The ceiling fan blows a chill across me, so I turn to my right and throw my arm over my sleeping husband, Will, to snuggle the way we always do. I squeeze into his toasty warm back, bury my nose into his neck. Sweet musk and a hint of citrus body wash. The feel of his flesh in the darkness stirs the pools of memories: all those hard days toiling; sore muscles and frustrations finally blooming into our homestead. One hundred acres of hard-won sanctuary for Will (my Papa Bear), myself and the precious daughter we created together. Of the evenings when we come home, Will from the fields and me from the realty office. Will plays with Becca until shower time. Afterward we lay in the bed with our alone-together time. Staring at each other, enjoying each other’s presence and bodies, embracing till we fall asleep, to wake up to those cozy breakfasts and quiet conversations. Warm memories of home. 

I squeeze into Will but instead I grab an armful of cold pillow. He’s not here. I bolt up in the bed and realize I was dreaming. Autumn sun shines through the bedroom window; the birds sing outside. The numbers on the alarm clock are flashing twelve o’clock. 

“No, no, no,” I whisper as I throw the covers to the floor and jump out of bed. I’m late. It is past breakfast time and I should have been in the kitchen long ago. “Please be here. Please.” I snatch my robe on and almost run down the long hallway to the kitchen. I round the corner and stop. Will sits at the little round breakfast table over by the back door, dressed in his usual jeans and denim work shirt, clean and sharply pressed as always. Trancelike. But still here. Yes!

I quietly walk across the kitchen to Will so not to startle him, put my face to his face. His eyes straight ahead unblinking, dilated and unfocused, looking far away. “What do you see?” I whisper to him. “What are you living? Where are you?” 

Will slowly comes out of his absorption, looks at me with those sapphirine eyes that first captured my attention a half century ago. A half century, when we met at the high school dance and the shy teen age boy stood shaking in front of me trying to ask me to dance but his words wouldn’t come out. Those eyes that I fell into on that dance floor (he couldn’t dance and I tried to teach him only to go home with bruised toes and ankles) and continued for many decades afterward swimming in their fluid gaze. 

“Oh, Sophie. I didn’t hear you come in,” he says. He rises. So tall. His arms wrap around me almost twice. “Give me a kiss!” He lifts me off my feet and plants a kiss on my lips and then a dozen around my face. So sweet, so wet, but a little cold.  

“I’m sorry, Will. The alarm clock didn’t go off. I’m so sorry you had to wait.”

“I love you, Sophie, from the south forty to the north forty.” he whispers, but his momentum is already subsiding. His grasp weakens and I slide from his arms to my feet. I cling to him, begging one more moment to swim in his big blue eyes, until they glaze over into whatever that state is that he sinks into.

No, no, no, I think, but I say, “Sit down, papa bear. Be quiet. I’ll fix your breakfast.” 

“You don’t have to, sweet cheeks,” he whispers. Fifty years, and that nickname still makes me smile. “I’m okay, don’t bother yourself. How are you? Is everything good?”

“Don’t be silly, papa bear. We always eat breakfast. You and me together. And you have some hard work ahead today. You’ve got to charge up. Breakfast time is our time.”

I help him back into the chair, step away and fire up the gas stove and put the griddle on the flames. I pull two eggs and two slices of bacon from the refrigerator, crack the eggshells on the griddle and lay the bacon neatly next to the spill. Fried eggs over medium and bacon, his favorite. While they sizzle and fill the house with the hearty aroma of breakfast, I look at the clock: 9am. Two hours of our time wasted with sleep. I mentally kick myself. 

He sits at attention, arms resting on the table and hands clasped together. He must re-charge, he has told me before. Re-charge from what? I don’t understand and he has never explained. When he gathers enough “charge” to speak, he says, “How is Becca?” but his voice is almost gone.

“Papa bear, Becca died twenty years ago next week.” I don’t want this memory: Will had never missed a day waiting at the street corner for that yellow school bus to pull up. He and Becca would wave and grin at each other through the dirty windows, and Becca would run off the bus and jump into his arms. That day Will watched the old Plymouth plow over Becca and drive away. This time he ran to her, held her bleeding body against him. She gasped her last breath cradled in her father’s blue loving gaze. He sobbed in the street while the ambulance took her away and the police came back to tell him Bill Oakley had been driving drunk again but they had him in custody this time. I panicked at the death in his voice when he called me at the office to tell me to come home, now. When I got there, “Our baby is dead,” was all he could say.

Now, Will looks up at me, quizzically. “Becca died?” Tears well up. One rolls down his cheek. That’s all he can muster physically. “I think I remember… Yes. Becca.” A second of silent grief, then as quickly as he remembered, he forgets: “Tell her I love her, too, sweet cheeks.”

I wish I could. 

I put the food on a plate and set it on the table. “Eat, papa bear,” I say and sit in the chair next to him. I grasp his hand. Cold, charge still weak. “I’m so sorry I missed our time today, papa bear. I promise you I never will again.”

Will stares at the eggs and bacon, still sizzling from the fire. A long second before he understands what he sees. “Oh, this looks tasty,” he forces the words out. “Do we have some ketchup?” 

“Of course.” I stand to retrieve the ketchup, but Will jumps up with a final jolt of energy, grabs me, squeezes me, kisses me. A kiss that takes my breath away.

“I’ll always love you, sweet cheeks. I love our breakfast times together. I’ll always be here for you.” He has barely enough breath to speak. His charge now spent.

As his color fades and his presence bleeds away, I pull out of his once strong arms and turn away. “I miss you so much, papa bear.”

For eternal moments my tears are fire, the pain is Satan, but I never let him see me sob. I made the mistake, that first breakfast, of watching him go. His eyes had shriveled and cracked, then dissolved to dust in the sockets. His hair had dropped to the floor in webbed clumps; flesh flaked away and bones cracked into white pebbles. All that was left was a dusty pile and rotted clothes on the kitchen floor. I had screamed at the sight and ran from the house, but hours later I mustered enough courage to come back. The messy floor was clean. Erased. As if he had never been there. I have never watched him leave again. 

I grab a dish cloth, dry my eyes, then turn around. Yes, gone. I had spoken to empty air. I knew when I cooked the eggs and bacon that they would be my own breakfast, so now I pour ketchup onto the eggs as Will would have and eat them all alone.

Breakfast is our time to re-live. Our many happy Christmases and birthdays. To talk about family and friends. Will always re-lives Becca’s first talent show. She had won best dance routine for her elementary school and Will had thrust the little gold trophy in peoples’ faces for weeks afterward, bragging about his tiny dancer. Often, we re-live our annual fishing trips to Alaska, where we tried for six years to make Becca.  He had insisted our first baby was going to be conceived at Lake Clark and her name would be Becca. Surrounded by stunning nature outside, inside making glorious Love. Six years and we created our baby girl. I always steer our conversations away from Becca’s death to those happier moments, but there was not enough time this morning. Moments with Will are fleeting and too many were lost.

Sometimes this feels like karmic punishment. Have I done something evil? Or perhaps not fulfilled some obligation; loved deeply enough or lived fully? What act could justify penalty as terrible as taking away the man to whom I gave my whole life and soul with not the first regret, taking him away over and over and over again?

As I clear the table and stand at the sink washing the single dish, a huge smile forms. I realize a fortune not everyone can claim. Despite my misery when he leaves, I’m given these moments to hold him, kiss him, remember our time together. Though Will couldn’t survive losing Becca, all these years since he died from the self-inflicted shotgun blast of grief, our love remains a powerful beacon guiding him back to me every morning. To watch over me. To love me. To re-live. Our hearts are sealed. 

Though we didn’t get to spend much time together today, I’ll see you tomorrow, my love.