Wear it well

   Most of the hours, I am happy. I don’t remember that Michael no longer exists. Especially at work, I don’t have to trip over the non-facts of him.
   I like being happy. I like busy-ness, problem solving, quick steps and decisive gestures. I like mock-dancing with co-workers as our paths cross on the carpet. I like blurts of humor from social media, I like people’s jokes. I like the problems.
   I don’t like being reminded. 
   I don’t like the generous, tentative, thoughtful co-worker who stops to look at me and ask how I am doing. “How are you holding up?” I don’t like it when they ask that. Stop asking that. Just assume I’m too fragile to answer and ask me instead about your grammar or that TV show we like. 
   I don’t like it when kind people express their sadness, and I have to remember mine and find a few sad-seeming words to say so I won’t be like a monster to them, trashing their good opinion of me by refusing to be broken and ruined and a mess. 
   I don’t want to be a mess. I refuse to be broken and I don't need to be ruined. He left me stronger and happier than I was before he found me. He gave me decades of strength to fall back on. As soon as I am on my way toward my workday, I can lift my nose to the sky and like the high wild blue and how my heart is ready to laugh and have a great day.
   I don’t like it when they confide how much they miss him and are struggling with it. 
   Their sorrow makes my sorrow happen when it doesn’t need to happen. It makes the loss of him slop around.
   They should shut up and have a good day.

   I must avoid thinking about his last months while I am driving. I need to stop going on and on about how often he would call me at work, after he was home in the afternoons. About the joke it was between me and Jennifer, his calling while I was so busy and unable to talk. I would text him some minor information and right away he would call to ask me to recite the text, confirm the text. “You will stop at the store on the way home?” 
   It was sweet but so annoying.
   Now while I am driving I start to worry that it was awful for him. That he was frightened. That he sensed his death coming and felt alone and was frightened. That he wanted to hear a reassuring human voice, and my voice had to do.
   
   Or did I mean everything to him? Was I reassurance? 
   I hope not. I hope he had other, better sources of reassurance. I was trying to be kinder, but I was always distracted — calm, but also not often fully present. 
   Again and again over our 41 years together, my harsh treatment of his feelings would shame me, and I would promise myself to be less rough with him next time. Gradually, over the years, I did learn better self-control, I remembered to remind us both that I loved him very much even when I was biting off his ears because he was fraying my last nerve. 
   But still, there was always that need for a next time, to do better next time.
   Thank God we didn’t have run-ins or rough patches in the week before he died. I don’t think I could recover if there was a “next time” I was still counting upon, a next time that will never come. 
   No, we were on good terms when he left and took my future with him. 
   I can see myself tweaking his big toe as I walk past his recliner on my way to the washing machine. I can see myself smiling at him fondly. I know he sees me showing him how fond I am.

   But it would be better if next time would come along anyway. Just for old times sake, give me back the future I had planned.