The Last Gift

Pen in hand, time is frozen. My words echoing, making their way through the pounding of my heart as it thrums through my ears.

I can’t believe I said it. But since I did I must wait for the response. My offer can’t be unsaid. This is the last gasp of desperation and then I’ll learn how to live the rest of my life.

He looks the same: serious, irritated, shoulders hunched, ready to get on with things. He also looks tired, eyes not meeting mine. A deep breath. Then another.

Is he? Is he going to change his mind? If he does I will honor my offer. I made the terms and I can live by them.

“It’s not too late.” I’d said. “If you want to try again I’ll quit my job. I’ll stay home. Lose weight. Do better. Be better. We can still stop this and just leave. Just go home and start again.”

Now I’m standing here in this office, in front of a stranger, waiting for his response.

What is he thinking? After twenty four years how can I not know how he will answer? How can I not know him?

He looks up and I know as soon as I see his eyes. They are calm, steady, and cold. I knew, but wasn’t prepared for the words.

“I don’t care where you go or what you do.” Evenly and deliberate.

Then he picked up the pen and signed his name next to the yellow sticky arrows, sliding the signed pages across the table to me, the ink had no time to dry and the letters smudged as they were rapidly shuffled.

The chill of those words, the unexpected shock of them from him; it was an answer so economical in its finality I felt my stomach clench against their punch.

An answer to my offer without the need to say ‘no’ or ‘I haven’t changed my mind’. It hit directly at the core of my worst truth: the people I love don’t love me, they leave me.

He had seen me, found me as a teenager trying to understand how to move forward from the latest parental capriciousness. His attention gave me color and substance, grounding me. His letters and calls, flowers and kisses; these were proof of love, surely?

Assurances that God’s guidance for his life brought us together, unprompted declarations of eternal love and longing? Who was I to doubt those? It must truly be the love he proclaimed it to be.

It would be us, together, forever.

Strange. I never expected Forever had an ending. That, unlike the rumored rainbow’s end it would be a real place, with a table and hard chairs, and a silent notary that had doubtless seen it all standing by with her stamp and seal.

The rush of blood that first flushed my face then fled from my head and fingers, leaves me dizzy and holding tight the sound of the words ‘I don’t care.’

‘I don’t care’, as I signed my name. ‘I don’t care’ as I thanked the notary. ‘I don’t care’ as I got into my car. ‘I don’t care’ as I watched him pull out of the parking lot and drive back to the home that used to be ours.

In hindsight I realized it was a gift. Truly a gift. After seven years of trying to remake myself, the house, the food, the.… everything so that he would love me again, want us again: his words were a sharply brutal gift.

Numbly tearless I was nonetheless hearing his words unlock and remove the doubt that maybe, just maybe, there was something I could do to change things and dissuade him from this divorce that I had resisted for years.

That I could find him again, that young man that told me I was a gift from God. I could find him and he’d take my hand and that future we’d once wanted would again be possible.

It may be that the notary stamped the last work we did as a couple, but his words were what cut me from him and divided us.

We were married in front of family and friends, clearly speaking our declaration and affirmation, our intentions and forever promises. Those words joined us.

In the end, all those promises, plans, years, and dreams were distilled to a sentence spoken in front of - not family or friends- but a stranger.

No longer dealing in dreams, but with considered finality. A finality I could polish as a touchstone when doubt and blame kept me company at night.

“I don’t care where you go or what you do.” It was his last gift to me.