I was talking with my Grandpa a week or so ago and he started telling me about his friend that had recently loss his wife. I heard it and I felt the need to write, write about something I myself have never experienced. I guess that's what writing is all about, creating that which you've never seen face to face, empathizing with those you've never met. It's a mystery when it happens, but when it does the mystery unfolds. This I guess is an attempt at such. I only hope I did some justice to that which we all must face and that is the loss of those who we cherish most.
Preface There is nothing romantic about dying. As much as the movies may sell it to be, it just ain’t so. That whole archetypal, Romeo and Juliet crap… well… it’s just crap. It’s not true. Not when it’s the love of your life laying there dying… my Grace dying. She tells me it’s ok and there is nothing either of us can do. That it’s best if we just muster up all the joy that we can in the time we have left. You know this is her trying to comfort you, but in all honesty it’s what you loath most about the situation, about yourself. That you’re helpless. That you can’t save her. That here she is dying and doing her best to save you and part of you hates yourself for that. But then again she had always been doing that for you. Being your savior, your divinity, your grace… Your Grace. And now she’s dying. She’s dying and you’re not. We thought we had months left as months shortly became days. And as she lay there in that hospice bed, frail, but so damn beautiful to you… We just did our best to survive the grief of her coming departure from this life we had shared. We did our best to create a living space, a brief lasting moment where such grief could be cherished as much as it was scorned by this heart of mine. We did our best. You know that now. And as we did happy things in those last days, happy and tearfully sad, we sought everything special that could be summoned and salvaged from the coming moment of her fading on. We found laughter as much as we found woeful cries as the two intermingled from time to time. Bitter was your joy. But you did your best not to steal from her the last chances she had to smile in this life. To make the time left not about you. What broke your heart most of all though… was that this was your honeymoon. That honeymoon we never got around to have. That’s what she called these last days. You know she wasn’t joking too. She was the embodiment of all things sincere, she never said anything out of pure jest. That’s was why you loved her. Everything she was and did was utter sincerity. Not a word said or a movement made that wasn’t genuine. You still struggle with how much stronger she was then you, stronger than you could ever hope to be. All while I stood in the terror of letting her go, she found love. For her this time together. These last moments were the christening joy of a marriage long lasted. That for her this was the time for love and joy. You don’t know how she did it. How she sought not the presence of fear. How she carried on knowing we would soon have no more time with one another. Don’t go. Please don’t go. This was what you beckoned to a God you never really paid much attention to over all the years. You weren’t mad though. You were to scared to be mad and she knew that. That’s why she held on as long as she did. Through the pain that this dying brought her, she held on. She wouldn’t let go until she knew you were going to be ok. After you couldn’t bear it anymore. After you had seen too much suffering in her eyes, you slowly bent down next to her and kissed her on the cheek. You said, “It’s… I’m ok, it’s time for you to go home beautiful girl.” You heard her laugh one last time and say, “You better not be lying to me because I’m not leaving till I’m sure.” You know you were lying, but you couldn’t make her stay. Lying for the first time to her in 50 years, you said this false necessity and promised her it was so. “Will you wait for me?” You whimpered. The last thing you would, in this life, say to her. “For eternity.” She whispered. “For eternity. I promise I will.” She smiled at you. She just smiled in those last seconds, not once moving her gaze from yours. Smiling as the light flowed and then finally dimmed from her eyes. You sat there wanting to scream, but you were so shattered… So shattered that your voice could not move. You couldn’t shout, as bad as you wanted to, because you were no longer there. For when she passed, you might as well have gone with her. Your soul left for that she was. Your soul, your essence. It all lay in her. For all that you were was gone now. Life’s death. Her death. Nothing now but perdition and it was yours. And terror… terror was its stay. -Thane Hounchell
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AuthorThane Hounchell: Offensive around children, scared of cats. Archives
March 2018
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