In the middle of the afternoon while he was laying on the grass and she was pacing on the conrete path, that was when he realized. He realized it all at once, like a bowl of cheerios with about half a cup of sugar sprinkled liberally across it. It hit him like a cup of coffee and a bagel with cream cheese. He rolled over so he could stare at the grass shoots and the ants he knew were scrambling underneath him. Knowing first didn’t make him happy, didn’t make him stronger, didn’t make him proud. He just knew and he knew that he knew, that there was no doubt, no second opinion. She flopped down next to him and wrapped him in her arms, struggling to get her balled up hand under his chest, hugged him tight and it was like he already knew this was the last hug, the last time she would ever show him her heart without a shadow of pain.
Worse than that, though, were the afternoons that followed, lazing in the sun or cleaning or cooking dinner for friends. All the afternoons when he knew it was over but it wasn’t yet. Every hug was the last hug, every kiss the last kiss, every goodbye the last goodbye. He became sterile and foreboding, limiting himself, castrating his emotions to save up everything for the last last goodbye. She barely noticed. He went to surgery and had his corpus callosum cut to keep the two halves of his brain from communicating. He no longer entertained her wild conjectures and no longer spoke in sweeping metaphors. He sometimes failed to recognize her in crowded rooms.
She continued dancing mercifully around him in conversation, building and breaking down her own arguments and letting him observe, though he saw very little worth remembering. She saw little worth in remembering. She let her heart guide her and consequently had a pretty liberal stance on personality, caring mostly for those who cared for her.
She had a heart attack.
He was a hero, he rescued her from her wounds, he was her rock when she was a puddle. He saved all her tears and bottled them for her, so she could look at them when she was happy and remember what it was like to be sad and then be that much happier, be reminded that the day always follows the night. If you can bottle sadness, he wagered, then you can bottle happiness, and remember too even in the depths of pain that happiness is possible.
They had a little girl and they raised her together. She was beautiful and when she smiled she smiled with her whole body, collapsing regularly in fits of pearling laughter.
There were still days when he felt like it was his last day on earth, certain each kiss was the last kiss. He knew that death was around the corner, and it petrified him to his core.
He would leave her eventually, but not because he was unhappy.