She told me to take my rain boots along with, never know what disaster is lurking around the corner. Poets put on rain boots because they know in life it’s always raining. I took my rain boots; turns out I didn’t need them. She did.
On the front page of the newspaper just below the fold, that is where I found out the love of my life was dead. It didn’t occur to anyone to find her partner, maybe they looked for a boyfriend and gave up, maybe no one knew who I was.
Partner. I’ve always hated the word. So clinical. As if she were the girl I made science with in the eighth grade, which isn’t altogether incorrect. Partner. The word irked me. It’s why I planned on changing it to fiancé that night, with pizza, beer, our first bad movie from the Sunday evening twelve years ago and the smooth silver ring on top of the cherry on the pancakes for dessert. As the ring lay melting its way through the whipped cream I felt silly, this was no grand romantic gesture. If she turned me down I would deserve it. Is this what I wanted to tell our kids and grandkids when they asked me how I proposed? Certainly not.
I sat on the porch stewing with irritation at being stood up on a date she didn’t know about but as the hours ticked away my furry turned to panic and over a dozen calls, her voicemail maxed out by my frenzied pleas for her to call me back. The contents of last night’s meal lay where they were, the ring forgotten in the puddle of milky cream and soggy breakfast that we always ate as desert. Dawn rolled by and light spilled onto the street, I kept waiting. I never stopped waiting for the news to be wrong after the paperboy came, my fingers clutching my phone as I raced to the hospital, hoping she would call, hoping they got the wrong person. The hope burnt a tiny hole in my heart that spread and stole away all the life inside of me until I had nothing left to give. I suppose I did need the rain boots, because it never stopped raining after that morning.
They wouldn’t let me see her; the crash had disfigured her face. They said I wouldn’t recognize her, they identified her off her ID. I tried to explain to them that I had spent all my life memorizing all her curves, the lines, the scars. I tried to tell them I would know. But I wasn’t family. I told them she had none. They didn’t let me see her anyway.
The funeral was a closed casket with three wailing people in the audience and me in my stunned silence still hoping it wasn’t her. Hoping she would come up from behind and laugh at me for even thinking she was in there. The phone still clutched in my sweaty hand, it was all the hope I had. It rained at the funeral. I didn’t have my rain boots.
Life Insects and Nothings 