His Wife

His wife is part of our relationship and she is in my mind every day. The thing I fear most is losing him. I could lose him to cancer or I could lose him because he will leave. When I think about this and when I feel this fear and anguish I am aware that his wife is feeling that now. He left her. She has this loss and this anguish. Every month it’s new again: her birthday, their wedding anniversary, the private anniversaries of a long relationship, things only they know and remember, where they were a year ago, the trip they took, the dinner party, the day they went to the play with their kids. Each one a new wound.

I sit with the fact that I am part of her pain. Did I cause it? Could I have prevented it? Did he leave because of me? Did I make him? If I wasn’t there would they have been happy and married 40 years? How do I apportion my part? I can’t absolve myself but is it also grandiose to say I caused her pain? Is it shirking to say he did or even she did? They did I suppose. It was their marriage just as mine was mine.

But I sit here on a cool fall morning and I think, “One day he will not come back.” The day is coming when I will be remembering our days and the pain will be so great.

Across town his wife is living that pain now and I am part of that.

She and I want the same thing: to love and be loved and to not be left. We both fear the man that we love leaving us. Hers now. Mine later.