“I don’t like the idea of you not being here,” I’d said. “With me. Always.”
“Me either. But it’s just a little while, sweetheart. Not forever. Never forever.”
I ran into Westley’s room to see two nurses working, although I could not register what the work of their hands entailed. Michelle stood next to her father, her hand on his chest, her arm stretched out as though she were casting some type of healing spell on him. I didn’t know what it meant, but I did the same—I pressed my left hand against the blue-and-white hospital gown, watched my wedding set rise and fall in the rhythm of the ever-slowing heartbeat of my husband, my life partner. His breathing had become more labored than before and the monitor’s beep-beep-beep slowed to vast spans of time between.
One of the nurses said something—I don’t know what—and left the room, then reentered. I looked up at Michelle whose eyes spilled tears but without her sobbing. “What?” I asked her. “Why aren’t they doing something?”
Michelle glanced at the DNR, telling me without words that there was nothing they could, by law, do. Westley had a directive, as did I. We’d signed them together. Only, I never thought we’d need them. Somehow, I’d believed we’d live forever … never truly growing old, never really growing tired. That, even though we’d buried our loved ones, Westley and I would carry on and death would never separate us.
The beating under our hands thumped in finality. His breath came in puffs. Once … twice … three times. Finally, a fourth intake of air—a last gasp of our time together—followed by a long sigh, and it was over. Westley’s life. My life. “Oh, Wes,” I cried, my knees buckling, my hands gripping the siderails of the bed.
Michelle came around, gathered me up and helped me to the chair I’d let out to sleep in every night, then slid in beside me. Together, we sobbed until our own breathing became normal again. Michelle whispered, “Mom, we need to let the nurses take care of things.”
I nodded and we rose to leave the room, but not before I gave Westley a final kiss. While his lips were still warm. While his spirit still hovered. While he could see—oh, surely he could—how much I would always love him.
An hour later, Michelle and I left the hospital to plan a funeral. To make the necessary calls to family and friends. To somehow … somehow … begin a new normal.
Southern women are strong by nature, my grandmother once told me. We are the true Scarlett O’Haras. We raise our radishes into the air and declare that, “as God is my witness we shall never go hungry again.” Remember that …
And so I stayed in Odenville and continued to run the drugstores. I joined one of the book clubs. For a while, I became active in a Single & Over Fifty group at our church, which too often was made up of men looking for “a nurse or a purse,” or women who wanted to man bash. I wanted neither. I would never marry again; this much was for sure. I’d had too many years of wonderful to ever settle for anything less. Perfect? No. But wonderful. Always easy? Definitely not. But … wonderful. I wouldn’t trade a moment of the bad with Westley for a second of the best with someone else.
Westley never fully left me. I sensed his presence. I caught the trail of his cologne as I walked within the rooms of our home. I talked out loud to him, then “heard” his retorts.
Your favorite movie is coming on TV this weekend …
Which favorite movie…
When Harry Met Sally …
Ali … that’s your favorite movie … Mine is, and always will be, Black Hawk Down.
I laugh. No, Westley … When Harry Met Sally is yours. Remember? I want what she’s having …
Oh, yeah … Let me see your best Meg Ryan …
Each night I held his pillow close to my breast and imagined kissing him goodnight. Then, as my eyes closed and I slipped into dreamland, I felt the heat of his arms coming around me. The strength of them. “I love you,” I whispered into the dark of every night. This sustained me.
During those first years, for the most part, I filled my days with work, which didn’t seem like work at all. Westley had always told Michelle: find something you love to do and then figure out a way to make money doing it. Well, I had. I wasn’t changing and touching lives like Westley had or my old friend Elaine continued to do, and I missed my time with Miss Justine and Ro-Bay, but I enjoyed my days. Routine days at times, but I knew I could count on them.
Routine days include routines. Each morning I woke at the sound of an alarm, put my feet on the floor, tossed the covers back over the bed, then padded into the bathroom. Minutes later, I slipped downstairs and into the kitchen where I made my morning coffee, sat at the breakfast table, opened my iPad, answered emails, then played Spider Solitaire to help wake my brain along with the caffeine. Then I headed
