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I…
…will be okay.
Not just because I have Liv, but….
I have hurt so, so much these last days because I’ve felt like I had my mother ripped away from me…but I can admit to myself now, in this stillness, that Lolly was already gone. It was the disease that really took her from me, not the brain aneurysm, and it happened long ago, not just this past weekend. And I was never going to get her back. She was never going to recover.
Don’t get me wrong—that truth doesn’t take the pain away, doesn’t make it easier to think back on all the good years I had with her and all the things I was already missing about who she used to be. However, it doessoftenthe pain a little bit. Gives me some control over my grief.
But, yes, I’m going to weather the rest of it because not only did I learn to be brave from Pop and to look forward from Lolly, I do have Liv-Andria to remind me not to forget those things. I feel pretty sure I’d have done exactly that without her, at least long enough to do some kind of damage to myself.
And I’mverysure that if she wasn’t in my life, I wouldn’t have ended up telling Lolly how I felt about her disease, and she’d have passed with me still resenting her. Liv saved me from having to carry that terrible regret around.
Yeah, there’s no doubt in my mind that I would be much worse off right now without her.
You know, I wonder sometimes about fate.
I wonder sometimes if things really do happen for a reason, if some people brush your shoulder and get your attention by what seems like total accident when it’s really so much more than that.
I lived one door down from the McKellars forfive yearsbefore I got the chance to see exactly how light the blue of Liv’s eyes is. I can’t remember the last time I choked on food, but it happenedthatnight just as I was walking pastherdoor, and someone else could’ve answered my frantic knocks and helped me, butshe’sthe one who did that, and she could’ve been bad at the Heimlich or not let me into her kitchen for water or been a completely uninteresting person once I started talking to her, but the opposite ofallof those things happened.
One thing and another and another.
This and that and that and this.
Certain words, a small action, a pivotal moment of some emotion or other, the exact right tone of voice used at the exact right time….
Everything.
Got me.
Here.
And even with so much sadness in my heart, this is a beautiful place.
I know so much more about Liv than what shade of blue her eyes are, and that is a beautiful fact.
She is a beautiful person in so many different ways, and I am beyond lucky to be the man who gets to wake up beside her, especially considering how empty she planned for my side of the bed to be.
Thinking that, I carefully move the blanket off myself and get to my feet, knowing today will see me doing a little more walking than drifting. Will see me being a little morehere, indeed.
It may not turn out to be much—I may not even hold up through this breakfast I’m about to cook for us—but at least I’ll have moved. I’ll have donesomething.
And I know damn well that the somethings in life add up.
*
I hold up through breakfast; Liv was very pleasantly surprised I was making it when she shuffled into the kitchen, and seeing her smile only made me feel better about the mood I’d found myself in.
I hold up through finally unpacking some of the stuff from my apartment, which has barely been touched since Sunday.
Hold up through five episodes ofParks and Recreation.
Don’t do so well after I doze off and have a nightmare about seeing Lolly’s lifeless body when I thought I was going to Quiet Springs to discuss her outbursts or a blip in her billing or something.
Do better when Liv and I walk down to the mailbox. Moving my feet is helpful, plus we see that jackass Wade or whoever and he looks annoyed that I’m holding her hand, which amuses me.
I do better yet after we get back home, where I toss down the mail and pull her into a slow,slowkiss. It precedes a shared look of intense warmth that we haven’t seen from each other in days.
