days I actually function
almost normally. Today wasn’t one of those days. Today I was in the toilet. All
day. It started the moment I woke up with a text message asking my opinion on
your headstone. At noon, I spent an hour listening and watching via zoom to
tributes given by all your friends at Toasties who love and miss you. There
were plenty of tears mixed in with the kind words. After that, I had two emails
to deal with—one requiring a death certificate and the other wanting
information about the military honor guard for your funeral.
Your death certificate. That one triggers every nerve
in my disconsolate body. To see your name on something like that. Your
occupation—firefighter. It’s you. It’s not supposed to be you, but I
guess it is. I can’t get my mind around it yet. Still, with the painful precision
of an ice pick, truth keeps stabbing at the numbness that encircles my heart.
With every piece of ice that falls away, a little more reality sneaks in,
forcing me to face the fact that you died last month. A month ago today. It’s
been four weeks and, while I am still Rob’s wife, I am also your widow.
But mostly I am heartbroken. Who needs a heart anyway,
I ask myself. Anything that can cause this kind of pain is, in my opinion,
highly overrated. Maybe we’d all be better off if they were optional equipment.
If I had the option right now, I’d disconnect my heart so it could never make
me suffer this way again.
It would be pointless. I’m already infected by sorrow.
Grief, which must be second cousin to the chicken pox, will never go away. That’s
what they tell me. Like the virus, it changes form, but it will always be
there. So, it doesn’t take time, does it? It’s not the great healer of
all wounds after all. No matter how much of that tick tocking stuff flows under
my crumbling bridge, I will always miss you. Always ache for you. Always wish I’d
had more of that fleeting time to hold you close and tell you again how much I
love you.
My knee is sore and my back is withholding judgment,
probably until I wake up tomorrow, but my heart? Even an accident like the one
in Petsmart today couldn’t make it any more shattered than it already is. My poor,
lonely heart will never be the same.
I’ve fallen again, Baby, and just like this morning,
you aren’t here to pick me up. It’s not the hard ground that hurts, though.
It’s the truth.
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