Every hour wounds…

….the last one kills.

Three months since she broke my heart, one month since it became official.  The funny thing about time is how acutely our perception affects it.  For example, three minutes have passed since I sat here thinking about a title, and it seems like an eyeblink, yet I’ve put things in the microwave for three minutes before and managed to seemingly run eternal laps around the house doing other tasks before the sound of the beep.

Unfortunately, these three months lean towards arduous rather than fleet, and it seems like half a year since I broke the news to my friends in staggered bursts of anger and tears. 

I’ve grieved for the most part, and it’s easy to fill my head with harshness and my heart with complaints. Still, it’s the gentle memories that intrude, insisting on recognition when, for now, I’d rather pretend I wasn’t in love, that I wasn’t caught off guard, that I somehow knew or sensed or understood it was going to end sooner or later instead of simply being naive enough to believe in laughter and joy and friendship, foolishly convinced that our commitment mattered to us both, rather than just me.

And yes, I’m also foolish enough to believe that having eight commas in a sentence is acceptable every now and then.

I finished The Lovely Bones last night. Breathtaking. It has almost supplanted The Time Traveler’s Wife as the best book I’ve read in the last year.

Towards the end was one of those unwelcome sweet memories.

Every night, for four years, I tucked her in.  Or at least, I tried to–sometimes, I lost track of time, or she fell asleep before I got up there (in which case I would quietly turn out the light and remove her book, ensconcing her within the sheets to ensure her warmth). In general, though, 19 days out of 20, there I was, bidding good night, holding her close, lips supple against her skin.  I counted this as one of the things I could do, every day, to remind her I valued her and our relationship; so that each night, as she drifted to sleep, she would know. Loving. Tender. Reliable. Consistent. Devoted.

That’s me. I believe in that. I believe in a lot, apparently, that gets rave reviews yet always leaves me alone.

And last night, alone in bed, finishing this wondrous novel by Ms. Seibold, I came across a passage that brought those tuck-in moments to life.

During the summers, we had a ritual called Soft Cloud. Sometimes, I’d do it multiple times because it made her laugh and shiver with glee.  Particularly good ones were called Master Clouds. Particularly bad ones were jokingly called Punishment Clouds. There were others; every couple has its own language, its own grammar and syntax, and that was certainly part of our omnibus.  Soft Cloud seemed better experienced than described, better seen than talked about, until I read this and aside from the fact it’s father/son instead of husband/wife it captured those sweet moments perfectly. Substitute appropriately.

"Ready, Buck?" my father would say, and sometimes Buckley said "Roger," or sometimes he said "Takeoff," but when he was most frightened and giddy and waiting for peace he just said "Yes!"  And my father would take the thin cotton top sheet and bunch it up in his hands while being careful to keep the two corners between his thumb and forefinger. Then he would snap it out so the pale blue (if they were using Buckley’s) or lavender (if they were using mine) sheet would spread out like a parachute above him and gently, what felt wonderfully slowly, it would waft down and touch along his exposed skin–his knees, his forearms, his cheeks and chin.  Both air and cover somehow there in the same space at the same time–it felt like the ultimate freedom and protection.  It was lovely, left him vulnerable and quivering on some edge, and all he could hope was that if he begged him, my father would oblige and do it again.  Air and cover, air and cover–sustaining the unspoken connection between them: little boy, wounded man.

The older I get, the more I come to the realization that for all my intellect, for all my philosophies, for all my theories, for all my study, there will be some things I will simply never understand, one of which is why she left.