TILL DEATH DO US PART | JENLISA

TWO

JENNIE

***

Deconstruction

February 21st, 2030

***

I know I'm just going through the motions. I'm still in shock. It's been two small days since my wife was taken from me. Even saying that now in my head, it doesn't register.

Wife.

Gone.

Those are two words I never would have put in the same sentence...yet, now I have.

And nothing will ever be the same again.

The past two days have been sleepless, full of the process of putting Lisa to rest. It's almost inhuman really, this process. I have called in funeral arrangements, flights and condolences to her family. I have serenely keyed my credit card numbers to order forms for caskets and penned my signature to receipts. I have done all of this without a flicker of emotion. I have been brave, brave like Lisa would want me to be.

Then there is the human part, when the calls come. Litanies of love and loss, words meant to salvage my soul have perforated every piece of me. Listening to people cry over my pain feels utterly disingenuous, though I know they don't mean it that way.

It makes me angry, too. Not because they are breathing and bawling in my ears and she isn't. No, they make me enraged that I can't feel anything. I have tried to let their tears leak into me, in the hopes that it will awaken my heart, but there is nothing there. There is no stir or echo of emotion, just a bottomless pit of nothing. And I'm furious over the fact that they can still feel her and cry for her like I should be able to.

Sometimes, I'm sure all my work must be for someone else, because if it really was for my wife, it would have killed me. It should have killed me. If I really loved her, then I should be unraveling at the seams. I should be drowning in my misery. There is no way that I should have the strength to do this, because of my love for her.

Even now, along the stretch of highway 57, I drive. I drive with steady hands. Fixed on the wheel they don't move, don't quiver. I stare at them and the proud bands of my wedding rings. They are impossible hands for a widow. A widow has old withered hands whereas mine are steady and strong, soft and youthful.

So, she can't be gone. I can't be alone.

The rationale stops any tears from falling.

The fields race past my speeding rental car as I head south from the airport. I roll down my window and just breathe in. The sweet scent of seeded fields brushes my face and for the briefest of moments I close my eyes. Lisa and I always promised we would come back to where we grew up in Illinois. She had always envisioned a welcoming home, a chance to visit her old stomping grounds, feel the sunshine and breathe clean air. She said those were her reasons, though I knew her well enough to see through to the truth. She desperately yearned to rub her success in the face of everyone who ever doubted her.

There were so many people who said she couldn't make it. That a Thai girl with a decent voice couldn't survive in the cold, fast world of New York. I had known her then, a boastful ingénue, bursting with promise and drive. Her stalwart arrogance and glimmering potential incensed me back in those days. I wanted to escape our provincial world just as badly, but with no hope or talent, she was a telling reminder of how unfair life was. My own cruel words had stood in testament to my jealousy many times. However, they didn't break her, they just fueled her on toward that pinnacle, pushed her toward greatness.