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To lose a lover
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I t’s easy to forget what you’ve got when you ’ve got it,
but death has a way of reminding you
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Tim A-tklnoon
by Beren deMotier
’ve just recovered from my semiannual
session as a single parent.
Fortunately for me and our offspring,
this is not the normal state of affairs around
our house. Though it could be argued that
as a housewife, stay-at-home kind of mom I do
take on the lion’s share of say, dirty diapers (all
7,811 of them), still I’m no single mom. These
times on my own always reaffirm my heartfelt
respect and kneeling awe of single parents.
They also reaffirm how much I would miss her
if she were gone.
It’s not that I’m pining for the wife when she’s
away. We’ve been together more than 10 years
now, and we could use the occasional break. God
knows we’ve earned it. It’s just that when she gets
on that plane, underneath I always fear that I’ll
never see her again. That something will happen.
That it was the last time.
I had a phone call this summer. It was early one
day and I was full of the minutiae of daily life: a
shower here, a breakfast there, a load of laundry
you’ve got it. Easy to see greener grass, easy to
imagine that real love is like love in a Bronte
novel or the latest flick. It’s not easy to stay in
love. Hard even sometimes to remember in the
thick of it that this is what life looks like when you
get what you want, blemishes and all.
If I were to lose my wife, this would be the
greatest pain of all, I think: the lost times spent
foolishly fighting over the garden, over a misun
derstanding, over an outbreak of PMS. The entire
third year we spent furious with one another but
doggedly determined to stay together. The lost
time never to be regained.
I hate to imagine those feelings amid the
convoluted business of death. What with insur
ance agents, city, county and state bureaucracy
and families— please, save me from families in a
crisis. Not that I begrudge anyone their feelings,
I’m far too P.C. for that. It’s just that I’ve wit
nessed firsthand how a death in the family can get
everyone’s knickers in a twist, with ugly results.
Being gay may be the final straw, but the camel’s
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already hit the floor once you have a nuclear-
family-of-origin involved. If you thought every
one was cool with your relationship with Martha,
just wait and see what happens should Martha
pass away. You too can become a punching bag
for an entire family’s collective psyche, a com
mon enemy on which to vent decades’ worth of
suppressed emotion. For there is no death without
trauma drama.
I just hope I don’t have to deal with it anytime
soon.
Sometimes at night during those long business
trips, when our two children are safe in their beds
(or more likely in our bed since they become little
limpets in her absence) I’ll putz around the kitchen,
wasting precious hours I could be working or
relaxing without guilt. It’s funny, our evenings
are spent most often with me working, or her on-
call for her job, or with my Friday night standing
date with the bills. And yet, I know she’s there. I
know that I only have to walk through the kitchen
and across the dining room to her office, and that
she’ll be willing to drop anything to give me a few
minutes. I know that if I’m busy doing my thing
and haven’t poked my nose in her business, she’ll
end up checking in. I’ll have to positively kick her
out to get anything done. Hard to imagine losing
that without the chance for a fight.
So tonight I’ll remember what my friend said,
and I’ll appreciate my wife and give thanks for her
safe return, for my parental reprieve, for our
continual co-existence, for our daily beating of
the odds. I’ll remember.
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SUSAN WALSTON, GRI
B R O K E R /O W N E R
4603 SE HAW THORNE BLVD.
503.236.6201 office
503.940.0245 vm/pgr
e-mail: SLW718@aol.com
heading down the chute. When the phone rang I
thought it was the neighbor calling about a play
date for our young daughters, getting them to
gether so that we, the two at-home lesbian moms
on the street, could get together for a good natter.
Instead it was a colleague, a friend, calling to
tell me that his lover had died. It was sudden,
unexpected, and there had been no preparation or
time to adjust. Just when life should have been
going on, his lover’s body had failed him and he
was gone.
My friend told me he’d called to remind me to
appreciate my wife.
Loving someone is always a risk, of course—
emotionally, physically, sometimes financially.
When you’ve found someone you trust, who
trusts and loves you back, it seems like it must last
forever. And if there is to be an end, a split, it will
be one you can fight over, grapple with and work
through until there can be friendship, peaceful
separation or undying enmity. At least there is
closure.
But to lose your lover suddenly, there can be
no opportunity to clear the decks. You are left
without knowing how to find the bills or whom to
contact about the dental appointment. There is no
other half who remembers the nephews’ birth
days, your sister’s shoe size, and a hundred little
things you’d given to him for safekeeping—parts
of your life he carried with him in his heart and
mind. And you always knew were safe there.
Are no longer.
And it’s easy to forget what you’ve got when
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