Big things hurt; little things kill

Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, Halloween, even our anniversaries are not the worst days in my life since Jane died. They can be hard–and no mistake. But the little things are the real killers.

The little things really do add up…

I loved Jane’s voice. No recordings of it exist, though. I don’t know when the sound of it vanished from my memory. All I have left is the scarred, post-surgery voice she had in the hospital. Even it fades 84 months later. To be honest, a part of me wishes that, too, were gone. It comes freighted with too many painful memories.

The little things I miss

I miss the morning hugs; I miss holding her hand; I miss the daily drive to work and the walk to her classroom. These seemingly small things grounded us both, reinforced the basis of our love in ways no bunch of flowers or cards could do.

I loved Jane’s voice.

We cooked together; we cleaned together; we shopped together; we gardened together. Now I cook alone, clean, alone, shop alone, garden alone. The lovemaking and the sex matter far less than the companionship–the simple day-to-day acts of sharing a life together.

Logic, evidence and compassion

Jane was smarter than I was–better able to look at evidence and draw conclusions dispassionately. Those things tempered my compassion. And my compassion, she said, tempered her logic. We made each other better together than we were alone. Now, bereft of that balance, I second-guess my every decision and my every action.

…the simple day-to-day acts of sharing a life together.

My single talent revolves around words. It was the one place my skill was greater–marginally–than hers. But even there, she made me better. She was my best and clearest editor. She helped me prune and shape my written words to greater effect constantly. And when the writing fit was truly on me, she would make sure I ate and drank, knowing in that state, time ceased to exist for me.

Little things shared create partnerships

She, too, could vanish into herself. When she crafted she got caught up in the emerging piece so much time stopped for her, as well. The same thing happened when she worked an interesting physics problem or tried to unravel a complex concept into terms her students would understand. In the classroom, for both of us, the world ceased to exist beyond the people in front of us and their need to understand.

We made each other better…

One of my professors told me I had a mind that embraced everything–that wanted to understand everything and how it was connected. Jane had a similar mind. We read everything on everything. And then we talked about it–education science, art, literature, history, philosophy; the universe was our classroom and we were each other’s teacher, student, and colleague.

Learning to hear

But we also learned from each other how to listen with a singular focus some might find unnerving. We heard each other with every sense attuned to the other. We did not hear the other’s words–we felt them in our entire being, with every sense–and in every sense.

We read everything on everything.

And that is what I miss most–the sense of two souls twined together beyond words and beyond thought or emotion. And it is what frightens me most when I think about the possibility of other relationships. I know how long it took us to reach the place that we were–how much time and how much patience and how much understanding. We worked at being us every day.

The little becomes the big

In the end, it created this enormous vulnerability we did not conceive of–that if one of us died–despite our deeply held beliefs–the loss would cripple the other in ways I only now begin to understand.

…the sense of two souls twined together…

And yet, I know I would risk that same investment to have that feeling of unity again. The little things really do add up to something far greater than two little lives in a universe of stars and open space.