MishMath

After more than two years navigating the aftermath of my wife's death, I think I've found the answer. The obvious next step, for me, was to tell her all about it. This may be hard to read, especially if you have suffered a significant loss of your own.

[from Tombstone]
Wyatt:	"[I just want] to live a normal life."
Doc:	"There is no normal life, Wyatt. There's just life. You get on with it."
Wyatt:	"Don't know how."
Doc:	"Sure you do. Say goodbye to me."

Hi, baby.

Where to start? Well, how about at the heart of it all, the foundation from which everything rises: I wanted you the moment I saw you, and I never stopped. Unfortunately, wanting changes nothing. You've been gone more than two years now. I've written thousands of words as I endeavor to comprehend your loss—my loss—and to find peace in your absence. Unfortunately, true peace has been rare, and fleeting. I remained tethered to my identity as your husband, best friend, companion, confidant. It's who I had been for so long that I couldn't remember how to be anything else. I jealously clutched my final role—your caregiver—because it is by far the best version of me that ever was. And there is serenity inside a cocoon, even one spun from heartache and despair, so I dwelt there. In your absence, all I could do was desperately miss you—and I did, working even harder at it, perhaps, than I did at being with you.

How else to honor you—us—and our shared joy? You know as well as I how dramatically you changed my life—how immeasurably better my life is now than it would have been had we never met. If we could be granted another lifetime to share, I still could never repay you. Yes, yes, I know what you told me:

“Eventually you'll get used to my not being with you. Your unbearable feeling of loss isn't permanent. I promise. You will find happiness again.”

You expunged my debt long before you left—but an obligation like that couldn't simply be brushed aside, especially as I continued to miss you so ardently. The void you left behind was filled by an overwhelming pain, as though the cells of my body sought to abandon each other and flee. But I have endured (though I genuinely do not know how). And now…

…I've had an epiphany. It arose stupidly, after watching a movie and pondering how much we remembered of our favorite movies, the ones we watched again and again. I realized that our life, in essence, was a movie that we watched together, but only once, so the details fade. All that remains are the broad strokes, a few highlights, and myriad horrors (because that's the way memories work—the worst ones imprint, immediately and indelibly). Alas, even the few good memories are melancholy, just wistful reminiscences of what was but is no longer. So, I contemplated for a while, and then I knew: I must forget you. (My friends will object to the word 'forget'; perhaps I should say 'stop remembering' or 'let the memories fade', but you and I know it's just semantics.) I need to stop writing; stop finding ever-more-poignant ways to express my aching yearning for you; and stop repeatedly rereading everything I've written—willfully keeping the memories fresh, feeding the desolation and the need to write even more. It's a grotesque perpetual-motion machine that takes up most of the inhabitable space in my life.

I need to forget you because, no matter how much I want it, there is no more 'us'. There's only me. Wanting changes nothing. This beautiful house you labored to create is no longer ours, it's just mine—as painful as it is to say. The things that fill it—not just our things, but everything that was yours before me—are now mine as well. I remain, and there is no you, save for a bottle of dust on my desk and a few synapses in my head—physical and emotional residue, and nothing more.

After you left, when I started going for walks again, I was haunted by a vision of you setting out alongside me, but struggling, unable to stay with me, then giving up, standing in the road, too weak to move, watching as I left you behind. It was so painful; a wretched reminder of how much I missed you and how much you had suffered, but also: an apt metaphor for the end of our time together. I know you didn't want to leave me; you were betrayed by a flawed body that simply could not keep up. But wanting changes nothing. So, I must keep walking, and acknowledge that the problem isn't that you can't keep up—it's that you're not coming with me at all.

I hope to finish writing this letter and then not read it again; put the pictures of you and us in the box with the other mementos of your life and death; and put our wedding rings, the ultimate symbol of what we were, and which I cherish, away with your other jewelry. I may watch The Lord of the Rings one more time—with you next to me—then possibly never again. I will try to send my memories of you into the background. I miss you immensely, more than I would have thought possible, but while I allow myself to feel this longing, I can never be whole. Even as I've been working on this letter, as I process the idea that this is the last, I've felt something inside me… uncoiling. I will continue to think of you and talk to you—there's no 'off' switch—but less frequently, and deeply, and deliberately than before.

We never said goodbye. Obviously, we knew it was coming, but we never had The Big Goodbye Scene. By the end, you were in and out—of consciousness and coherence—and there was no way to know when the last moment would be, and then you were gone. This occurred to me one day, with a pang of sorrow, but I quickly realized that the memory of saying goodbye would have been far worse than the regret that we didn't. However, it is nearly upon us. I know you understand; you always grasped everything long before I ever did, in our life and your imminent death. That's why you wrote me your final letter nearly three months before you died.

My utter lack of faith makes this harder. I don't believe that I'll ever see you again, in any form or on any plane of existence, and I don't think you believed it either. It's the never again that causes the anguish—even now, as I'm tentatively coming to accept it, it's the greatest source of pain. Was it easier for you, somehow, to be the one leaving, knowing that I'd still be here? Or was it worse? I can't know, but I sense that path is fraught with torment, so I won't pursue it. On its surface, this all seems to matter, but none of it changes anything—I can't spend 30 more years like this, whether I magically get to see you again, in the end, or not. This insipid existence that I've known for the last two years is not living, and I know it is not what you wanted for me. I used to be one of the happiest (if a bit cantankerous) people I knew; I need to find that again, within this new paradigm.

One more thing before I let you go: I need to thank you. Thank you for finding me, and walking with me for a while, and enriching my life. The dreadful irony of losing you has been not having you to help me through it, which has made me realize how very much you made everything ok, always. For most of our 23 years, I simply didn't need to worry. You were always the strong one, my anchor and my rock. Even at the end, you showed me how to die with dignity and grace. You suffered, less than some, but far more than most. Eleven years (after the BRCA2 diagnosis) wondering when the other shoe would drop, then three more (after the pancreatic cancer diagnosis) knowing it would probably be soon. Three months watching The End inexorably overtake you. Forty-seven days of ceaseless pain as cancer corrupted your bones. Your courage was staggering. When my time comes, I hope I can recall your strength, lean on it one last time, as I venture into the darkness.

[from Gypsy, by Fleetwood Mac]
She is dancing away from you now
She was just a wish
She was just… a wish

And so, we come to the close; the culmination of 23 years together. The Fellowship Is Broken. I want to keep writing, to find one more thing to add, one more way to express how expansively I love you and miss you, because I don't want to finish this letter, for I know how it ends. But we're there, and there is nothing left except

Goodbye, My Love.

Epilogue
[The walking vision, as it ought to be.]
We move through the woods, pausing occasionally for water and to check the trail map. We stop to eat lunch on a sun-drenched hill that is, for some reason, free of trees. Today we're heading for Sky Blue Trail. There is no view from Sky Blue, but I'm excited: views are wonderful, but this path has more subtle delights. It is only accessible, at either end, by walking a couple of miles along some other trail, which means almost no one ever gets out there. Near the peak you pass through an area of pine forest, with its intoxicating fragrance, where the bed of needles underfoot insulates all sound. This expanse is full of paradox. You feel utterly removed from civilization, yet safe… embraced, almost. It is hauntingly peaceful. Even birds seem to avoid congregating there; there are a few, so it doesn't seem eerie. Their songs somehow seem to die immediately yet echo forever. We've been here so many times before—over a span of twenty years—and now, at long last, we're back. We stop for water and stand there, soaking it in, treasuring the moment. Neither of us speaks, so as not to break the spell. I look at her, and she is startlingly youthful and vibrant. Her face is joyful, as though all the weight—of disease and surgeries and chemo and pain—has been lifted from her. It is marvelous, and marvelous to be alone, together. We exchange a look, knowing that we cannot linger too long… there is still quite a trek before the journey is over. Her smile fades, as though a melancholy breeze has just drifted through her. It is a dream, and we must wake. She stows my water bottle for me, gives me a kiss so soft it almost isn't there, and watches as I walk away. I don't look back.