Chapter 46 - Meeting him again

On the way home after a long day. “My love, if you’re out there send me a sign.” I said.

I am a mix of contradictions: sad and entirely unhappy, alone, mourning, tired, drained, unmotivated, loss of will, and a wife with no husband. I feel loved by so many and yet no longer by one in particular.

I am a woman whose husband has died. He is not late nor lost. He hasn’t passed. He is absent but not erased. I catch a glimpse of him in the curve of her mother’s jaw and the lilt of his laugh in the recorded video. He inhabits my dream world, making star appearances. I know him so well that, like a favourite character in a book, I can imagine him into any situation. But now he’s gone, I don’t know how to make the star appear again.

Conan left me, but our relationship outlives him. I am grateful for the independent self that was fostered in our marriage as I carve a lone way forward through this surreal new world —although altered, I too am not late, passed or lost. But this independence has a