The best and worst days of my life were separated by two years, three months, four days, three hours, and seven minutes, give or take a few seconds.
The best? The day of my wedding. It was that moment where my eyes swept along the curve of my wife’s white gown and up to the tears in her eyes, watching them pour down the second I said, “I do.” That day was amazing, culminating in that one perfect moment.
The worst? The day I lost her, sitting in the ER, watching the surgeon come out only 20 minutes after she’d been rushed in. I knew then that she was gone. I had a drunk driver to thank for that.
Maybe it sounds strange, becoming that attached to someone. I married young, I could always find someone else, right? Except that there was no one else. When I met her, it was like something inside me clicked into place. Everywhere we went, she bled color into the world, filling my vision with a kind of beauty that I can’t express, no matter how many useless words fill this page. She was my one and my only.
Jessica. Sorry, it’s still hard to even write her name. It feels like the weight on my chest gets heavier every time.
After her death, I went into a deep depression, as is to be expected. I stopped eating and going outside. I practically lived on the couch because I couldn’t bear to be in our bed. I had her favorite pink silk nightgown perpetually balled up in my fist. It was like I could hold on to that one piece of her forever.
Things went on like this for months. Even after my family tried to intervene. I just couldn’t move on. I wouldn’t let anyone touch her stuff. I still DVRed her favorite shows. I would make her favorite foods and then leave them on the counter, never touching them for myself.
I was a mess.
But time goes on. And life goes on, whether you want it to or not. Whether it’s fair or not. I started with her toothbrush. One day I caught myself staring at it for over an hour. And then, on an impulse, I grabbed it and threw it in the trashcan. I sobbed for about 20 minutes after. It’s like a spell was broken. I gradually went back to daily life.
Nothing was ever the same, and grief never disappears, you just learn to experience it differently. I had moved on as much as I ever would.
Five years, two months, twelve days, four hours, and two minutes after the moment I lost her, I got her back.
I’m an editor for our local newspaper, not too bad a job. She would be proud of me. But sometimes I get back sort of late at night. This happened to be one of those nights.
I trudged in around eleven, thinking that I’d grab a beer since I’d been particularly productive that day and, hell, I deserved one. Her voice wafted to me from the kitchen.
“Hi, honey, you’re back so late!”
Her soft, sweet voice froze me in place.
After she’d passed, I’d often have dreams where she was still alive. She’d convince me that everything that had passed had been nothing but a misunderstanding, and I’d always end up believing her. I’d hold her in my arms and just as I was about to kiss her, I’d wake up on that grungy couch, tears already starting to form in my eyes as reality sunk back in all too quickly.
I figured I was having another one of those dreams.
I squatted down and tried to steady my breathing. It had helped with my panic attacks in the past, maybe it would help me stay calm now. I inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to will myself to wake up.
And then she popped around the corner.
She looked just like the day she had left for work when the accident happened. Her blonde hair was wavy with just one piece of her bangs longer than the others. Her blue eyes practically jumped out of her skull, they were so big. She was tall and slender, dressed in a simple black dress and a dress coat.
Now I knew I was dreaming. It was like she’d jumped right out of my nightmares.
“What are you doing down there? Come on, I’ve tried to keep dinner warm for you!”
“YOU’RE NOT REAL!” I screamed. It was more to convince myself than anything else.
In a moment, she was at my side. “Andrew, what happened? What’s wrong?” I could feel her eyes searching my face, so I hid it behind my trembling hands. This was bad. I was having a breakdown.
I tried to ward her off again. “GO AWAY, LEAVE ME ALONE!”
This time, she put her arms around me. Her lilac perfume washed through my insides, staining my heart. This was her. This was her touch. I could feel it in my bones that it was her.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, shh. Everything is okay, just relax…”
All the resistance I’d had fell away at that point. I cried in her arms for hours. I wouldn’t let her go. I knew I was dreaming, but maybe this time I could make it last. Maybe I could just dream forever and never wake up. I was realizing now just how much I wanted that.
Jessica eventually led me to our room. I refused to let go of her, so she climbed into bed with me, snuggling into my arms just like she used to. I tried to remain awake, knowing that once I fell asleep in my dream it was all over. I stared at her perfect face, trying to etch it into my memory. Eventually all my strength drained away and I fell into a deep sleep.
I woke up the next morning, steeling myself for a long day. Maybe I’d call into work sick. Or would it be better to go in? Maybe I shouldn’t be alone.
I was contemplating these questions when I opened my eyes and saw that Jessica was still there.
I was speechless, staring at her sleeping form until her eyes fluttered open.
“Hey,” her coarse morning voice, just like I’d remembered. “You’re up early. Are you okay? Do you feel better?” She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, just like I’d remembered. Her every movement…just like I’d remembered.
It felt like all the prayers I’d ever prayed had come true at that moment. So maybe I was still dreaming… maybe I really could dream forever.
I called into work sick and I spent the day with Jessica. It was like she’d never left. She cooked me breakfast. We lazed around the couch and watched stupid romantic comedies. We even browsed Reddit (her favorite subreddit is /r/aww). That whole day I wouldn’t let go of her. She was always in my arms. She was mine again.
And then, that night, we made love.
That was the moment that convinced me I wasn’t in a dream. This was real, it was tangible, it was intimate, it was everything it should have been and more. I knew now I was in the real world with my real wife.
I can honestly say, I’d never been happier. I took a full week off of work and just spent time with her. It was the best gift I’d ever been given. Gradually, the past five years began to feel like some bad joke. Here was my wife, and she’d never even left.
Of course, I noticed some things were off. We never left the house. With her home, it seemed natural for us to stay in together. I saw our kitchen stocked with food, even though neither of us had gone to the store.
She never told anyone else that she was back. I never told them, either. It wasn’t that I was keeping her a secret. The moment she came back into my life, it was like the rest of the world didn’t exist, like it had never existed in the first place.
Lastly, we never addressed her death. I was petrified of bringing it up, as though it would break the delicate balance of her reappearance and she’d be gone again. I just pretended she had never gone, and gradually began to believe it myself.
After a week, I was sufficiently assured that she wasn’t going anywhere. I went back to work. I’d come home to a home-cooked meal and romantic evenings. The spring came back into my step and I was always whistling, much to the annoyance of other subway passengers.
It was bliss.
Then it shattered.
The burglar broke in around one in the morning. He was an amateur, unable to jimmy the lock. He thought he could break the downstairs window and we wouldn’t hear. Fucking idiot. Of course I jumped to my feet, Jessica following close behind as I rushed down the stairs. I’d grabbed a baseball bat I keep in my room, but of course, the moron had a gun.
I was protecting Jessica as best I could, shielding her and trying to hold down my panic. If I died now, I’d be separated from her again. My heart was thumping wildly.
The guy’s face – seriously, not even a ski mask? – changed abruptly as he stared at Jessica. It was a look of sheer terror. I’ve never seen someone that scared.
“Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, what the fuck, you sick bastard, what the fuck is wrong with her?!”
That was probably one of the most confusing moments of my life, second only to my dead wife cooking dinner for me.
He practically jumped out the window as I turned back to face Jessica.
You know, when Jessica died, I didn’t really have a chance to look at her. She was gone before I could see what the car accident had done to her. And, of course, there was no open casket visitation.
Now, however, I had the opportunity to see clearly for myself. I could see the bruising descending diagonally from her left shoulder down, matching the seatbelt that she’d been thrown against at 70 miles an hour. Her face was smashed in, chunks of glass jutting out, from where the windshield had been crushed into her head. There was a piece of glass stuck in her right eye, a mess of puss and blood painting her face. Her right arm was twisted at all the wrong angles. You could tell she’d tried to get it in front of her face in time to lessen the blow. The rest of her was black and blue and a mess of blood.
“Should we call the cops?”
Her voice took me out of my daze. This was surreal. She looked at me innocently, as though she was unaware of the mess that her body was in.
After that, I tried everything I could to fix her. I washed her up and removed all the chunks of glass, but the moment I turned my back to throw them in the trash, they reappeared. Blood flowed from her cuts in endless streams, converging into a river of gore that swelled at her feet. Although she continued to cook and clean for me and even come into our bed, there was nothing I could do to help her.
As time went on, her body started to decay. I could tell it was happening when she began to swell up, her stomach distending and her skin turning a sickly shade of yellow. The smell came next. I could tell she was trying to cover it up with perfume. I watched as her hair began to fall away and her skin started to rot.
After a week or so, I realized there was no way we could continue like this. So I sat Jessica down.
“Honey, I want you to know that I love you very much… But we both know that you shouldn’t be here. Please, I need to know…what happened to you?”
Until I reached the end of my question, Jessica held that perfect, innocent smile. But as soon as I finished, she broke down and began sobbing, puss pouring out of her tear ducts instead of tears.
“I know this might make you hate me, but…I made a deal.”
My heart sank. “Jessica, what did you do?”
“Death isn’t anything like what people say. He looked like an ordinary man to me. And when I died, it wasn’t so bad, just like drifting through nothingness. But I could still see you sometimes. Sometimes I’d find myself standing next to you, watching you. And I could feel your pain. I wanted so much to help you…” She sniffled. “So I asked Death to let me come back. Just one more chance. For a long time, he wouldn’t listen. It’s against the laws of nature, he said. It’s not my place, not anymore. But…but then he saw your lifespan was shortening. You were supposed to live to be an old man, you were supposed to have kids and a full life…but instead, your life was getting shorter and shorter by the minute, like a candle about to burn out. It went from 80 years to 70, to 60, to 50, to 40…” she paused to look me in the eye. “That’s when he made a deal with me. He knew that if I came back, your lifespan would return to normal. He told me that our bond was too strong, we couldn’t be separated, it was a mistake to pull us apart in the first place. He told me I could come back. The thing is, though, I couldn’t let anyone but you see me or have any contact with me. If I did, I would have to die again. Dead people don’t belong in this world, but I wanted to be with you, no matter what the cost.”
At this point, Jessica was in hysterics. I did my best to comfort her, my soothing hand careful not to pull away the rotting skin. I spoke in a low, soft voice until she gradually relaxed. She cried herself to sleep and I placed her in our bed.
I’m writing this now because I want you all to know what I know now. Sometimes, love hurts. Sometimes it hurts the ones you love the most. My love for Jessica became her burden, and now she is rotting here in front of my eyes. I can see how painful it is for her. I can see that balance must be restored.
I’ve still got my dad’s old glock in the gun safe downstairs. In a moment I’ll lay down next to the woman I love more than anything in the world and I’ll restore the balance. At least, this time, we can go together.
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