I'd laugh, if I could remember how

I felt I’d gone crazy enough that I’d laugh, but I couldn’t remember how. It seemed all I could remember how to do was sleep, and even that was a fight that I lost more often than not. I lay in the middle of my bed, my body naked and exposed amid the wide expanse of the king size mattress, making me feel like driftwood lost at sea.

I stared with unfocused eyes at the fan blades spinning slowly overhead, the quiet hum of the motor competing with the steady drips of water from the bathroom faucet – humdriphumdriphumdrip. Nothing brought me comfort; I wanted only to tear down the world around me, convinced that only destruction would bring me peace.

I never expected it to end like this; frankly I never expected it to end, so my mind was refusing to process the fact that it had. She had been gone only a day. One day. It was a moment and an eternity all at the same time and my every cell presented me with its own memory of what had been: her caress, her scent and her laugh washed over me like waves of untouchable perfection now forever out of reach.

The phone rang; I ignored it. I curled onto my side and closed my eyes, squeezing them tighter and tighter with each persistent scream from the phone. I buried my face in her pillow, inhaling the scent of her shampoo that lingered there; honeysuckle, the scent of my heaven, which now only brought pain.

She had quite literally fallen into my life at my brother’s graduation party, tripping on his cat and falling into my arms as I lunged forward to catch her. The surprise in her smoky gray eyes refused to give way to embarrassment, and finally amusement won when she burst out laughing. That had been five years and a wedding ago.

Each night we had lain in bed, fingers laced together as we talked softly about our high/lows; the high and low point of our day. My low varied day to day, but my high every night was lying in bed with her, and she prodded me endlessly for something new; nothing ever displaced her as the best part of my day.

Our morning routine was the same every day; up at 6:00, shower, get dressed, pack up lunch and head out the door to carpool to our respective jobs. Yesterday hadn’t felt different from any other day; not to me anyway. She had seemed a little off from the moment she woke up, her gaze drifting off and staring into space not blankly, but as though she were listening to something only she could hear.

The longer it went on the more concerned I’d become, asking her repeatedly if she was all right, and she assured me she was. The drive to work was uneventful, and as I kissed her goodbye a feeling of dread began creeping over me, compelling me to beg her to stay with me and play hooky for the day. She laughed, called me silly, and climbed from the car to head into her office.

Halfway through the day she had called me, her voice quiet and sounding far away. She told me she loved me, but her dad had called and she needed to go see him.

Her father had died a year earlier.