One Twelfth of My Life

Dearest Rachel –

It starts with the incongruous admonition about eating with a dignitary, and the need to control ones appetite in front of one. Which probably meant more back in the day, when a ruler’s favor (or lack thereof) toward you could mean the difference between life and death. Granted, I’ve heard stories about certain behavior while out to a meal with a prospective employer altering the course of said job offer, so maybe it still is useful advice for some folks in this day and age, but it’s almost comically inapplicable to me – and thus, ironically memorable.

Because it’s the opening of the reading I do every twenty-third of every month. I read it in the morning before we took off for camp that day, since we wouldn’t be getting back until late in the day (or so I was thinking at the time). To be sure, there are some days where I don’t get to it until afternoon or evening, but eventually I find myself reminded of what day it is, if only because of the chapter of Proverbs I’m having to read that day. I’ve told you about how the text of the thirty-first is less than pleasant to go over, but there are months where the mere existence of the twenty-third chapter presses upon me; it’s another monthly reminder of your departure.

This month has a certain odd significance to it in that, as the fifty-seventh month since you had to go – and me being fifty-seven years old at this point – this means you’ve already been gone for one twelfth of my life. As a numbers person yourself (well, a math major, anyway), you might be able to appreciate this. It’s strange enough to realize that earlier this year at some point, our time together (at least as husband and wife) dropped to less than half my life. The latter is capped at twenty-eight years and four months, while every day thereafter grows my entire life beyond you. The twelfth will become a tenth in a little more than a year, and will keep growing, even as the days with you fade into distant memory.

I hardly need to tell you that I don’t like it one bit, but it’s not as if I can stop the march of time. Meanwhile, it’s not as if I’m getting off this ride on Spaceship Earth just yet; I assume I’m still here for a reason or two, or He’d have sent me with you.

***

On an entirely unrelated note, though, I think I got to see you in my dreams last night. There wasn’t a particularly coherent storyline, so don’t expect much of it. The gist of it was that I had you back for just one month, which meant I had to decide how to rearrange my schedule so that you would be the main focus of it, given the limited time we had together. Should I cancel the travel plans I’d made with Daniel, or was there a way to get you to come along with us (especially since it was hard to tell if you were real or just a spiritual existence, like a ghost)? At the same time, you were coming to terms with the substantial changes I’d made to our home and my lifestyle since you left; unfortunately, I can’t remember any of your reactions to it all, apart from some dismay (even as you understood) at being unable to find anything of yours left to wear.

I wish I could have remembered to do so, but I’m fairly certain I didn’t think to ask you any of the myriad of questions I’ve expressed in these letters about what you can or can’t see from the other side; I think I assumed there would be time enough over the next thirty days to ask them of you. But as a result, I don’t have any answers from you about those questions. Then again, seeing as to how dreams are just the mind’s way of going over things that happen in the waking world, whatever answers that would have come would simply have been my mind making them up, now, wouldn’t they? So they shouldn’t have been relied upon, even if I’d gotten them from you.

What made the whole scenario that much more confusing was the fact that, on occasion, I would spot what seemed to be several other copies of you in my peripheral vision. Were you there, and there, and there, or was I imagining things? Each of you insisted that you (the one talking to me) were the original, and the others were simply clones, but isn’t that what a clone would say as well? Then again, if there were multiples of you – and the others were clones, or other replications – I’m not sure I’d mind, either; they would be able to remain once the original you would return to heaven in a month, so they shouldn’t have to fear anything from me. Then again, I’d want to spend the current month with the real you, since that would be all the time I’d have with you.

I wonder if this wasn’t a case of my mind processing your voice from yesterday, saying words I’d never actually heard you say (because there hadn’t been call for you to say them when you were around) and trying to make sense of it all. Still, after complaining that I don’t see you all that often in dreams, it was nice to see and hear from you again – although I still wish that it had been real, despite the constraints involved in the story, such as it was (a month would still be so much longer than a single night, even if I would have had the added challenge of figuring out which one was the real you). Such visitations would make this twelfth of my life, as it continues to grow into a larger and larger amount and percentage, that much more bearable.

For now, though, all I can do is to ask that you continue to keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck, as I’m going to need it.