her ghost.
Sometimes just as he reaches for my hand, the overhead light flicks on. Ghost light, he calls it. I think it's Jami. I wish I knew whether she was signaling her approval or disapproval.
The day we decided to drive to the beach, I caught a movement from the corner of my eye. Something a lot like a shadow, but brighter, right near the stove. When I turned my head, it didn't disappear, and I felt--not heard, exactly, but felt--a voice in my head. She asked me what I was doing. I answered that I like him, we have fun together, and he's happier now than he was. Then I promised I wouldn't hurt him, and the shadow nodded and blinked out of sight.
Dating in your 30s is like walking through a minefield. Everyone has baggage. Everyone's been married, or nearly married. Everyone's been hurt. Everyone's scared. Everyone is damaged. But "dead wife"? This is a whole different thing. It's not like a break-up or a divorce, where you're angry or apathetic toward the last one. You never stopped loving the last one. It never went wrong or fell apart, except for the part where she died.
It's ridiculous to feel threatened by a dead woman, and I don't. It's impossible to compete, too. I win by default. I'm actually here. But she can edge me out on a technicality, too... I'm human, and I'll do shitty things and make mistakes and say stuff I'll regret. She won't.
Yesterday her daughter came over with her dad and stepmom to get the last of her things out of her old room, and when I shook her hand I realized she looks exactly like Jami, and it felt weird to think that. It feels weird to realize how much of a role this woman I never met is playing in my life right now. How well I seem to know her.
But I stepped outside and stared at the garden for a while, blinking back tears, because what hit me hardest was how this house, the one I'm sitting in right now, used to be home to a whole family, a husband and wife and two kids, and now it's just him. Ray didn't only lose Jami--he lost a family. That's a loss that takes my breath away, really. It doesn't really matter that the kids weren't "his." They lived here and now they don't, and he doesn't get to see them. It's just one of the saddest things I've ever seen.
And here's the thing, right? I haven't been so happy myself in a really long time. I'm not stressed out and I don't freak out wondering what's going on or how he feels and we have similar tastes and we're similar kinds of people, really, smart and smart-assed and liberal and generous and basically kind. And he's cute and holds my hand all the time and smells good and gives great hugs and rescues me when I go out drinking with a girl from work and want to ditch out early and I like him, a lot. And life is for the living. It's not like I feel guilty, or like I'm doing something wrong. I'm pretty happy. I wouldn't change a thing.
But if there were some way I could put it all back, bring Jami back and turn everything back into the way it was for them before she got sick, if I could put her in the kitchen not as a ghost or a shadow but as a woman, his wife, making coffee or reading the paper, and the kids climbing on the sofa or running in the yard with the dog, I would. I'd walk away in a heartbeat, happily, if it meant that she'd never gotten cancer, if it meant he'd never had to hurt so much. Which... I think... I think it might be love I'm in.
The day we decided to drive to the beach, I caught a movement from the corner of my eye. Something a lot like a shadow, but brighter, right near the stove. When I turned my head, it didn't disappear, and I felt--not heard, exactly, but felt--a voice in my head. She asked me what I was doing. I answered that I like him, we have fun together, and he's happier now than he was. Then I promised I wouldn't hurt him, and the shadow nodded and blinked out of sight.
Dating in your 30s is like walking through a minefield. Everyone has baggage. Everyone's been married, or nearly married. Everyone's been hurt. Everyone's scared. Everyone is damaged. But "dead wife"? This is a whole different thing. It's not like a break-up or a divorce, where you're angry or apathetic toward the last one. You never stopped loving the last one. It never went wrong or fell apart, except for the part where she died.
It's ridiculous to feel threatened by a dead woman, and I don't. It's impossible to compete, too. I win by default. I'm actually here. But she can edge me out on a technicality, too... I'm human, and I'll do shitty things and make mistakes and say stuff I'll regret. She won't.
Yesterday her daughter came over with her dad and stepmom to get the last of her things out of her old room, and when I shook her hand I realized she looks exactly like Jami, and it felt weird to think that. It feels weird to realize how much of a role this woman I never met is playing in my life right now. How well I seem to know her.
But I stepped outside and stared at the garden for a while, blinking back tears, because what hit me hardest was how this house, the one I'm sitting in right now, used to be home to a whole family, a husband and wife and two kids, and now it's just him. Ray didn't only lose Jami--he lost a family. That's a loss that takes my breath away, really. It doesn't really matter that the kids weren't "his." They lived here and now they don't, and he doesn't get to see them. It's just one of the saddest things I've ever seen.
And here's the thing, right? I haven't been so happy myself in a really long time. I'm not stressed out and I don't freak out wondering what's going on or how he feels and we have similar tastes and we're similar kinds of people, really, smart and smart-assed and liberal and generous and basically kind. And he's cute and holds my hand all the time and smells good and gives great hugs and rescues me when I go out drinking with a girl from work and want to ditch out early and I like him, a lot. And life is for the living. It's not like I feel guilty, or like I'm doing something wrong. I'm pretty happy. I wouldn't change a thing.
But if there were some way I could put it all back, bring Jami back and turn everything back into the way it was for them before she got sick, if I could put her in the kitchen not as a ghost or a shadow but as a woman, his wife, making coffee or reading the paper, and the kids climbing on the sofa or running in the yard with the dog, I would. I'd walk away in a heartbeat, happily, if it meant that she'd never gotten cancer, if it meant he'd never had to hurt so much. Which... I think... I think it might be love I'm in.