I’ve been rehearsing my wife’s funeral in my head since about 2014. Not because I want her to die. I need somebody to believe me about that. It’s the scene that arrives without invitation—the church, what I’d say, who would come, what my life would look like the following Tuesday. I let it play out for a while, then I put it away and go ask her if she wants tea. Eleven years of that. A man doesn’t rehearse a thing he’s dreading; he rehearses a thing he’s curious about.
The feeling isn’t grief, and it isn’t hope. It’s the same low hum you get when you start planning a trip you aren’t sure you’ll ever take. I imagine the phone calls, the empty side of the bed, the first morning when nobody needs anything from me. Then I feel ashamed of myself and return to being the husband she thinks I am. The worst part is that I’ve never actually wanted her gone. I’ve wanted to know who I would be if she were no longer there.
She had a bad winter this year. Two hospital stays, and both times I was frightened. That’s the part I can’t reconcile: I can be terrified when something might happen to her and still have spent years imagining the life that would follow. When she came home, I took care of everything. I drove her to appointments, made dinner, sat beside her when she couldn’t sleep. She thanked me for being there, and I almost told her the truth. Instead, I let her believe that the fear in my chest was only fear of losing her.
In February, she asked me to help write down what she’d want in case something happened. She’d been carrying a list in her purse since 2014, apparently, and had finally decided to show it to me. I expected flowers, music, names, the ordinary things people write down. Instead, halfway through the list, I saw a sentence that made me stop breathing: “I know he thinks about what his life would be without me.” She looked at me and said she’d known for years. Then she folded the paper, put it back in her purse, and whispered, “I just wanted you to know that I’ve been rehearsing your life too.”
