At the end, Mike was unable to eat, bedridden, completely dependent on me. His hospital bed was in the guest room. I slept lightly, at the opposite end of the house, listening for him, always available. 

He continued to call for me in the days and weeks after he died. Or so I thought. I was sad and unnerved when I realized he was gone, and that I’d only imagined hearing his voice.

My therapist recommended Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. Reading it was healing. Life is not better now. But it’s different. Tolerable. 

And often … too quiet.

I’ve written about Mike the student. He loved to read and learn, and rarely went anywhere without a book. While the rest of us were playing Candy Crush, he was studying.

In the last six months of his life, he spent a lot of time in hospitals. Each trip meant packing a bag, and each bag had three books in it. Every time. Including the final one, to hospice house. He didn’t read them. He didn’t even open them. 

I came to realize they were security for him. As long as he had books to read, he wasn’t done learning.

Mother’s Day, 2006. His favorite month. 

That May morning was full of Appalachian spring. Warm, breezy, soft, sweet.

“We need to talk about something,” he said.

The last time he’d proposed a “talk,” he suggested we see other people. I was, naturally, a bit apprehensive as I sat down at our dining table with a fresh mug of coffee.

We’d lived together for nine years. We’d been dating since 1993 – with the aforementioned break.

“I think we should get married,” he said. “We make a good team.”

I’ve always thought it funny that I was wearing pajamas when he proposed.

A recent Washington Post article about digital clutter sent me to my inbox to see how many emails I was hanging onto – 390, some still unread. (Mike’s account has two.)

I started deleting – so many were unimportant! 

I stopped to read one about Mike I wrote on his birthday last year.

The resulting emotion surprised me. Astonished me, really. The last month of Mike’s life was so very hard, and reading about it brought it all back. 

I was – and am – sad and angry and sad and frustrated and sad and helpless. But only sometimes.

Time really does heal grief.