I remember the last time I cleaned your glasses. You were in palliative care, lying in a large medical bed—one meant for someone much bigger than you. It had been gifted to us in your final days by a kind nurse who overheard me telling you how much I missed sleeping beside you. He was a man with long hair, a hippie heart worn so openly on his sleeve that you could feel his compassion in the air.
“Babe, will you clean my glasses?” you asked.
Your sweet, sweet, handsome face. The face I’d kissed a million times. The face I’d stare at for no reason other than to admire your symmetry and those youthful, unfairly good genetics. The face with your lips—the same lips I kissed even after you were gone.
By then, you were somewhere between here and… there. Wherever “there” is. Your eyes had that faraway daze. Fatigue consumed you, slowing your words and leaving your jaw partially open. Your body so very still, paralyzed, unable to move even the smallest limb on your own.
I took your glasses off, and something inside me cracked. Tears streamed down my cheeks in a flood I couldn’t stop. My body knew before my mind did—this was probably the last time I’d ever clean your glasses. I looked at you—your sweet face, your gray beard, your mouth and teeth, your lips that still puckered instinctively for mine. My beautiful love. The first of the lasts. And now, I’m in the firsts of life without you. The cruelty of it is suffocating. Each “first of the lasts” steals my air, sends me into panic.
I kiss your glasses. I hold them like they’re a piece of you. I know they aren’t you, but they touched your skin. They sat on my favorite part of your body—your face. Your kind eyes. Your trusting eyes. The eyes that would still catch me off guard, staring at me even after all these years. The eyes so full of optimism and hope. The eyes that, in the end, as you leaned in, carried peace. Your inner peace was beautiful, sweet baby. But it was your’s only. It was not mine.
Now, I lie in our bed, clutching an orange, weighted stuffed cat —a stand-in for your body. Symbolic of some of your last words to me. “You will know it is me when an orange cat shows up at our home.” I cry silently, stifling the internal wail so I don’t disturb our daughter, who is watching reality TV in her room. I stare at your glasses and kiss each lens. I go through your wallet, running my fingers over your credit cards, the worn receipts—bargaining with the universe for one more trace of you. It’s empty agony.
The pain fills my entire body. My stomach trembles. My heart pounds so hard I feel it in my throat. I miss you. No—I miss you more than I can say. Every single second is a second that my heart and mind know that you are not here. I am so lost without you. These moments swallow me whole.
Baby… how can this be? How can this possibly be?
My heart is shattered into pieces so small I can’t seem to put them back together. The pieces that do exist no longer fit, and many are lost. I hold on to the lasts and lean into my firsts—the first of many without you, my love.
It’s so so hard. And the tears are not predictable.
Healing energy coming your way.