Or,
How to Beat Yourself Up with Guilt
I rode in the front of the ambulance to Emergency that day. Holding his jacket and the one shoe I’d found on the road. In a daze, like it was happening to someone else.
Like in a dream, the next thing I remember was standing behind the rear doors as they pulled the stretcher out. He saw me. He struggled to keep eye contact with me as he awkwardly swatted at the oxygen mask on his face.
“Keep that on, Paul. You need to keep that on,” the paramedic warned him, too kindly.
“Hey, you heard her. Put that back on or so help me I will tell your mother.”
Those were the last words he heard me say.
Yeah. Great. And I get to live with that for the rest of my life.
Except, I do get to live with that for the rest of my life.
And I’m okay with it.
Because at some point I realized something incredibly obvious, but not obvious at all.
We were together 23 years.
As time went on, he learned all about my people, my past, my personality. I learned all about his people, his past, and his personality.
We got to a point where our interactions were a bit of a private shorthand.
I could spout, “OMG, he did it again!”
And Paul would know exactly whom I was talking about, what had happened again, and what I expected him to say or do about it.
Because every time we talked, we were continuing our conversation from the last time.
Because every time we talked, we were never starting a new conversation.
Because every time we talked, we were adding to one continuous 23-year-long conversation.
So if I look back across the length of that conversation, I can remember parts where I told him I loved him. I told him I didn’t know how I’d ever get by without him. I missed him when he was away.
I also said a lot of nasty things. And there were times I went too long saying nothing at all.
But in every one of those cases, we were able to find our way back to each other and fix things.
I know that, given enough time, we would have laughed at me threatening to tell his mom on him.
We just didn’t get enough time.
And that doesn’t matter. Because I know, and I know he knew, that everything was good between us.
Because we had been talking and adding to our story the entire time we were together.
The last words we spoke to each other were no more or less important than every other time we talked.
They were just part of the whole. And the whole, when taken as the whole, was pretty damn good.
Dragonfly You 
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