Our wedding anniversary arrived in August.
Mary and I would have been married seven years.
The morning began with ordinary problems.
Alice spilled milk down her pajamas.
June lost one shoe between the house and the car.
The washing machine made a noise that sounded expensive.
I was late for work.
For a moment I was annoyed by everything.
Then I looked at the date on my phone.
August seventeenth.
I stood in the hallway holding a diaper bag.
Seven years earlier I had been pulling on a suit in a hotel room.
Ruth was helping with my tie.
Mary had asked the photographer to take a picture of me before I saw her dress.
The picture showed me looking terrified.
She kept it on our refrigerator.
"You looked like a man about to meet his own consequences," she always said.
I called Denise and asked to take the afternoon off.
She agreed.
At lunchtime I collected the girls from daycare.
We stopped at the flower shop Mary loved.
I bought a small bunch of sunflowers.
The florist remembered her.
"She used to buy the ones with bent stems," the woman said.
"She said they had character."
I smiled.
"That sounds right."
We drove to the cemetery.
I hadn't brought the girls there since the funeral.
I'd worried about making it a place of frightening silence.
Now I wanted them to know that remembering their mother could be part of an ordinary day.
I parked near the trees.
The sunflowers lay across my lap while I unbuckled the stroller.
The headstone was warm from the afternoon light.
I brushed away some leaves.
Then I sat on the grass beside the girls.
"This is where we come to remember your mother," I told them.
Neither understood.
They watched birds in the branches.
I placed the flowers beside Mary's name.
Then I opened the letter I'd been writing for weeks.
Mary,
I still think about the last morning we spent together.
I remember the socks.
I remember the bag in the car.
I remember the way you asked me about the little hats.
For a long time I thought that if I examined those hours closely enough, I could find the place where I should have changed everything.
I could not.
I paused to wipe my eyes.
June started pulling at a blade of grass.
I moved her hand gently.
Then I read on.
I was frightened that my words in the hospital had taken you away.
I spoke to the doctors.
I read what I could understand.
I have learned that I didn't have the power I imagined in that moment.
I couldn't order the ending.
I couldn't carry all three of you home by wanting it hard enough.
I wish I had known about your worries earlier.
I wish you had felt able to tell me.
I also understand now that being frightened didn't make you less brave.
It made you human.
The girls are getting bigger.
June laughs when I drop a spoon.
Alice has decided Ruth's dog is the most interesting creature alive.
Your mother comes over on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
She tells them stories about you.
Sometimes she makes them laugh by accident.
Sometimes I think she is starting to enjoy coming to our house.
I have gone back to work.
I still get through some days an hour at a time.
But I am learning that doing things without you isn't the same as leaving you behind.
I read the last sentence quietly.
I love you.
I wish we had more time.
I will keep telling them about you.
I folded the paper.
A light wind moved across the grass.
June leaned against my knee.
Alice reached for the flower stems.
I kept them out of her reach.
We stayed another twenty minutes.
Then I packed the stroller and drove home.
Evelyn had left a message asking how we were.
I called her back.
"We visited Mary today," I said.
There was a pause.
"I'm glad."
"Would you come for dinner?"
"Yes."
That night we ate spaghetti at the kitchen table.
The girls made a mess.
Evelyn told a story about Mary falling asleep during a wedding rehearsal years before she'd met me.
Ruth nearly choked laughing.
I laughed too.
The anniversary had included tears.
It had also included dinner.
Mary was part of both.
That anniversary weekend, I found the wedding guest book in a box beneath the bed.
I hadn't opened it since our first year of marriage.
The cover was dark blue with our names stamped in silver.
I took it to the kitchen and read a few messages.
Most people had written familiar wishes.
Happiness.
Patience.
A long life together.
Then I found Evelyn's message.
She had written that she hoped we would always make room for each other's questions.
I stared at the words.
I wondered whether she remembered writing them.
At dinner I showed her the page.
She put on her glasses.
"Oh, I do remember."
"What made you choose that?"
"Mary had a habit of deciding what other people were feeling before they told her. You had the same habit."
I looked up.
"We did?"
"You were very well matched in that particular flaw."
Ruth laughed from the sink.
I had to laugh too.
"We argued about the seating arrangement for two weeks," Evelyn said. "Both of you kept saying you knew what the other wanted."
She was right.
We had eventually drawn names from a bowl because neither of us could decide where to seat the cousins.
"I wish I'd asked more questions," I said.
Evelyn touched the edge of the guest book.
"All married people do, eventually."
After dinner I opened the book to our own signatures.
Mary had added a tiny star beside her name.
I didn't remember seeing it before.
I showed it to Ruth.
"She used to put those on everything," Ruth said.
"Why?"
"She told me it helped her find her name quickly on lists."
I shook my head.
Even the little star had a practical explanation.
I took a photograph of the page and added it to the girls' folder.
Later that night I wrote down a memory from our wedding reception.
Mary had stepped outside because the music was too loud.
I found her sitting on the hotel steps eating a bread roll.
"Are you hiding?" I asked.
"Yes."
"From me?"
"From everybody. Including you, if you're going to be loud."
I sat beside her.
We ate the roll in silence.
After a while she said she loved the party but wanted to go home and put on pajamas.
I said we probably needed to stay for the cake.
"That's fair," she said.
"It's our cake."
"Then we'd better make sure we get some."
We went back inside and danced with our families.
I remembered that moment more clearly than our first dance.
It was the quiet between the planned events.
The part where we didn't have to impress anyone.
When I finished writing, I slipped the page into the wedding book.
One day I would show the girls.
I hoped they would laugh at the idea of their mother hiding from her own wedding.
I hoped they'd ask questions I couldn't anticipate.
I would answer what I knew.
And when I didn't know, I would say so.
Click here to continue reading: PART 16: One Year After We Lost Mary, Our Daughters Had a Home Filled With Her Stories and Our Own
The Morning Mary Laughed About Baby Names and the Night I Came Home Without Her
Part 15 of 16
