Backspace

I haven’t been here in awhile. While I was away,  I learned that only one space is needed after a sentence. Not two. Really? Yes. A writer should know these things. I know now. Dammit- I have backspaced eleven times since I started writing these few sentences. It doesn’t seem enough room to let words breathe, to flow, to resonate………………….to make someone pause. I’ll just add ellipsis after ellipsis.

Today I am pausing……………

A soul-sucking, life-altering, mind-numbing pause. A star just went dark- a wife, mother, friend, creative and intellectual force and warrior woman lost her spouse, her Ian, her lover, her father to her children, her world-traveler, her compass point (maybe he was North or South or West or East, doesn’t matter he was one of them or part of them all). Her axis tilted, her Earth slid off course, her body created a vacuum, her molecules broke apart and started band-aiding back together in that slow, clumsy, three-year old way.  Her chemistry vibrated and realigned into something no one else will ever know. Dammit- I backspaced again. I imagine her backspaces will be many, painfully-plenty and brilliantly- highlighted in the eyes of their dark-haired Irish boys.

He was sick. Backspace. She loved him as a woman does- holding his tired body and then sending Facebook messages to those of us a world away to courageously announce he had passed. Passed. Shattered into a million pieces of light to the sky. Gone. Noooooooo. Backspace x 10.

Please give her memories lit brightly by the love they shared and memories fueled by fights, grit, make-up sex, slow mornings with coffee and their sweet pup, head-achey nights with twin boys, strolls through foreign streets and mad dashes through airports to the next adventure. They may have had some of this- I can’t be sure as my husband and I weren’t physically there much the last few years, but I do understand the complexities of a marriage between two very strong-minded people.

They were our “firsts”.  Our first real, adult couple friends- adored the instant we met them, the first faces we knew as newlyweds, in a new location, living the frustrating, rewarding, weird life based on our husbands’ employer. He held our first baby and stared in awe, we helped them with their first puppy, we knew and understood each other, first, in a way only those living this life could. Our first couple that made us roar with laughter while serving us wine and salmon in their one-bedroom apartment. Backspace. One space will never be enough for the years we only knew them through email and pictures and second-hand stories. I want our backspaces back. I want to “renovate the ga-rage” with you, Ian, (insert thick Irish accent). Inside joke.

Those are the backspaces she will fill now in her world, her tired, love-sapped mind, her wide-eyed boys’ hearts, her aching soul……………ellipsis, oh please protect her soul. We will backtrack(space) the world for you and those boys, any moment of any day. Promise.

Rest in peace- no, rest in dark-witted, humorously-divine and riotously-adventurous love and peace, dear Ian, our friend. We will fill in your backspaces, all of us that loved you so much and love your beautiful wife and boys with the best kind of ferocity.

Until we meet again……………..