And now he was sick.
“I do love you, Lizzy,” he murmured against my hair. “I’ll always love you, even when I’m dead and gone.”
“Which won’t be for at least fifty more years,” I reminded him on a sob.
He ignored me, “You love me back, don’t you?”
“Yes, I love you back,” I whispered with so much emotion the words stuck in my throat. “But you already knew that.”
“Maybe,” he conceded gently. “But I will never, ever get tired of hearing it.”
I sniffled against him, staining his hospital gown with my mascara and eye liner. “That’s a good thing, because you’re going to be hearing it for a very long time.”
He didn’t respond, just kept swaying with me back and forth until the song ended. He asked me to play it again and I did, three more times. By the end of the fourth, he was too tired to stand. I laid him back in bed and helped him adjust the IV and monitor again so that it didn’t bother him, then pulled the sheet over his cold toes.
His eyes were closed and I thought he’d fallen asleep, so I bent down to kiss his forehead. He stirred at my touch and reached out to cup my face with his un-needled arm. I looked down into his depthless green eyes and fell in love with him all over again.
It was as simple as that.
It had always been that simple for him to get me to fall in love with him.
“You are the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me, Lizzy.” His voice was broken and scratchy and a tear slid out from the corner of each of his eyes.
My chin trembled at his words because I knew what he was doing and I hated it, I hated every part of it. I shook my head, trying to get him to stop but he held my gaze and just kept going.
“You are. And you have made my life good, and worth living. You have made me love more than any man has ever known how to love. I didn’t know this kind of happiness existed in real life, Liz, and you’re the one that gave it to me. I couldn’t be more thankful for the life we’ve shared together. I couldn’t be more thankful for you.”
“Oh, Grady, please-”
“Lizzy,” he said in his sternest voice that he only used when I’d maxed out a credit card. “Whatever happens, whatever happens to me, I want you to keep giving this gift to other people.” I opened my mouth to vehemently object to everything he was saying but he silenced me with a cold finger on my lips. “I didn’t say go marry the first man you find. Hell, I’m not even talking about another man. But I don’t want this light to die with me. I don’t want you to forget how happy you make other people just because you might not feel happy. Even if I don’t, Lizzy, I want you to go on living. Promise me that.”
But I shook my head, “No.” I wasn’t going to promise him that. I couldn’t make myself. And it was unfair of him to ask me that.
“Please, Sweetheart, for me?” His deep, green eyes glossed over with emotion and I could physically feel how painful this was for him to ask me. He didn’t want this anymore than I did.
I found myself nodding, while I sniffled back a stream of tears. “Okay,” I whispered. “I promise.”
He broke out into a genuine smile then, his thumb rubbing back and forth along my jaw. “Now tell me you love me, one more time.”
“I love you, Grady,” I murmured, leaning into his touch and savoring this moment with him.
“And I will always, always love you, Lizzy.”
His eyes finally fluttered shut and his hand dropped from my face. His vitals remained the same, so I knew he was just sleeping. I crawled into bed with him, gently shifting him so that I could lie on my side, in the nook of his arm and lay my hand on his chest. I did this often; I liked to feel the beat of his heart underneath my hand. It had stopped too many times before, for me to trust its reliability. My husband was a very sick man, and had been for a while now.
Tonight was different though. Tonight, Grady was lucid and coherent, he’d found enough energy to stand up and dance with me, to tell me he loved me. Tonight could have been a turn for the better.
But it wasn’t-because only a few hours later, Grady’s heart stopped for the third time during his adult life, and this time it never restarted.
Stage One: Denial Not every story has a happy ending. Some only hold a happy beginning.
This is my story. I’d already met my soul mate, fallen in love with him and lived our happily ever after.
This story is not about me falling in love.
This story is about me learning to live again after love left my life.
Research shows there are five stages of grief. I don’t know what this means for me, as I was stuck, nice and hard, in step one.
Denial.
I knew, acutely, that I was still in stage one.
I knew this because every time I walked in the house, I wandered around aimlessly looking for Grady. I still picked up my phone to check if he texted or called throughout the day. I looked for him in a crowded room, got the urge to call him from the grocery store just to make sure I had everything he needed, and reached for him in the middle of the night.
Acceptance-the last stage of grief-was firmly and forever out of my reach, and I often looked forward to it with longing. Why? Because Denial was a son of a bitch and it hurt more than anything when I realized he wasn’t in the house, wouldn’t be calling me, wasn’t where I wanted him to be, didn’t need anything from the store and would never lie next to me in bed again. The grief, fresh and suffocating, would cascade over me and I was forced to suffer through the unbearable pain of losing my husband all over again.
Denial sucked.
But it was where I was right now. I was living in Denial.
Chapter One
Six Months after Grady died.
I snuggled back into the cradle of his body while his arms wrapped around me tightly. He buried his scruffy face against the nape of my neck and I sighed contentedly. We fit perfectly together, but then again we always had-his big spoon nestled up against my little spoon.
“It’s your turn,” he rumbled against my skin with that deep morning voice I would always drink in.
“No,” I argued half-heartedly. “It’s always my turn.”
“But you’re so good at it,” he teased.
I giggled, “It’s one of my many talents, pouring cereal into bowls, making juice cups. I might just take this show on the road.”
He laughed behind me and his chest shook with the movement. I pushed back into him, loving the feel of his hard, firm chest against my back. He was so hot first thing in the morning, his whole body radiated warmth.
His hand splayed out across my belly possessively and he pressed a kiss just below my ear. I could feel his lips through my tangle of hair and the tickle of his breath which wasn’t all that pleasant first thing in the morning, but it was Grady and it was familiar.