No Happy Endings

by Nora McInerny Purmort

the front yard and shoveling the walkway together. Not just the two of us, but more of us . . . a bigger version of our team, filling out the space. This house was as boring and traditional as houses could be, the kind of house a child would draw if you said “Draw me a house.” This was a house that a family would live in. And instead of seeing Ralph and myself as two pieces of rubble, I saw us for what we were: a family. Even without Aaron, we were still a family. A small family, yes, but a family. Those little condos didn’t feel right because they weren’t right, because our

know how, or when, but I knew that it would happen in this house. That this house, even with its aging furnace and the spider-filled basement, would be where we let ourselves grow. “This doesn’t have a big bathtub, a porch,

finished basement, a gas fireplace, or any of the things that you said were must-haves yesterday,” Dave said. “And this kitchen is a disaster.” I gave him th...

his arms to his sides and squeezing until I felt him give up. “It’s perfect. I have to have it,” I replied and started a mental calculation of how many gallons of paint it would take to cover the baby-poop...

a mortgage approval,” he countered. “It’s bad form to make an offer you can’t pay.” I did my best to look employed and responsible at t...

minutes in, just when I was getting to the part where I knew I had found the right house for my son and me to start over in, Richard raised his hand to interject. “Do you have your tax returns?” he asked me, and I reached into my bag to wrestle out the stack of backup information I had compiled: five years of tax returns, bank statements, and check stubs from my shiny new freelance career. “This is possible . . .” he said, punching some numbers into his computer. “It won’t be traditional,

Of course, I didn’t mind. I’d heard him loud and clear: it was possible. Yes, this was more in between, but it was a new kind of in between for me. This in between was joyful. This uncertainty was one that had a beautiful new beginning on the other side.

in our dorky nightgowns, eating popcorn and watching Olson Twins movies we were definitely too old for, repeating my fortune for them turned them all into the human equivalent of a grimace emoji. My parents were not big fans of sleepovers. “You have your own bed to sleep in,” my

grew up to be the kind of woman who believes in spiritual pluralism, a sort of cafeteria approach to faith and religion that puts about as much stock in my star chart and my own self as I do in a benevolent (and probably female) God. It’s all just different ways to make sense of the world around us, and our place in it. We are who we are maybe because of some big, omniscient force, because of when and where the planets were in relation to when and where we were born, because of our own choices and actions . . . because of a lot of things that nobody can really know for sure. Let me

at us like, “You get cancer! You get a fancy house! You get a fancy house and cancer!” I don’t believe that the psychic at Kate’s tenth birthday party was truly telling my future. Or

Once, I was talking with a friend whose husband had also died young. He was a lot like Aaron—preternaturally positive and happy and present—and she wondered: Did a part of him know he was going to die young? Somewhere deep inside, was his soul aware that he was here for a good time, not a long time?

There was certainly something in me, from a young age, that knew that life was going to be hard.

Maybe everything that psychic said was bullshit. Maybe it’s all bullshit. But some of it is bullshit I can believe in.

“The problem with people,” he said, a vast generalization not targeted to my age group, which may have been why I kept listening, “is that they think there’s a right time for things. They think the world gives a shit about your timing.” Maybe this was why the psychic had bristled him so much: because the idea that the future was predictable was just as ridiculous as the idea that there was a specific chronology you could follow on your way to happiness, that there was a right time for marriage, or children, or buying a minivan. That was pure nonsense to

loyal. I don’t know if sloths are actually loyal, but don’t they seem like they would be? Austin dated his wife, Lori, for ten years before he proposed, and this drove my father absolutely bonkers. What was Austin waiting for,

house just off the freeway, where my mother was once robbed at knifepoint by a man whose face was covered by pantyhose, which I bet you thought happened only in movies. This guy threw my mom into the basement and locked the door while my sister slept in her crib, blissfully

but that we couldn’t let timing be an excuse for not getting the things that we did want. Waiting for the perfect conditions is a waste of what limited time you have on this earth. What

Aaron died at age thirty-five, and while there is no disputing that it was the wrong time for him to die, we could look each other in the eye and say, “We did good.”

that I was unemployed. He didn’t know that I was making it up as I went, and neither did most people. I really had felt ready for anything with Aaron, because his bravery made me look so much braver than I actually was. I didn’t have to do the brain surgeries, or the chemo. It wasn’t my body

or anything really. I know that because I have lived the reality, and have seen others live the same way. Here is what my dad didn’t say: that it’s easy to accept that notion when you’re a good, safe distance from the difficult experience you’re living through. It’s easy to say “everything happens for a reason” when you’ve already found your reason. It’s easy to say that timing is irrelevant when you’re looking back at

It’s a lot damn harder when you’re in the thick of it, when you can’t even see where your next step is.

you from the shock, and it can’t prepare you for what’s next. What’s next is unknowable, but one thing is certain: it doesn’t care about what you want, or what you’re expecting. It doesn’t care whether a psychic tipped you off at a birthday party in fourth grade or if it catches you completely off guard. It’s coming for you, ready or not. Chapter Ten Smile I guess I looked too sad for a widow.

“Okay, I acknowledge your presence but can this exchange be over now?” I turned away from him, and signaled to my friend to cover for me, but he leaned over her, because he wasn’t done talking.

nephew who was going to spend his entire short life in the hospital. I hadn’t spent

Did the world need another nonprofit? No. Did it need a nonprofit run by two women, my friend Lindsay and me, with absolutely no experience in the nonprofit world? I assure you, it

Money is super helpful when your life is falling apart.

radiation appointments. It made the nurses laugh, and it made us feel safe and strong. Our fellow patients would shuffle or be wheeled in, and you would know instantly that you were looking at a shadow of what they had once

It’s hard to sit with someone’s pain and allow it to make you uncomfortable. It’s much easier to try to fill that hole in the conversation with small talk, or hand the person a tissue instead of offering them your shoulder. It’s much easier to implore them to see the bright side than to be in the darkness with them. I get it. I’ve done it. I still do it. Being a tragedy connoisseur does not make me a tragedy expert, and I still fuck it up sometimes.

the moment called for. Accessing that feeling would mean accessing my grief for Aaron, and my dad, and the baby who

“Smile” is not a way to actually cheer a person up. It’s a way to tell them “please adjust your face to my preferences.”

” a curious physical ailment that seems to have spread of late like a case of foot and mouth does through a preschool class. Remember how Hillary Clinton was diagnosed with RBF for not smiling enough during the presidential debates, and alternately described as crazy, grandmotherly,

for dinner. Aaron would never be late. Minus ten points. Matthew arrived, twelve minutes late* and completely soaked. Last year, I’d given Aaron a piggyback over a snowbank to our favorite diner for what we didn’t know would be his last meal out. This year, it was pouring rain. Stop. I told myself. Be here. The first year of widowhood is a year of firsts: 365 days where you can say “last year, we were . . .” The blank is filled in with everything from the monumental to the mundane: we were at the oncologist for an MRI, we were picking apples at the orchard and pretending he wasn’t dying, we were looking at the price of flights to Arizona for a Christmas he would never celebrate. It’s an entire calendar year of emotional landmines, every single day loaded with meaning. I’d wanted to propose a different day for our first date, but which one? If every day was reserved for living in my past, when would I have time for the present? Two hours after Matthew finally arrived, our dinner was over and the staff at Pizza Nea was ready to go home. Around the time our appetizers arrived, I’d stopped cataloging the differences between Matthew and Aaron, and slipped into the present moment. It was not an intentional shift; it was an imperceptible magnetic pull into the present moment, probably emanating from Matthew’s unbelievably blue eyes. They were crinkled at the edges, and lined with jet black lashes that only men are born with because the world is unfair.

insists he is five-eleven. This is a very common practice for men, and since I’ve been six feet tall since eighth grade, I know that most men overestimate their height by at least an inch. As such, I’ve always set my parameters to a six-two minimum, knowing I’ll get a guy around my height. This is not important to me because I need to feel small and dainty next to my man, but because

so she could see what she’s missing by taking dads out of the equation. Instead, I’ll just implore you all to open your eyes, search criteria, and hearts to include parents . . . for these enticing reasons.

time to waste. Because soccer pickup is at 7:30 p.m. and there’s an orchestra concert on Saturday and school pictures are coming up and the

I came of age in the era of Céline Dion, and my expectations were that near or far my heart would go on. For me, love was a ghost driving a motorcycle into my bedroom?

You don’t need to be this person’s everything because they already have a rich, full life outside of you. They have other people in their life—small people who may not yet know how to wipe their own butts—and those small people will always come before you. This is good for you! Because you’ll realize that having a relationship doesn’t mean sacrificing everything you enjoy at the altar of love.

It means adding something great to your already awesome life.

as a cup of wine or coffee. When you’re one hundred percent obsessed with your romantic partner, you become like a cup of hotel coffee: lukewarm, bitter, and a waste of time and resources. Is t...

There were gift ideas and albums to send me, and stupid photos and memes that would make me laugh. Aaron was the kind of person who made coffee without being asked, who played with the

Love is in these little things, in small acts of kindness, in the simple consideration of another person.

slept with a hand on me, because he was too claustrophobic for my brand of snuggling. How he laid in bed with me until I fell asleep—even when he wasn’t tired—because

you just . . . plug it in). In the immortal words of the prophets Simon & Garfunkel, I was a rock, I was an island.

I told him that I’d woken up thinking about him, and everything he had been through in the past five years. I told him that I could see what he didn’t: that he had kept his broken world together for his children, and that it was harder than it looked. I told him I was sorry he had been betrayed and broken, and that I was happy to be a person who benefited from his pain. Here is a notebook, I explained, I think you should write it all down, so you can look back and see what I see. I had these items couriered

I hated how much I liked him. I didn’t want to get used to him, or love him, or need him. Because here is one thing that all human men have in common: stupid mortal bodies that will definitely die. I knew Matthew had smoked, so, obviously, there were already pre-cancerous cells floating around in his body, just waiting to gather

I knew Matthew was alive, and it was only a matter of time until he was not.

Mary Oliver’s book of poetry about her dead wife. Love still as once you loved, deeply and without patience. Let God and the world know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.

Is it a date if you just read a man poetry and weep while he sits on your couch? It is to me! Date

Unexpected goodness is as large and overwhelming as unexpected tragedy. It feels as if all unexpected life events blow in all at once, like a summer storm that drops rocks of ice on your lawn on an eighty-degree day. That’s true of the hard things: they arrive with an exclamation mark, sudden and declarative. But the good things are different. Looking back, you always see that they took their time. A high school boyfriend of mine told me that

If something extraordinary happens to you, why shouldn’t it happen twice? Be just as likely to happen again? Why should I be surprised to find myself here? Why shouldn’t I be feeling this electric rush of new love?