Writer's Workshop Wednesday ~ Jennifer from The Hoare, with An Open Letter To My Dead Husband

Open Letter To My Dead Husband

Dear Dead Husband,

I can recall a time when I counted the number of days that had passed since the rainy September morning when you cried out for me before finally letting go of your ever-weakening grasp on your cancer-riddled life. Eventually, it was easier to transition to counting weeks, and then months. And now, I count the years.

Next month will mark the 14th anniversary of your death. I find this nearly impossible to wrap my brain around. In so many ways, it seems that I should still be in the day counting stage of my grief, as I don’t know how much headway I’ve really made since your departure. I still feel as if you could still walk through the door, or ring me up on the telephone.

Of course, I’m remarried now, so this would make for quite the awkward situation.

Yet, I find myself clutching to you by a thread, not wanting to let go lest our brief and wonderful life together unravel, and leave me with nothing but photographs reminiscent of who we once were. And while it’s true that I’ve moved on, I have never really accepted that you are, in fact, dead.

I’ve kept you alive in myriad ways. At first, it was by refusing to rid our closet of your clothing. For months, your shoes sat by our front door, waiting for you to casually step into them. Or perhaps, metaphorically I was waiting for someone else to step into them. As years passed, the shoes went unfilled, and the clothing was eventually donated, (however, I still have your favorite Tommy Hilfiger dress shirt hanging behind my winter coat. You know, the plaid one that we bought on a trip to Orlando for our honeymoon).

I’ve kept you alive with the photographs around the house that my current husband so understandingly tolerates. I’ve kept you alive through silent conversations that we often have when I’m lying in bed at night before I drift off to sleep, hoping that you’ll show up in my dreams. You seldom do.

Mostly, I’ve kept you alive by projecting the relationship we once shared onto every man that has entered my life in the last 14 years. I’ve unfairly had expectations of my current husband to be the husband that you had been. I expect him to react that way that you would in a bad situation. I expect him to know the right things to say and do, and I've expected him to help me recreate some goddamn fantasy that I still have that marriage. Like it never went away... Like you were just recast, like fucking Darrin from Bewitched.

Dead Husband, I guess the point that I’m really trying to make here is that I really must release that thread and acknowledge that you cease to exist. I need to understand that while I can carry your memory with me every day for the rest of my life, I need to let you rest. My incessant attempts at your revival must exhaust you. Your soul can’t sleep, because I won’t allow it to do so.

Dead Husband, I don’t want you to worry about me anymore; I’m going to be okay. I’m no longer going to fantasize about meeting you in some illusionary afterlife where we spend eternity playing fucking harps, or drinking Heineken while belting out Grateful Dead tunes. I refuse to continue to beckon your assistance for every arbitrary crisis that I encounter. I’m going to let you find peace.

I’m finally going to let you die.

After all, while I’ll never regain the same concept of marriage that I shared with you, I have a new, different marriage now. It’s unfair to punish this wonderful man simply because he isn’t you. I have our children to raise, and a life of my own to carve out, just like you hoped I would.

Dead Husband, I bid thee farewell.

Sincerely,

Your Still Grieving Wife