She considered his question, wondering how things would have been different if she could have known March eighteenth was his last day on this earth, her last chance to look into his eyes, the last morning she’d wake up in his arms and hear his laughter.
“I would have wasted less time.”
“When you think of time wasted, what comes to mind?”
“I guess I wouldn’t have worried so much about the stupid stuff that used to drive me crazy. The petty things married people bicker about like the dishes or taking the trash out.”
“And how much time do you suppose you would have spent worrying about time, if you knew when your time together would run out.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “It would have consumed me.”
“Knowing that, if you had the option to know when his time was up, would you take it, or would you choose to finish your time together in blissful ignorance?”
Every day they spent together had been genuine until the very end. They were both ignorant, lost in their twenties still under the delusion that they were young and invincible. She’d been so unaware of how quickly life could change, how permanent loss could be.
Losing him had been a hurricane ripping through her heart. It happened too fast for her to understand. The moment the chaos stilled and the condolences fell away, she drifted in an endless sea of confusing aftermath, where her reality resembled more of a nightmare than any version of her life before. It passed like a bad dream, and for days and weeks she hoped to wake up, hoped for her old reality to return. But it didn’t.
Losing him was like a bullet cleaving through her soul, fast and over before she could process what was actually happening until her world cut away. The real pain didn’t come until after he was gone, when the grieving set in.
“I wouldn’t want to know,” she whispered. “Knowing how limited our time was only would have distressed me. I would have been consumed with fear of the inevitable and possibly missed our last moments together. We were happy. We argued and had our moods, but we were content until the very end.”
His lips formed a compassionate smile. “Perhaps it’s wise advice then, to not look too far ahead in the future. Why not try to simply exist in the present and enjoy it while it lasts?”
“That’s easier said than done.”
He didn’t disagree. “Imagine you could go back in time and speak to the Maggie who existed three years ago. You can’t tell her what’s going to happen, but you can give her advice. What would you tell her?”
“I’d tell her to never miss an opportunity to say I love you. To take more pictures and videos. To back up her hard drives and print things out. I’d tell her to save every love note, to record him singing, and to take more time to laugh.”
All those seemingly meaningless things were what she missed the most. She didn’t care about the house or the car or any of the stuff couples often stressed to accumulate. She assumed she’d have decades of cards and letters to save, so keeping his silly Post-It notes seemed foolish. Sometimes she found one crumpled in a drawer like a little treasure that survived a war.
“I’d tell her to get new tires.”
He handed her a tissue. “And what would Nash tell you, if he could offer some advice?”
She wiped her nose. “I don’t know.”
“Try to guess. You knew him better than anyone else. You knew his strengths and flaws. What would he say to you if he knew just how limited his time was?”
She didn’t like this game. Her shoulder lifted in a half-hearted shrug. “He’d probably tell me he didn’t like the new couch.”
“Go deeper. He’s given the rare chance to address you from the beyond. I highly doubt he’d waste time commenting on your furniture choices.”
He didn’t know Nash. Her husband never liked anything too serious. “He’d hate death, hate that there was no punch line to his circumstances.”
“Deeper. This isn’t about him. It’s about what he’d say to you.”
“He’d tell me he misses me.” Her voice strained against a lump in her throat, each word scraping painfully past her lips. “He’d wish he could touch me one last time. He’d tell me he’s sorry.”
“Sorry for…?”
“Leaving me.” Goose bumps rose on her flesh. “He’d tell me to stop hanging out in the cemetery and stop being so sad.”
But he wouldn’t tell her how. Not even Dr. Alec Devereux could tell her that. No one could because no one knew how to turn off this pain inside of her.
Grief was the counterpoint of love. The more a person loves something, the more painful their sorrow became when that something disappeared. She loved Nash with every ounce of her being, so when he went away, he took her entire soul with him, leaving only a skeletal shell behind.