what we’ll miss

We thought the first conversations were the hard ones. When the person you love is facing an imminent demise there are things that need to be discussed - wills, health care directives, burial plans and hospice care. There’s an actual checklist labeled important conversations - it’s in a pamphlet they send home from the hospital reminding you to talk about those things. It’s in a mint green booklet, with a super depressed sketch of a willow tree on the front. I think it’s supposed to be comforting. 

It isn’t.

But what happens when those conversations are over?

That’s when the real ones start.

There isn’t much time for small talk when you’re dying - and besides, small talk has never been our thing. So tonight, over a dessert of warm carmel rolls from “Cinnamon roll Lori” (see previous post), I asked him, “What will you miss?”

“About life?”

“Yeah. This life. What will you miss most?”

“You.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to miss me. I think you’ll get to be with me all of the time. And you’ll be strong. Both of your arms and legs will work, and even when I get old, you will still be young and strong. I sure will miss you though.”

He smiles and says, “I’ll miss the way that I could always reach my hand out and yours would just fit into it.”

“I’ll miss that too. I’ll miss car lunches.”

He laughs, “definitely will miss car lunch dates”. Car lunches are the only way we could have each other’s undivided attention. Since we both worked from home, eating there was a distraction, and in a restaurant we invariably would run into someone we knew, and we’d lose our together time, so we’d order takeout and sit in the car to eat. Nobody else would get my need for car lunches.

The list is so long. Between bites of caramel, and sips of cold milk we tell each other the things we’ll miss most, not the obtuse esoteric things, but the concrete, everyday moments that have built our love, our home, our family. Road trips; watching New Girl; cooking for the other person; falling asleep next to each other; planning trips - even if we never went; me playing with the back of his hair while he drives; Sunday morning sandwich snuggles with Nika; how he always talked too long to too many people and I’d have to squeeze his hand to get him to get going; the bouncy way I walk; swing dancing in the living room; sharing a coke, because neither of us can finish one; family game nights; our walks around the loop; the way I’d squeeze his hand when he put it on my knee; the smell of his unwashed t-shirts; me feeding him cheesecake covered in cherry goo; when I’d walk into his office and he’d hold up one finger because he was on a call, but I’d kiss him anyway, and he’d always tell whomever it was that he’d call them back later; his obsession with his food dehydrator and his little cherry tomatoes; the trips we take each morning (today it was Couer D’Alene, Idaho); his spinach puffs at Christmas; my foot tangled in his legs when we sleep; that I always knew which lemonade to buy; sweet corn; the feel of hugs; the sound of our kids laughing; pinoli cookies.

He’ll miss those things. I’ll miss them too - in the most concrete of ways, those will be the tiny arrows that pierce my heart. When I go to the grocery store and don’t have anyone to buy lemonade for; when I realize too late that I should not have washed his T-shirt; when I walk into his office and realize I need to clean it out - that he won’t be just one minute - those are the things that will break me all over again. 

But for now, they are perfect. They are pieces of how we love each other, how we fit.

I wonder if I will ever fit into this world without him.