I Can’t Remember My Last Words

I lost the woman I loved one month ago today and I can’t remember my last words to her while she was still conscious.

I believe they were, “I love you.”

I do remember there was no indication on the day I said whatever words I said that she would need to be moved to intensive care where I was prevented from seeing her until she was unconscious and on life support.

I said whatever I said and walked out of her hospital room that day knowing I would see her again.

Soon.

I’m sure I said, “I love you.” I always said, “I love you.”

But I know I didn’t say those words as I would have said them if I thought there was any chance I would never talk to her again.

On reflection, I said, incorrectly, that the day she died was the worst day of my life.

But that is untrue.

Each successive day since she died has been the worst day of my life.

“Jim, time cures all. And it is only been a month,” more than one friend has told me, confidently.

I don’t know if that is true or feel good bullshit. My guess is the latter.

Time is a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future. It is the events in time that matter and that are implied in the oft-repeated shorthand, “time heals.”

What the well-intended mean to say is events will occur in the future that lessen your pain by redirecting your attention from the loss of your loved one to some new and shiny object.

And that can be true or untrue, depending on a plethora of factors to include the relationship, age, and whether the one left standing has a path forward without the person lost.

When my grandmother died, it was harsh blow. Without her in my youth, I would not have had self-confidence. I would never have learned the love of music and would have never finished college and law school. I owed her. And I still owe her.

And I was sad the day she died.

But I was not despondent or hopeless because she was my past. Not my future.

And lives, yours and mine, are future-focused.

Lorena was my future.

Every thought about how my life would proceed and end had her as the main character. She was young, vibrant, and stunningly beautiful.

She was finally at the point in her life that she could do things not because she was expected to but because she wanted to.

When she died, our future together as We planned it, as I imagined it, ended.

Memories took its place and a sense of hopelessness substituted itself for excited anticipation.

Yet, at this moment, her death is not my worst regret. Death is real and it can happen to any of us at anytime. And will. We can be sad and devasted when someone we love dies, but we cannot be surprised.

My immediate regret and corresponding guilt is not remembering the last words I said to the person I loved the most.

I will regret that.

Forever.

Subscribe here

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No Way Back To Eden

Image
It has been a year since Lorena, my love, my partner, my hopes and my dreams, died. It seems like yesterday and an eternity. I have grieved. My sadness, punctuated by hopelessness and anger, has been unrelenting. Friends ask whether anything has changed in the year since leukemia ended her life and our future together. Nothing really, except that I have gotten used to being alone, really alone. I cry daily, often in public, and am no longer ashamed. Tears and regrets have become somehow normal, another example of man’s inexorable ability to habituate to any circumstance, no matter how wonderful or terrible it may be. I spend most of my time at home, the one I bought to live in with Lorena for the rest of our lives, a home filled with photographs, shadow boxes, her things, our memories. She is my first thought every morning and my last thought every night. I do not will my circumstance, but accept it without self-pity. It is simply the way it is. A wise friend, who also...
Read more

An Obituary For The Only Woman I Ever Truly Loved

Image
I have never written an obituary. I have never wanted to. Especially not for my lover, my partner, and the only woman I ever really loved. I met Lorena about two years ago. She told me on our first date that she was a “house woman,” meaning she liked to spend time at home, knit, crochet, and wasn’t much of a traveler except to the beach now and then. She was refreshingly honest saying she was not looking to date or party but to find “my life partner.” She had been divorced 10 years after what sounded to be a tough 27 year marriage. . We continued dating and over a year or so I felt something for her like no other woman I had ever met. She filled a hole in my heart I didn’t even know existed. We didn’t have a lot to talk about or many common interests, but we became inseparable. A few months ago we decided to move in together and began looking at homes. None were quite right until we walked Into a French contemporary in the countryside outside San Miguel de Allende and ...
Read more

Rules For White Boys Dating Latinas

Image
Written by another divorced and damaged expat living in Mexico. He asked it be published anonymously if only because he desires to live a little longer. There are not many rules when it comes to dating Latinas but here are three of the Big Ones: No machismo bullshit. Latin women, especially Mexican women, have seen, and felt, all the aggression, manly moves and heard all the bragdocio they can tolderate. That’s why they are going out with you, gringo. Acting like Billy Bad Ass will do nothing but insure you go home with the same hard-on you showed up with. If you can’t quite grasp this concept, pretend your mama is in the backseat or at the table watching it all. Act like that. 
And don’t talk so much. Listen. In many, if not most, cases you will learn what a tough life really looks like, feels like, and you will humbled. Humility is attractive. “Te quero” and “Te amo.” Know the difference. They both technically mean “I love you,” but you get no credit for mincing or confusi...
Read more

On Being A Loner

Image
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900 ) The term pack animal is used to describe a beast of burden used to carry heavy loads over long distances such as donkeys and mules. The term also refers to animals that live and hunt in packs such as wolves and hyenas, The best example of both types of pack animals is the human. Like mules, most of us put on blinders each morning and carry the load, doomed to spend a large majority of our lives compulsively working at jobs we despise and where success only breeds more work. Ironically, most work so that one day they don’t have to work anymore. When not laboring, the pack gathers at designated times and places, e.g., parties, meetings, to recite long worn out aphorisms, nod, agree, and seek approval and validation in t...
Read more

Fifteen Months, Fifteen Days

Image
Fifteen months and fifteen days ago my life ended. Or, I thought it had. The woman I loved, Lorena Alcala, died of leukemia. It was only then that I understood Camus’ admonition: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering that fundamental question of philosophy.” I pondered that problem for months. I read innumerable books and articles on grief, all of which assured me that I was not insane to think about such things, but rather, normal, that grief is a “process” and that while I would never “move on,” I would, one day, learn to live again, that I would decide life is, indeed, worth living. Today is that day. Just as Lorena taught me what mature love means, the pain that has tracked me like a wounded animal since her death has taught me that life is worth living, that there are people who care that seem to come out of nowhere, people who have helped me selflessly along this mo...
Read more

So, What Was So Special About Her?

Image
I’ve written a lot, perhaps too much, about the grief that has devastated me since the death of my love, Lorena. This will be the last on this topic for a while. But before I finish, I need to answer a question that many of you have asked, “What was so special about her?” She was simple, straightforward, and honest. Her ego was always muted, under control, if it existed at all. She didn’t want to compete with me or anyone else. She enjoyed just sitting together. She didn’t need to be entertained. Her life wasn’t a running travelogue. If we went someplace, fine. If we didn’t, also fine. She thought my habit of bringing coffee to her in bed every morning was the kindest thing ever. She spoke well of others. She was beautiful and liked to be pretty but when I told her I thought she was just as beautiful without makeup, she seemed relieved and stopped wearing it except when we went out. She didn’t discuss politics or religion. She was self-motivated. She got up and went ...
Read more

I Fell In Love With A Gas Station Chiquita

Image
The gas gauge was flirting with empty between Celaya and San Miguel, a deep-night high-speed run on a particularly dangerous highway, when I noticed the lighted PEMEX sign on my right side near a drug dealer holding a cardboard sign, “METH.” PEMEX is Mexico’s government-owned oil company, their gas stations littering the countryside, places where there are no fewer than a dozen ways to be ripped off, most of them involving diversion by the attendant. I noticed three tall, young girls with long legs and short skirts. As I pulled into one of the lanes, the prettiest of them knocked on my window. As I rolled it down, she reached in, touched my face, and said, “Hi, young man. We are the chiquitas,” motioning to her scantily-clad girlfriends. “Aren’t you cute?” Maybe I was tired, or maybe it was my perpetual emotional vulnerability, but I thought to myself, “Fuck it. If this is this week’s diversion, they can rip my ass a new one now.” “What’s your name?” she asked. She had wond...
Read more

I did nothing today

Image
From the patio . . . I did nothing today. I breathed. I sat. I made lunch. I walked my dogs. I looked at the sky. I scribbled. I guess that is not nothing, but none of what I did today was on a “to do” list, a calendar, or, in any way, planned. What I did today was exactly what I wanted to do at the moment I wanted to do it. It was life in stream of consciousness. What I did was slow. And present. For the first time in my remembered life, I was not focused on a goal. I was not trying to accomplish anything. I was not trying to change, judge, criticize, alter, control, or manipulate anyone or any circumstance. I have been aware for some time that life has no interest in my plans or dreams and so I dispensed with them. At least for today. I did not try to impress anyone or be worthy of praise or even acknowledgement. I did not try to justify my lack of productivity to anyone, including myself. I ignored my frightened ego. Indeed, I did not try t...
Read more

Advice to 20 from 70

Image
What I would tell my 20 year old self if I could pass along what I know now. Make friends. Real friends. No more than a handful of people you would feel comfortable playing poker with over the phone. These are the people who will get on a plane in the middle of the night to come and bail you out of jail. If you are lucky, you might find three of these in your life. These are your real friends. If you ever get good at anything, make it reading people. It should take you no more than 30 seconds to know if someone is real or a pretender. Actually, you never really know, but if you stop thinking you will feel it. Learn to trust your feelings. Going out so you won’t be alone is waste of valuable time. It may keep you from being bored or it may make you feel important. But you are not important, so if you hang around with people who kiss your ass but don’t really mean anything to you, ask yourself “why?” Being alone is a fact. Being lonely is a decision. Stay debt free. Don’t owe anyone an...
Read more

I Love Her…

Image
I have been married twice. My first marriage lasted 20 years and my second 25. And, on reflection, I am ashamed to admit that while I was fond of both, in retrospect I was in love with neither. My first marriage could be summarized in a photo of two children pretending to be adults. She was, and is, a fine woman. The truth is she deserved better than she got. My second marriage was pure heat. Nothing less, but mostly nothing more. When I began dating Lorena Alcala after being separated a year from my second wife, I knew. I knew that everything I had ever believed about love was altogether wrong from the start. While objectively she was not the woman I was looking for, I knew deep within she was the woman I wanted. I needed. She said the words first. “I love you, Jim.” And I felt ashamed I had not told her first. Because I did love her. And I knew it. I was a coward. I knew I had a good relationship, the best I had ever had. And so I feared something bad was going ...
Read more