Widows

I am reading the book review from yesterday’s New York Times. I sit to read about Anne Roiphe’s memoir, Epilogue. I feel the fear and sharp pain as I read the review. I wonder if there will be a class on the Literature of Widowhood in my future? I begin to list the works: Donald Hall, Anne Roiphe, C. S. Lewis, Joan Didion. I think of the poems. I can’t remember the poets but I can summon the sharp mixture of pain and fear.

Why am I reading these now? Some kind of inoculation? Or some kind of preparation? Or a way to stick myself, to test the hurting part of me, jabbing something sharp into the already sore place. Part of me is screaming: “I don’t want this, I don’t want this”, even as I know the odds are good that I will get this.

I think to myself, “stop being such a bitch about cancer and its politics, be nicer, be kinder”. I think I should do anything to make a deal with God that will spare me having to outlive the person that I love.

But I have outlived people I love. I have outlived my brothers and my sisters. I have outlived my parents. My greatest fear for so many years was that my husband would die but then I left him. Does that make any sense at all? And now, the man I am with has cancer. And I am loving him. And I am afraid. And I do not want the future to come.