Category: loss

I have often told my husband that he should write a book. He is self-employed and works with so many different people each day, spending time in their homes, and he ends up seeing and hearing snippets of people’s lives that are sometimes hilarious, sometimes sweet, sometimes disgusting! People feel comfortable with him, and as he works in their homes, he becomes their sounding board, their counselor, a witness to their lives.

The other evening, when I got home from work, he told me he wanted to tell me what happened to him earlier that day. I laughed, anticipating some crazy story about a colorful customer, but it was not at all what I expected.

He stopped at a restaurant after work, and he looked up and saw a man sitting nearby, crying at a table, alone. My husband asked him if he was okay, and the man wiped his face and told him it was his first time eating out without his wife. She had died the week before. His son was supposed to be meeting him there, but he was late and hadn’t shown up yet.

My husband told him that he was sure his son would be there soon, but while he was waiting, he invited the man to sit with him so he wasn’t by himself. The man sat down with my husband and told him his story, that he and his wife had spent a lovely weekend together, played hooky on Monday to have more time together, then on Tuesday, as he was driving to work, he got a phone call that his wife had sat down at her desk at work and had simply died. No explanation, no warning. She was there one minute and gone the next.

The man told my husband about his wife, how she liked to plan things, how she had a notebook full of information about places they wanted to visit, trips they wanted to take. He told him how they were running late for work on Tuesday morning, how she was standing in the kitchen when he left, how she said “I love you”, and how he said “I love you too” just as he closed the door to the garage.

He started crying harder as he told my husband this, and he said, “I don’t know if she heard me.”

My husband asked him if he told her he loved her every morning. The man said yes. My husband said, “Then she heard you. Then she knew.”

I felt my eyes fill with tears for a man I had never even met, because I know that regret, that doubt, that tearing apart every detail after someone has died. It’s agonizing. I hope he learns soon to stop adding to his pain.

My husband talked to him a bit longer, then looked up and saw a younger, spitting image of the man walking through the restaurant, looking around. He knew the young man was the man’s son, even without having met him before, because they looked so much alike. He said, “Look who’s here.”

When the father and son saw each other, they hugged, crying, and they sat down together at another table. When my husband went to pay for his meal, the waiter told him it had already been taken care of. The man’s son caught his eye and nodded.

It was hard not to cry when my husband told me this story. It will soon be two years since my mother died, but losing someone that close to you is a deep wound that never really heals. I hope my husband brought some comfort to that man and to his son that day. I hope they find out what happened to her, even if it won’t bring her back, but just to understand a little bit of why she was taken away. I hope that man stops torturing himself with what he thinks he should have done or said differently that morning and learns to focus on the love they shared and the time they had together.

I held my husband tighter that evening. I don’t take any of our days together for granted, and now, I appreciate them even more than I did before. I want to be sure he never doubts how I feel or that my life would not possibly be the same without him in it.