The Splintering as One Passes—When a Life Partner Dies

We said goodbye this week after years of illness but still unexpectedly, suddenly, and heartbreakingly.

We always write to someone, in anticipation of someone who will read and know.

I debated about sending a letter, about whether or not to put words into your boxes, the little slip of paper in a fortune cookie, the words lining up in tidy rows to reveal, not a fortune, not a prediction, but a story, an ending, something unexpected, and then unexpectedly fast.

Partly, I don’t want to lock these words into an email. It feels too vulnerable, too raw. I don’t want to give you these words. I don’t want you to own them. I don’t want belated support.

I’ve reached out so many times.

I’m not sure now what even matters.

Shards. Splinters. Glass. Eventually, I know, I will make my way back to the glass, to the rounding, the softening, the weathering. Eventually, there will be glass, prismatic and sea. I hope I get there, but it will take time.

So many things happened this week, but it was, before that, a story of four weeks. And before that, a story of a few months, and before that, and before that, and before that.

This story was different. This story didn’t start the same way. This story didn’t start with crisis. This story was supposed to be simple—a few days in and then out.

But the rules of the game shifted every day. Every day, we thought maybe the next day would be a release. But that date kept moving. The dominoes kept falling, the splintering of the glass kept expanding. But we had been there before.

At no point did we think there would never be a release, that the only release would be a final goodbye.

We passed time doing the crossword puzzle. We talked about foods and grocery lists and planning for my mother’s visit. We talked about falling behind in War and Peace, about shows on TV, about headlines, about the boys, about random memories that floated free after more than thirty years.

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So much goes in here…and yet so little. Too little.

I just didn’t know. I didn’t know these were the last days.

Things happened fast, faster than anyone seemed to expect even after everything fell apart and we knew what was coming, and too fast to allow the time we needed, the time I needed.

They talked of maybe days, maybe weeks.

We needed twelve more hours. Maybe eighteen. When I left on Tuesday, it seemed we might get that time. She was sure. She promised. She would hold on for those hours.

My partner died this week.
Passed.
Thirty-two years.
I’ve debated the words.

I’ve used different combinations.

I’ve had to tell people that I didn’t feel I owed those words, those explanations.

There aren’t a lot of people to tell. Chronic illness isolates you. People don’t have time, don’t understand, don’t make room for things that are not shiny, things that are not carefree, things that are inconvenient.

“No one knows,” I said the morning after.

The world keeps going.

They brought in a round of Shasta ginger ale in small green cans as we sat in the final hours. Four little green cans. So many times in those last days, she wanted something to drink.

She also wanted one final lobster roll on her birthday next month.

In the final whispers, we talked of Maine (the best), of Louisiana (the bugs), and of Nantucket (a memory).

I feel like I need to announce it, yell it, scream it, because nobody knows. Nobody knows what these years and then weeks, and then 24 hours, and then twelve, and then four, and then two were like.

Nobody knew this was happening.
And then it happened.
We watched it happen. We held hands through the happening. My head split wide open in the happening.

I like to think I handled it well, handled the day well, handled the decisions well, kept it together.

I hold close a few words from a doctor, words generously given after talking us through one day and then me through another, when I was the only one who could, when the twelve hours we were sure we would have had been taken away in the dark hours of night. Her kindness to me in the day, her patience, the compassion in her eyes, both of us in masks, meant so much, and when she sought me out to thank me, I was undone.

I don’t even know where to start now…. I don’t know where to start with the writing. I just know that I have to write, that writing is the only way to begin to gather and fold the details. I just know that a keyboard was the thing I most needed after I got home, but my overwhelm was too real, my exhaustion too deep. I sat on the couch, keyboard in lap, falling asleep, slipping in and out as we sat together in the dim living room, drained, details and moments rehashed again and again.

It’s the only story, and only in written words am I able to find the threads.

Already, the thousand details have started to fall like shards …. My writerly brain jumps to (and rejects) kaleidoscopes. My writerly brain jumps to (and rejects) pickup sticks. My writerly brain jumps to (and lingers) on the shattering of a wine glass. My writerly brain jumps to (and rejects) the shattering of a snowflake, a crystalline formation, delicate, lacy, full of holes and yet full of pattern and beauty. But snowflakes don’t shatter. The analogy falls away. They melt.

This is not a story of fragility.

Photo by Elina Fairytale, Pexels

Over time, I will sort out words and analogies.

The thousand details right now are the splintering of history, of memory, of time, of the individual moments over the last days and weeks, of things I wished I had done differently, of not doing enough, of things that were said, comments, doctors, kindnesses, moments of transition. The thousand details include the last whispered words.

I know I will forget it all. I feel like I have to get it all down, as quickly as I can, because I can’t lose this. I keep opening new files, starting new notes. I don’t know how to approach the emptiness ahead. There are dozens of things to do, and a lot of uncertainty.

I don’t even see a way now.

I have a lot going on in my head.

I am sure there will be words, more words, other words, and repeated words. This is not a polished story. This is a sticky note on the mirror, the kind of note that says, “I’ll be back soon.”

I am realizing I know nothing at all about grief and grieving.

I planned on putting a few images below, but I just don’t have it in me. (Images are always at Instagram.)

Thank you for reading.

Amy

“I am sitting here, you are sitting there. Say even that you are sitting across the kitchen table from me right now. Our eyes meet; a consciousness snaps back and forth. What we know, at least for starters, is: here we—so incontrovertibly—are. This is our life, these are our lighted seasons, and then we die.… The sheer fringe and network of detail assumes primary importance. That there are so many details seems to be the most important and visible fact about creation. If you can’t see the forest for the trees, then look at the trees; when you’ve looked at enough trees, you’ve seen a forest, you’ve got it. If the world is gratuitous, then the fringe of a goldfish’s fin is a million times more so.”— Annie Dillard, Tinker Creek

Weekly Bits and Pieces

• Prompts for Illustrate Your Week - Week 24

• Diary List Comics / 52 Weeks

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Made It?

Thank you for reading. Thank you, too, to the few of you who commented last week on the 100 Day project wrap up. The project meant a lot to me, and I somehow thought that showing all of them together would be a post that people would respond to, a post that was meaningful. I am facing facts.

It was a long week.

Have I said too much? Maybe.

There are no words that will help. I can’t do glossy words. I read something today that explained what people sometimes need in this moment is simply acknowledgement. Yes. But already I see that acknowledgement is often a wave and then silence. From others, there has just been silence.

I wish I had a collaborative correspondence in progress. I wish I had friends where I live. People underestimate what that really means, what that reality really is. My mom and our sons are here for the moment. We have all lost, but I am going to be lost. I am drowning in that and, too, in the reality that things can’t simply “go on.” So many things I have been ineffective in bringing about. So many things I have done wrong. So many things didn’t happen.

But I do have this space. I do have a few readers who might skim a few lines. Thank you.

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