Forever, Interrupted

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Every morning when I wake up I forget for a fraction of a second that you are gone and I reach for you. All I ever find is the cold side of the bed. My eyes settle on the picture of us in Paris, on the bedside table, and I am overjoyed that even though the time was brief I loved you and you loved me.

He seems too sexy to be a husband. He’s young and he’s tall and he’s strong. He’s so perfect. I sound like an idiot. But this is how it’s supposed to be, right? As a newlywed, I’m supposed to see him through these rose-colored glasses.

That’s when I fall to the ground. Everything starts spinning. I can hear my pulse, but I can’t focus on what the policeman is saying. I really didn’t think this was going to happen. I thought bad things only happened to people with hubris. They don’t happen to people like me, people that know how fragile life is, people that respect the authority of a higher power. But it has. It has happened to me.

There is a teenage couple holding hands. I don’t know why they are here, but judging from the smiles on their faces and the way they are flirting, I can only assume it’s not dire and I… I want to scream at them. I want to say that emergency rooms are for emergencies and they shouldn’t be here if they are going to look happy and carefree. I want to tell them to go home and be happy somewhere else because I don’t need to see it. I don’t remember what it feels like to be them. I don’t even remember how it feels to be myself before this happened.

Then I think of what a stupid reason that is for Ben to die. He died over Fruity Pebbles. It would be funny if it wasn’t so… It will never be funny. Nothing about this is funny. Even the fact that I lost my husband because I had a craving for a children’s cereal based on the Flintstones cartoon. I hate myself for this. That’s who I hate the most.

The water springs from my eyes as if I’m forcing it out but I’m not. It’s just falling on its own. I don’t even feel sad. This level of devastation is so far beyond tears, that mine feel paltry and silly.

I look at my face and I think that I had someone who loved this face. And now he’s gone. And now no one loves my face anymore.

Why would I want him to go in with me? I just met this man. This man means nothing to me. The man inside this room means everything to me. Nothing isn’t going to help losing everything.

Stepping into my apartment, I have no idea what time of day it is. I have no idea how long it has been since I sat on the couch like a cavalier bitch whining about cereal in my pajamas. This apartment, the one I have loved since I moved in, the one I considered “ours” when Ben moved in, now betrays me. It hasn’t moved an inch since Ben died. It’s like it doesn’t care. It didn’t put away his shoes sitting in the middle of the floor. It didn’t fold up the blanket he was using. It didn’t even have the decency to hide his toothbrush from plain view. This apartment is acting like nothing has changed. Everything has changed. I tell the walls he’s gone. “He’s dead. He’s not coming home.” Ana rubs my back and says, “I know, baby. I know.”

get into my side of the bed and I can smell him still. He’s still here in the sheets. I grab his pillow from his side of the bed and I smell it, choking on my own tears.

I reach over to grab Ben’s hand as I do every morning, and his side of the bed is empty. For a minute I think he must be in the bathroom or making breakfast and then I remember. My devastation returns, this time duller but thicker, coating my body like a blanket, sinking my heart like a stone.

Ana leaves, and as I hear the door shut, it hits me how alone I am. I am alone in this room, I am alone in this apartment, but more to the point, I am alone in this life.

I am all talk right now. Life can’t go on. That’s just a thing people say to other people because they heard it on daytime TV. It doesn’t exist for me. It never will. There will be no moving on. But people not living in the valley of a tragedy don’t like to hear this. They like to hear you “buck up.” They want to say to your friends, to your co-workers, to the people you used to ride elevators with, that you’re “handling it well.” That you’re a “trooper.” The more crass of them want to say you’re a “tough bitch” or a “hard as nails motherfucker.” I’m not, but let them think it. It’s easier on all of us.

Life can’t go on. That’s just a thing people say to other people because they heard it on daytime TV. It doesn’t exist for me. It never will. There will be no moving on. But people not living in the valley of a tragedy don’t like to hear this. They like to hear you “buck up.” They want to say to your friends, to your co-workers, to the people you used to ride elevators with, that you’re “handling it well.” That you’re a “trooper.” The more crass of them want to say you’re a “tough bitch” or a “hard as nails motherfucker.” I’m not, but let them think it. It’s easier on all of us.

In my dreams, Ben and I are together. We are free. We are wild. We are what we were. In the mornings, I ache for my dreams to be real, but it’s a familiar ache, and while it feels like it might kill me, I know from having felt it the day before that it won’t. And maybe that’s how some of my strength comes back.

Everything reminds me of Ben. Floors, walls, ceilings, white, black, brown, blue, elephants, cartwheels, grass, marbles, Yahtzee. Everything. My life is trigger after trigger. I have reached a critical mass of grief. So, no, I don’t need to avoid any triggers.

“Elsie, let’s spend our lives together. Let’s have children together and buy a house together. I want you there when I get the promotion I’ve been shooting for, when I get turned down for something I’ve always hoped for, when I fall and when I stand back up. I want to see every day of your life unfold. I want to be yours and to have you as my own. Will you marry me? Marry me.” “Will you marry me?” is crossed out and replaced with the more forward statement. “Marry me.”

When you love someone so much that you’ve stuck around through all the interesting things that have happened to them and you have nothing left to say, when you know the course of their day before they even tell you, when you lie next to them and hold their hand even though they haven’t said one interesting thing in days, that’s a love I want. It’s the love I was on target for.

Things happen in your life that you can’t possibly imagine. But time goes on and time changes you and the times change and the next thing you know, you’re smack in the middle of a life you never saw coming.”

“I took each day as it came, and it led me to Lorraine. And Lorraine is the love of my life. Esther is a story I tell young women in libraries, but Lorraine makes me feel like I could conquer the world. Like the universe was made for me to live in it. The minute I met her, she just set my world on fire. I forgot about Esther just as fast as she forgot about me, once I met Lorraine.”

I’m just trying to tell you that your life will be very long with zigzags you can’t imagine. You won’t realize just how young you are until you aren’t that young anymore.

The novelty was gone for us and what we were left with was… awesome.

“So, I mean, being married is what separates him from just some guy. It’s what proves he’s… he’s the love of my life.” “No, it doesn’t,” she says. I just stare at her. “That doesn’t matter at all. It’s a piece of paper. A piece of paper you don’t even have, by the way. It means nothing.” “It means everything!” I say.

“Listen to me; it means nothing. You think that some ten minutes you spent with Ben in a room defines what you meant to each other? It doesn’t. You define that. What you feel defines that. You loved him. He loved you. You believed in each other. That is what you lost. It doesn’t matter whether it’s labeled a husband or a boyfriend. You lost the person you love. You lost the future you thought you had.”

Love is love is love. When you lose it, it feels like the shittiest disaster in the world. Just like dog shit.”

“You didn’t have as much time as I did to be attached to the man you loved. But attachment and love are two different things. My heart was broken and I didn’t remember how to do things without him. I didn’t remember who I was. But you, you lived without Ben just last year. You can do it again. You can do it sooner than me. But the love, that’s the sharp pain that won’t stop. That’s the constant ache in your chest. That won’t go away easily.”

“I just feel like I had him for so little time,” I say. It’s difficult to talk about. It’s difficult because I work so hard to keep the self-pity at bay, and talking like this, talking about all of this, it’s like opening the door to my self-pity closet and asking its contents to spill all over the floor. “I didn’t have enough time with him,” I say, my voice starting to break, my lips starting to quiver. “It wasn’t enough time. Six months! That’s all I had.” I lose my breath. “I only got to be his wife for nine days.” I now begin to sob. “Nine days isn’t enough. It’s not enough.” Susan comes closer to me, and she grabs my hand. She pushes my hair back off my forehead. She catches my eye. “Sweetheart, I’m telling you, you love someone like that, you love them the right way, and no time would be enough. Doesn’t matter if you had thirty years,” she tells me. “It wouldn’t be enough.”

But you, you have to meet someone else in this life. I can’t imagine how much of a betrayal that would feel to me if I had to do it.” “It is a betrayal. All of it feels like betrayal. I had this amazing man—I can’t just find another one and forget about him.” “I understand that, Elsie. But you have to find a way to remember him and forget him. You have to find a way to keep him in your heart and in your memories but do something else with your life. Your life cannot be about my son. It can’t.”

I shake my head. “If my life isn’t about him, I don’t know what it’s about.” “It’s about you. Your life has always been about you. That’s what makes it your life,” she says and smiles at me. “I know nine days is short. I know six months is short. But, trust me when I tell you, if you go on and you marry someone else, and you have kids with them and you love your family and you feel like you would die without them, you won’t have lost Ben. Those nine days, those six months, they are a part of your life now, a part of you. They may not have been enough for you but they were enough to change you.

Yet, I’m not on the verge of tears. In fact, I feel okay. I can’t help but think that maybe because it’s okay to cry, I can’t.

“Drunk words are sober thoughts,” he said, and then he fell asleep.

That is what true love is. True love is saying to someone “Forget about us. We will be okay,” when it might not even be true, when the last thing you want is to be forgotten.

“You made my life worth living. I promise you I am going to do something with it.”

They shine brighter than anything else in the sky and then fade out really quickly. A supernova is a short burst of extraordinary energy.”

You are everything I have ever wanted in another person. You are my best friend, my lover, my partner. And I promise that I will spend the rest of my life taking care of you, the way you deserve to be taken care of. My whole life I was never looking for something bigger than myself, and then I met you and I want to dedicate every day of my life to you. You are it for me. You are why I am here. Without you, I am nothing. So thank you, Elsie, for being who you are, and for spending your life with me.”

never knew what it was like to love someone so much and to be loved so well,” I said. “For the rest of time, I will be by your side, Ben. I will dedicate my life to you.”

“For the rest of time, I will be by your side, Ben. I will dedicate my life to you.”

No matter how strong you are, no matter how smart you are or tough you can be, the world will find a way to break you. And when it does, the only thing you can do is hold on.