Tender Grace by Jackina Stark

and staff. His favorite saying, pulled out when he was encouraging punctuality, was “If you aren’t ten minutes early, you’re late.” By this standard I was always late when I rushed into my first class with ten seconds to spare.
    This was an issue we never resolved. Our last argument had to do with this discrepancy in our personalities and took place on a Sunday only a month or so before he died.
    “It’s seven thirty,” he said as I sat at my vanity running a comb through my wet hair.
    Grrr . This was a warning, not information. A clock sat on my vanity, less than two feet from my face.
    “Don’t do that, Tom,” I said. “I’ll either be ready when you leave the house at eight fifteen or I won’t. We can take both cars if we need to.”
    At 8:16 I was ready and glad to see he was still in the house, standing by the door leading to the garage. He even smiled.
    Why I always insisted on cutting it so close, I cannot say. I don’t like that about myself. He probably didn’t either.
    I intended to leave for Austin today, but I didn’t leave this room. After what happened this morning, I decided to dawdle away the entire day.
    I got up late and headed for the shower, still thinking I would leave today.
    But standing under the cascading water, I began to cry. I would have thought after last night my reservoir of tears would be depleted. Crying eventually turned into sobbing, gasping-for-breath sobbing. I stopped only long enough to shout something I haven’t uttered since I left home: “I don’t want this. I do not want this!”
    When I could finally stop crying, I turned off the water, wrapped a towel around me, walked to the unmade bed as though I were sleepwalking, fell onto it, and stared with unseeing eyes at the ceiling.
    Then, with nothing on but a towel, I tugged at the comforter and pulled it over me and fell into a deep sleep. I awoke an hour later, disoriented until the towel and my damp hair reminded me of my meltdown. Management had not knocked on my door, so I assume running water and well-insulated walls muffled the outburst.
    After the craziness of last night, I had pulled myself together enough to write an entry that ended with a sliver of optimism. But this morning I wanted, more than anything I can think of, for Tom to walk into the bathroom and say that we were going to be late if I didn’t hurry up. I’ve finally figured out that the obvious antecedent for the ambiguous pronoun in “I don’t want this” is the infinitive phrase “to live life without Tom.”
    I do not want to live life without Tom!
    I just don’t.
    That I have no choice doesn’t seem to give me the perspective it should.

    I’ve been thinking that maybe letting go of what we had is so hard because the last decade of our marriage was so good. Each decade seemed to get better.
    Not that the first ten years weren’t okay, but most couples have issues to deal with those first years, don’t they? I used to beat myself up for any tension we experienced early on until I finally accepted that blending two personalities, two backgrounds, two histories, two agendas probably isn’t easy for most people.
    A benign example is the budget. Both of us agreed that our bills should be paid and something should be put in a savings account. The argument was how much should be put in savings and how much should remain at our disposal. The first year we were married we had a dandy tiff about whether we could get an unplanned pizza one school night. Those issues get resolved eventually, and two do “become one” in ways other than physical. I can’t remember the last time the budget or any financial matter was an issue.
    What I consider our worst argument also occurred and recurred in the first decade. I made a hateful accusation, trying, I’m sure, to defend myself unnecessarily. I had failed to do something I said I’d do, or maybe it was the time I lost a hundred dollar bill, our grocery money for a week. Whatever it was, Tom