Until Then

Chapter 35

Chapter 35

Kenneth

She swallows down her pain medication and we wait for the sharp stabbing pain she's been feeling to pass. I hold her hair away from her heated face as she breathes through the pain. I don't rub her back because sometimes she says the pain is so bad it makes her skin hurt and anything extra touching her makes the experience unbearable. So I watch in tortured silence as she twists and rocks. And I close my eyes and watch as memories of different times flash behind my eyelids—of hospital rooms during childbirth as I rubbed her back, of holding her as her life slipped away outside the wreckage of two tangled cars, of carrying her over the threshold of a tiny house and then again another time in a life I can't quite form clearly.

She's remembering me too. At night as we lie wrapped around each other she will tell me that she's just dreamed of me again. How I've come in from work to our home together or that once she saw me as her father. Her memories feel like mine the instant that she shares them. I know they are ours together. Layers of lives we lived together, of pasts we've shared so many times.

Her eyes open and look into mine. They can almost see through me now and my heart sags with relief when I recognize the signs of her pain relief, the heavy weigh of her eyelids and the slight flush of her cheeks. It's our moment and I know these moments are fleeting. I pull her to her feet again. I've been practicing while she sleeps and I'm sure I have it now—I press a few buttons and she smiles as the raspy voice of Chris Stapleton serenades us. He sings of broken halos and folded wings that used to fly. Her lips tip into an adorable smile and even though I know she is still hurting, her pain never completely gone now, I put my arms around her and tuck my head in the crook of her neck rocking us to the beat. Her hands lift and touch the back of my head and it's as if they unlock another door that opens allowing more flashes of lifetimes to come spilling out.

We're dancing on a beach at night, then on a wooden dance floor at some crowded party. I breathe her in and I can imagine us at prom and I can feel in my hands the texture of at least three different wedding gowns, the silk and the lace. But perhaps my favorite is the image of holding her as we swayed, her hair gray where my face rests on her shoulder. We have lived lifetimes together and we've brought lives into this world together so maybe this life was tragic for us, but it is just one of many in a beautiful gift of many we have been given. 

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