Letter: Hearts On a String

It was the day before this last Valentine’s Day. And it was to be our last.

“You’ve battled well. It’s been a long journey,” her oncologist said, “but we’ve reached the end.”

I suppose we’d expected – one day – to hear those words. But not that day. And not any day, anytime soon. But now that day had arrived.

“When the end comes, would you prefer to be in the hospital, or at home?”

My wife looked at me from where she lay on the hospital bed and together, we answered: “home.”

For that Valentine’s Day, hearts, lots of hearts, were a display of love from the grandkids, hung by clothespins to a string stretched above where we sat together on the couch in the family room that evening, holding hands, the little ones having returned with their parents to their own homes.

It was there on that same couch in the family room, in the early morning hours, long before the sun had risen, that I woke her up and once again sat with her, holding hands, we two together sharing in the grief of having lost our business, totally destroyed by fire.

It was there on that couch in the family room that we sat together and laughed at the antics of the family; and cried, facing death; or simply sat still in silence for lack of knowing what to say.

Not three months now have gone by since she’s been gone and sometimes, I’ll sit there alone and think how time is as thin as the thread, as slender as the string, which connects fifty years, from the promise made – “till death us do part” – to the promise kept.