Finding Grace

by Loretta Rothschild

with my lofty drop into medical menopause at thirty-three had done little for my Christmas spirit.

He no longer cared what time it was. It was as if he knew that from now on, there was just before and after.

The world seemed to prioritize a regimented skincare routine over the wonder of getting old.

It never ceased to amaze him how two people could share the same DNA yet little else.

Tom watched as a man walked by, thumb-typing on his BlackBerry, making the same mistake he had, looking at his phone instead of into his wife’s eyes.

For a moment, I envied my husband. If only I could be more like Tom and put myself first, no matter what—maybe

How someone at such a young age can just drop dead like that. He was thirty-two years old. How does that happen?”

harbinger

But grief isn’t an oyster—you can’t swallow it whole.

You don’t pity me or look at me like a project.

the way he used to ogle me, that staggered glance over my body that always made me feel like he was undressing me with his eyes.

What had I done? Why was everything changing? Was this my fault? Had I become an inconvenience?

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.”

There were so many crossed wires. So many dead ends and complications. But like children’s books and memoirs, we don’t write from the very beginning; one simply chooses a place to start and that becomes the first chapter of the story.

But love wasn’t measured by its ending. It was every cup of coffee, broken boiler, empty crisp packet, and train ride.