A Glimpse into the Future

A Glimpse into the Future

She had lived with him almost three-quarters of her life. They met when they were a freshman and a senior in college, were married a year later and spent the next fifty-three years walking hand-in-hand down life’s many paths.

Some of those pathways were well-lit and well-marked, requiring little or no decision-making or discussion of whether or not to continue to traverse them. Others were less obvious and contained dark crossroads and beckoning detours. Whenever they came upon the latter, they would put their heads together and decide how to proceed. Some of the resulting choices were good ones. Others were not. But all of the selections were made in concert with one another, and always affording respect to the other’s opinions.

When their beloved only child died in a freak accident that no one could have foreseen, they looked to each other for strength, wisdom and comfort. When one of them was especially disconsolate, the other took on the mantle of strength, whether that strength was genuine or merely a façade deemed necessary in order to support the other until he/she was strong again.

They appreciated the simple things of life: nature, reading, gardening, hiking, traveling and exploring small towns and villages, both at home and abroad. Their joy in doing those things was always the result of the shared pleasure they experienced. They rarely discussed their travels with others, simply because others had not been there and could not conceivably understand that the exhilaration they felt was the result of not only where they had been but, even more significant, with whom they had experienced that adventure.

He had left her eleven days ago. His heart had simply stopped beating, without warning. In the handful of days since that emotionally symbolic part of him simply ceased to function, she found herself hearing his voice, or his key in the lock, or his soft snoring as he lay next to her, or so many of the countless memorable words he had uttered during their life-walk … many of which were loving … some of which were frustrating … others of which were humorous or flippant … many of which were insightful, even brilliant … but none of which were ever purposefully hurtful. She longed to hear that voice again, not with a melancholy longing but with a desire to simply recall its sweet tenor. She was afraid she might forget it over time.

She was not devastated. How could she now see her life as left in ruins after having spent so many years steeped in personal contentment? She was grateful. Deeply saddened that she would spend her remaining days without him, but grateful beyond words for the decades she had spent with him.

The expressions of condolence that friends and family shared with her before he was laid to rest were uplifting, and it was obvious that so many others loved him as well. But their love was not hers. Their sharing of him was not as deep or abiding as hers had been. He and she had truly become one, and no one else truly knew the man she knew so well and loved so dearly. That privilege had been hers alone and she felt a certain peace and fulfillment for the knowing.

Standing in the basement of the home they shared for the last thirty-plus years, she was overcome with a desire to open the box marked ‘memories’ that had sat, unopened, on one of the high dusty shelves just outside his workshop since the day they took possession of the house all those years ago. She seemed to recall a small black notebook in which she had written during one of her college years. She wondered whether it was among the contents of that old box, or whether it had been lost in one of their moves, or even discarded as no longer important. Strange that the latter possibility was even crossing her mind just now, when seeking out that old notebook seemed to occupy a small but insistent corner of her mind over these last eleven days. Even when her mind sometimes seemed to drift off into a kind of numb, semi-dream state, that small notebook would remain a persistent, though not unpleasant, part of her thought process. She did not even really recall the contents, if any, of the notebook, which made the question of its continued existence seem almost meaningless. And yet she still wondered.

Her only material concern at this point was that her income would be cut as a result of the cessation of his Social Security checks, and that concern only crossed her mind upon a friend’s mention of it as one she should consider. She wished the mortgage were paid off, in which case she believed she could make ends meet comfortably on their savings for as long as she were living, but that was not the case. There were a few more years of mortgage payments to be made in order to pay off the almost $20,000 remaining on their principle. She could always sell the house and move into something much smaller and less expensive to maintain, yet the thought of leaving the home in which they together had fashioned so many warm, indelible memories left her feeling at loose ends.

She walked back upstairs, not yet prepared to take the dusty box from its thirty-year location. She might do so tomorrow … or the day after. She cleaned up her dinner dishes, read over a few sympathy cards that had come in the mail a few days ago, straightened up the kitchen and then climbed the stairs to their bedroom, planning to lie down a bit before showering and preparing for a good night’s sleep. Yet she was asleep before she knew it, and she slept soundly, and dreamlessly, for eight uninterrupted hours.

It was 6 AM when, rubbing the sand out of her eyes, she glanced over at the clock … the one that had awakened them both for probably the last twenty years … for work, for scheduled appointments, for all of life’s early responsibilities. She wondered how often she might have to set the alarm now, with only her own life events to consider, and she began to cry softly. She had barely shed a tear in the last eleven days, and now she was crying over bedside clock thoughts. ‘How silly,’ she mused, composing herself.

After taking the shower she had planned to take last night, brushing her teeth and dressing for the day, she made herself a breakfast of oatmeal with raisins, orange juice and coffee. Sitting alone at the breakfast table, she envisioned him sitting across the table from her, reading his morning newspaper, of which the comics and the editorial page were his favorite parts, sharing the news of the world with her, and eliciting her opinion on stories of interest. He always took her opinions seriously, even though their politics and world view did not always coincide. He was proud of her ability to think outside the box and to connect not-so-obvious dots, and he often made it a point to tell her so. She wondered whether she had ever thanked him for that.

So many times, especially during their quiet meals together, they would find themselves finishing each others’ thoughts, or being reminded of something from their distant past by something they either read or saw on television, or in a movie, or within some offhand remark made by a friend or acquaintance. She thought it might number in the hundreds how many times they would simultaneously begin to say the same thing about a resurfaced memory, when prompted by something they saw or heard in the present. They often jokingly called themselves ‘two oxen,’ yoked together by years of shared experience. She had asked a few of her friends, over the years, whether they experienced the same kind of common recollections process with their husbands, wives or long-term significant others, and she came away feeling that the experience was highly unusual. And it was now something she treasured deeply, and always would.

Realizing that she had not brought in yesterday’s mail, she went outside to retrieve it, waving to the neighbor across the way, while hoping she would not attempt to start a conversation this morning (which she didn’t … she simply smiled warmly). A letter from the bank, whose envelope boasted new higher CD rates, reminded her that the mortgage payment had to be made within the next few days. A letter from one of his cousins, who still corresponded via snail mail, was in the box as well.

Returning to the living room, she tossed the bank CD-rate letter in the trash and tossed the letter onto the old corner desk. No doubt it had been written in order to attempt to ease her pain, but she was not as yet feeling up to reading well-intentioned pep talks, as caring and sincere as they might be.

After putting her breakfast dishes in the sink, and almost as if prompted by some inner voice, she absentmindedly made her way down into the basement, set up the small two-step stool next to the tall shelving just outside the workshop, and pulled the old box labeled ‘memories’ from the top shelf. She gingerly stepped down from the height, placed the box on the floor, dusted off the top, pulled out an old beach chair from the storage area and sat herself down in front of the faded corrugated cardboard. He had carefully intertwined the four flaps that comprised the top of the box, so no tape had been required to seal it. She pulled on two of the flaps, instantly revealing the contents, and looked inside. It was filled to the brim with old papers, photo albums, drawings that their son had made, loose photographs, scrapbooks and the like. She removed each item with care, deciding that she would like to spend some future time going through the box’s entire contents … but not today.

About two-thirds of the way to the bottom sat the small black notebook she had been wondering about. She was suddenly filled with an unexpected sense of elation at having found it, although not quite understanding why. She removed it from the box, tucked it under her arm and began climbing the stairs to the living room, leaving the rest of the unboxed contents on the basement floor. She would clean up that mess some other time. As her feet quietly and deliberately measured each of the eleven basement steps, she felt a strange sense of accomplishment at having discovered what she had not been sure still existed. Somehow she didn’t feel that she wanted to examine the notebook in so pedestrian a location as a dimly lit basement. She would sit down in her comfortable arm chair and open it there.

Picking up her reading glasses from the table that sat between their his and hers thickly-upholstered arm chairs, she opened the cover of the notebook. Before looking closely at its contents, she thumbed cursorily through all of the pages, discovering that it contained only one entry: an eleven-page handwritten draft of a short story, ‘A Glimpse into the Future,’ that she had been required to write as part of a creative writing class during her last year of college. Her memory sufficiently jogged, she now recalled typing and handing in the final copy, but she could not recall having written this first draft, and she had no memory of the professor’s comments or the grade she received.

This is that story. And she is submitting it for consideration for first prize in a writing contest. The actual eligibility of the story for entry in that contest will rest on whether she is indeed privileged to be the recipient of the esteemed $20,000 first prize, since the notebook contents must result in that.