A Life Well-Loved

My early retirement now feels almost like a curse. I haven't yet mastered the art of sleeping past the Reveille bugle call of the alarm clock by our bed that never actually sounds now. For nearly forty years it was my call to long days at the shop, just over half of them spent looking forward to coming home to him.

These days it is only a ghost of a call...to the hours I spend here in reflection, remembering the life we once had; a life I thought would last until the end of my days.

If I could I would laugh at the irony of so much time spent worrying about how that end would affect Chik. He never really dealt well with this kind of loneliness.

In the reunions that followed the few nights we had to sleep apart during our all too brief life together he would throw his arms around me and say, "Oh, Papa! Let's never do this again!"

The silence deafens me as I find myself still listening for that voice.

What's left of me in his absence tries to be strong for him even now. In truth, though, there are days when it hardly seems worth the effort. I'm so lost without him, and yet every single day I struggle forward...trying to convince myself it's getting better.

Maybe it is. Even in the midst of this sadness I can't help feeling a tad grateful to myself for having the good sense to open my heart to him and let him in. What an unlikely bundle of joy he turned out to be.

If there's an afterlife then I hope he can see I'm looking after Mom.

It's been nearly five months now since he quietly slipped away. My bitterness and self loathing for not heeding that frightened inner voice when he first started to change are easing up at last. I guess I'm beginning to forgive myself.

I'm not quite there yet, but I'm starting to understand that beating myself up and continuing to deny myself happiness are not honoring Chik's memory. They're denigrating it.

I still can't imagine loving anyone quite so completely at this stage of my grief...but I'm slowly coming to the realization that if I'm to do right by the life he shared with me, by the memories he left me, then I have to open myself to that possibility again at some point.

Not yet, of course...but someday.

*

Author's acknowledgment: I extend my sincere gratitude to Bundy5 for his patient guidance in grammar, imagery and story craft.