Day 18 - Life Without Love

Hey guys! Grace Nask here with Day 18 of the April Challenge. Today we have Life Without Love, a short story for all ages. It's about a woman coping with the loss of her husband. So let's get to it!

Life Without Love

By: Grace Nask

Six Months, Twenty-Four Weeks, 168 Days, and 4,032 Hours

I had my dream last night. The same one as always.

He embraces me tight, and I clutch him for dear life. He’s laughing, laughing, laughing, and I want this to last forever. Warmth seeps through me as I close my eyes in this euphoric bliss.

But it can’t last; it never does. A new warmth evolves, warm and sticky: blood. Before I can understand, it’s all over me, but not from me. From him. The laughing turns to screaming, screaming, screaming as he crumples to the ground. I’m screaming, too, but I can’t hear it; both of our voices are drowned out as the unmistakable sound of ambulance sirens blares….

I had woken up, trying to brush away the tears and sweat before Kevin notices. It’ll only make him anxious, and that’s the last thing I want to do to my love. Then I had remembered, with a new wave of tears: he can’t notice. Or hold me or laugh or even scream. Not anymore.

Six months. Twenty-four weeks. 168 days. 4,032 hours, and too many minutes to count. Six months from the day my life fell apart. Six months from the day this living death began. Too long, much too long. But try as I might, I couldn’t change it.

After the nightmare I called Grace, since it woke me up early enough to catch her before she went to work. With a ghost of a smile tainting my lips, I dialed the number and hung onto it. She picked up on the first ring. “Hi Gracie-face,” I said, the emotion taking the cheerful words and turning them somber.

She sounded tired, but not more tired than usual at six in the morning. “Hey, Mom. What’s up?”

No sense in beating around the bush. “Six months today, huh?”

At my comment, Grace’s voice perked up in concern. “You didn’t keep track all this time, did you? Mom, please tell me this isn’t the exact day.”

“O-of course it is!” I spluttered. The thoughts in my head churned around and around, faster and faster until they created a whirlpool. Grace hadn’t been keeping track of the days? How else could she remember how long ago her father died? Unless...had she forgotten so soon? “I have the date marked on my calendar!” Of course, I hadn’t needed it, but I etched it into the year just the same. “Did you...forget?”

“Oh, don’t say it like that, Mom,” Grace backtracked. “I didn’t mean it like that. I loved Dad; you know that. But it’s been six months.” Six months. Much, much too short for me to stop grieving. But much too long for my Gracie-face. “Maybe...it’s time to move on? Why don’t you--oh I don’t know, call up some of your old friends? Paint your nails? Take up baking? Anything is better than sitting around and mourning.”

As if mourning were a fatal disease needed to be surgically removed. When had grieving for the man who had been my partner for over twenty years become wrong?

Grace is my only daughter and strongest connection to Kevin; I’d do anything for her. But this might have been too much to ask.

I didn’t tell her that, though. Instead, I breathed, “Alright. I’ll try.”

I could hear the smile in her voice. “Thank you. It’ll be good for you, I promise.”

“Love you, Gracie-face.”

“Love you, Mom.”

I hung up the phone but held onto it, the dead weight burdening yet comforting me.

Six Months, Twenty-Five Weeks, and 175 Days

Yesterday, I tried. I really did. I had the nail brush poised over my index finger, ready to change my features forever. Ready to do something without Kevin. Then in that moment I remembered the way he used to kiss my hand, and I dropped the entire bottle. The glass smashed on the floor.

Today, hands shaking, I went through the old photo albums. Thousands of memories pressed between the different pages, most of them with Kevin. Photography had been his passion, as if even then he knew I’d need something to hold on to when he died.

I sifted through the decades, not sure what I looked for or if I was, in fact, looking for something. The years peeled back, each a thousand recollections within the picture. Grace with a wide grin as she held up her Bachelor’s degree, looking like she could rule the world with this piece of paper. Her high school graduation in cap and gown. Disneyland, the three of us screaming our hearts out on a rollercoaster. Kevin holding a snake around his neck at the zoo, miming a choked look as I laughed. Grace giggling on the swing set while Kevin pushed. Grace as a baby in my arms, and my look of complete contentment. Our wedding day.

I paused on that one for a moment. Kevin wanted a modern wedding where we could disco down the aisle, but he relented to the traditional structure--for the most part. We compromised with his navy blue suit, my billowing red dress, and a cake designed in the shape of a wreath of roses.

In the picture taken, we stood facing each other but held hands, the priest hovering behind us. An arch of roses separated us from the bridesmaids, the best man, and the two flower girls. I smiled wider than I ever had before in my life; thinking back, a touch of that smile blossomed on my lips. Kevin grinned, the mischievous smile I’d first come to love him for replaced with one of complete bliss. In that moment, my life became whole.

And how had I repaid that love? By losing my smile the minute it went to pieces and tainting his joyous memory with grief. Kevin wouldn’t have wanted that. He...would’ve wanted me to be happy.

And at that moment, I wanted it too.

Six Months, Twenty-Six Weeks

It took me two days to dredge up the nerve after looking over my photos and another three to write it down, but I finally took my Gracie-face’s advice. I got my hair cut for the first time in six and a half months.

Kevin had cut my hair for the past twenty years, and in exchange, I cut his. Of course, this wouldn’t work anymore, and I didn’t want a pair of scissors in my own hands anywhere near my scalp. I’d have to go to a salon.

When I looked up reviews for salons nearby, I found one that guaranteed “an hour or less or your money back!” I didn’t care about the money, but I wanted this finished before my courage fled.

I entered with the wedding day picture, that wonderful happiness, in my pocket; every time the door seemed inviting during the excruciating twenty minute wait, I fingered my pocket and stayed put.

After much too long, the stylist called me over. When he asked what I wanted, I told him a basic cut at shoulder-length. Kevin had hated my short hair, but I enjoyed getting the weight off my back. Now it wouldn’t matter.

This stylist didn’t grumble about “a waste of such beauty”; he nodded once and led me over. He soaped and washed my hair, then guided me to a chair in the back of the salon.

The soft cushion dragging me backward didn’t do anything to ease my shaking knee as I glanced at my surroundings. Mirrors. Everywhere I looked, mirrors. I would have to watch the entire process strand by strand, and all without Kevin here to squeeze my hand.

The stylist opened a drawer and got out a pair of scissors. I felt the slight tug on my head as he evened it out, and then...snip. The first clump of hair fell to the floor. I watched it fall, never to be a part of me again. Always a separate entity, lost and gone.

My silent tears didn’t grab the stylist’s attention until he finished the first major cut. “Oh...oh. Ma’am? Ma’am, are you alright?”

I reached down to touch the wedding picture in my pocket and, finding the resolve, nodded. “Keep going,” I whispered.

He stared for a moment more, then composed an air of professionalism.

“Oh...ok.” He continued the cut, and, for Grace, for Kevin, for myself, I survived it.

It’s all off now. Shoulder-length, the way I had always wanted it to be. It’ll take me a bit to get used to it, but once I do, I’ll have more freedom without it. And regardless, it can always grow.

Eight months

I can’t believe it’s been eight weeks since I wrote! How the time flies. Oh yeah; I forgot to write it in here, but I put my profile up on a dating agency a few weeks ago, and last week it found a match for me. His name is Mark. I warned him I’d become a widow eight months ago, and he agreed to take it slow and hold out on any sort of commitment with the relationship. We’re going out for coffee this Saturday. I’m...excited. Very excited.

For what is life without love?