Late at night, or even midday, whenever really, I find myself in the shower meditating over how I, as a grown independent woman, I don’t need a man. If you die, I can survive, I tell myself. I can support this family. I can take the insurance money, pay for the house, put some aside. It will be enough, and then I can take care of my personal pleasures myself, financially, physically. My body does not need a man’s touch, and coffee and books are not that expensive. I will be fine without you, I’m sure. I lie. Tears are harder to see in the shower. But a young to middle age feminist has no time for tears that mourn only possibilities.
When our dog passed away a few years ago, I numbed myself while you cried. He was old. It was expected. Yes, I told you, you miss him, and you lied to yourself that he would live longer. The vet assistant was moved to tears as she witnessed the bond between a grown man and his first furry child—a grown man grieving over a graying giant that struggled for his last breaths. As the euthanasia crept through his veins, you were determined to be there, that he would not be alone.
He would die knowing he was loved above all others. It was not until your grief was spent that I found mine many days later. It snuck up on me one night after I put the kids to bed, you were working an overnight shift or away for some training—I don’t recall. But I do recall the shock, the awareness that I thought that I was done with this thing, but it was not quite done with me. I missed Frank “the Tank” too. I also wanted to be there to send him off with love, but someone had to stay home with the kids. My shoulders shook silently with only the cold faux leather of the sofa to hug me.
I have to shed at least half the tears for what’s coming before it occurs. If I don’t, who will hold our little ones, the one with your blonde hair and icy blue eyes and the other with your bone structure and gangly limbs? If I do not mourn half of the could-bes now, then I will crumble when they need me the most, as they struggle to hang on to your memory, your laugh. It is my job to show them how, and I have to do it with half the tears or not at all.
Now that there are rumors of war, my visions sneak up more and more. They whisper in my ear while I pull a brush through our daughter’s dirty-gold locks.
His whole camp will be ambushed.
The people he will go with are weak.
They will get him killed.
I am incapable of escaping the maybe of your end. It is a stench that won’t leave, wisped into my nostrils by hasty politics.
You say “I shouldn’t have mentioned it” when my teeth grind and my questions get caught up in exasperation, because you want to protect me from the worry, from the truth. As if we could stop my tears by ignoring the storm. It is because you are protecting me that I cry. It is because I know that you truly know the risk you take. And so, you prepare, but you are the only one that I can see preparing. And the preparation is ugly, draining. For both of us.
I don’t hate what you do. It is not that simple. I understand it. And that makes it more painful. I know what fuels you. I know that you didn’t expect it to feel so important.
I am not a woman that refuses to be with a man in a uniform, but I cannot claim that I do not understand them, those women that refuse to mourn. Not now. Once I could convince myself that they were crazy. But that was before I watched you die thousands of times. That was before I really understood what it meant to consider that I might have to live without you. And not in the sappy over-romantic way, but in the practical companionable way that defines what we are to each other.
It is because I love you for all that you are that I know you are the perfect soldier for the people you love unselfishly. It is because when your death comes to you, I know that you will not see the faces of the stupidly confident at your sides or the comfortably naïve. You will see my face and the faces of your babies. It is us that you fight for. And we will not be there to hold you. You will not come home to hold us. We will have to settle on holding each other. It’s expected. I know it may be coming, but it hurts.
“I got you,” he whispers as he cups my arm one night. It’s not sappy. It is strangely comforting in a way that belongs to us. I am happy you are here today. I can be sure you will be here tomorrow. It is the someday you might not that hurts.
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