Life Interrupted
Because of how it ended, I remember that typical, beautiful summer day very well. The girls and I went home from the pool around 4 p.m. to change clothes for the park. As I was coming down the stairs, I was surprised to hear my husband, Rob, in the kitchen.
“I didn’t know you were coming home.” “I didn’t either.” We both laughed. “The traffic moved so quickly, I had time for a snack before tennis.”
Later, I recognized that light traffic as a blessing: I got to see Rob two hours before he died, and to see that he was perfect. Gorgeous at 6 foot 4 in his white dress shirt, talking about the upcoming weekend. The image of him drinking milk from the glass bottle remains vivid in my mind. He spilled some on his tie and I said, “Good thing your tie has umbrellas.”
He laughed his big, bursting laugh.
Those were our last moments together, right before the world cracked open and devoured our tender life.
As it turned out, I went to Rob’s funeral that Saturday, with our two daughters who were 8 and 4. Only 42, he died instantly on that tennis court from a cardiac arrhythmia, around the time I was picking up a roast chicken for dinner.
Later I gave away most of his clothes, but I saved the yellow tie with the umbrellas.
After he died, reading through files on his laptop and journals from his college years, I found no surprises, because in the 15 years that we were together Rob had shared everything with me. But I cried when I saw his lists of mountains and hiking trails, rivers for canoeing, and beautiful places he wanted to see all over the world. There was so much he wanted to do. Rob joked that he woke up early on weekends because he wanted to start having fun, and would have preferred to sleep in during the week.
I saw it as my job to carry the blueprint to completion, so that the children would have everything we wanted for them and also know who their dad was.
Two years later, the girls and I flew to Phoenix. I had never been in an RV, but Rob and I had always wanted to rent one. The three of us set off after dark toward the Grand Canyon, filled with courage and joy, ready for adventure. Over the next eight years, the girls and I went to three more national parks.
Like Rob, our girls are devoted friends, warm hosts, and hard workers. Their sense of humor, positivity, and gratitude are a credit to him. Recently, seeing my youngest child thriving in her first year out of college filled me with enormous, unexpected relief. Our daughters are capable and grounded, resilient and optimistic. They love to hear stories that capture their dad’s wisdom, humor, and attitude toward life. Olivia remembers him asking her, “What’s the key to happiness in life?” with the required answer like a catechism: “Focus on what you have and not on what you don’t have.”
Sometimes, when Louisa makes me laugh so hard I am gasping for breath, I squeak, “You are just like Dad!”
I think of him every day. A baby in a stroller, a family of four with teenage daughters, the footprints of a raccoon next to a stream. These simple moments remind me of our old life, or the family we might have been, or something Rob would love. In each one, I feel him close, inside my heart, and also far away, in a different time, in a different life. In every moment he is long gone, yet with a deep imprint showing how much of himself he left behind.
For years I was terrified of forgetting what it felt like to be near Rob. All these years later, I finally believe that I am unlikely ever to lose the feeling of him, or how it felt to lose him.