I am reading about Game of Thrones, a TV show I don’t like, don’t care about, and never even watched, on Twitter. I suppose it’s because it’s the ending of something that was around when he was still around. Maybe that’s it, I don’t know. But suddenly, out of nowhere, I’m choking on my anxiety and my tears. They just come, even when I don’t want them to, 11 months later. Still. Incredibly, they come.
The Anniversary is coming. Like Winter, I suppose. The march of time that marks the beginning of the end of my relationship, which ended, not through a fight or a gradual drifting off to sea, but of a severing through death.
June 5th is the first of the anniversaries. It’s the last time I saw him. I was going to New York, full of hope and happiness, a heart full of love. I was going to work on my book and had a story assignment and everything was looking up. My newish boyfriend was walking me to the train at 8:30 that morning. He was rolling my suitcase and for some reason we crossed the street at different times, and he was across the street from me for a significant part of the last five minutes I would ever see him in person.
I finally crossed to him at the corner, and was little irritated. But I relaxed as his hand folded into mine, as it always did, automatically. We descended the escalator toward the train, and it was coming soon. And my throat began to close and I began to feel anxious about saying goodbye to him. It was just a few weeks away, but I hated to be gone so long from him.
For him, I knew it was just a blip. He’d work longer hours, make extra money. He’d been in the military and married and been gone months and years. A few weeks would be over in a flash, and it’d be like it never happened, this separation.
The train came and he gave me a hug and a kiss. “I’ll be here when you get back,” he said.
I got on the train, facing him as it pulled away. I began to cry and I didn’t understand why I was crying. It was like I knew. Maybe I did. Maybe I just was sad to be away for so long.
Within a few minutes, he was already texting me. The traffic back to his house was bad. He usually never experienced it like this. He usually didn’t go back to his house until mid-day when the commuters had already commuted. He was stuck in the hellish daily commute of techies traveling from Seattle to Bellevue.
One hour later, I had arrived at the airport and he was still texting me. We kept in constant contact, even on the plane, his enthusiasm and excitement for me and my trip, humming through the phone.
Is it dark? What's the weather like? Taxi or Uber or Lyft omg tell me what's up I'm so excited!
I could take him with me wherever I went, showing him videos of the apartment where I was staying, the little needy black cat I was watching, on an app, Marco Polo. I could show him the dinner I was making and would have made for him if I had been home, and see him at work, in his shop. We weren’t separated, we’d be right here for each other, every day, connected through the ether.
Some days that connection was constant and filled with charming anecdotes. Other days, they were filled with anxiety, because he had said something that hurt my feelings, or I had sent a text I shouldn’t have. In all cases, the gulf between us, thousands of miles of space hung in the air. I yearned for him, I wanted to go home, to lean into his big chest, to have my hand slip into his as we walked down the street. I had anxiety dreams about not being able to reach him, about him ghosting me, waking up sweaty and filled with dread.
And then it happened. The actual thing that I had feared but never expected would happen, happened in the most literal and awful of ways. He died in a motorcycle accident. He is a ghost now. The last image I have of him is drifting so far away, it’s fading so quickly, I fight to crystalize it in my memory. Him standing at the train station, wearing the plaid flannel shirt, or maybe it was just a t-shirt, I can’t be sure. But the train of time is pulling away from the station, moving faster and faster, further and further from Before when everything was good and he was alive.
I cry as it recedes away from him. This time, I know why I am crying.