message

You’ve started seeing other women. I suppose that’s only natural. It’d be easy to say it’s only been a year. I’ve known other widowers to wait. Maybe five years. Maybe ten. Just to give themselves time to grieve. To acclimate to their new reality. But knowing you you’ll probably say that you grieved through the years that you cared for me as I slowly died. And that makes sense, I guess. But I wouldn’t know. I was too sick to grieve losing you. To reach into the reality that you’d be gone from me too. Yes, even in one’s own death there is grief but there comes a point when one can think only of the moment and then the next wondering which will be the last and what it will feel like to plummet into dark nothingness where the before life and the afterlife blend into the perfect final state of everlasting null and void. But you, you have started seeing other women. How can you even stand it? It must be vacuous; ongoing flat conversation tapering off into fewer and fewer words. You held my hand as I slipped into nether realms. And then you let go. I still seek your touch but I am devoid of my senses. I have to say that I do favor the last one.  But I will find a way to keep you to myself.

©Karen Casady 2021