32. Mini Premonitions

"Life ends. Love doesn't." 

~Unknown

It's funny how the mind works sometimes. Although they may mean little to us at the time, we subconsciously notice tiny details that capture our attention for some unfathomable reason and later come back to haunt us with a force we could not have imagined. When Jon was first assigned to Fort Bragg after his tour in Korea, his very first day of work was memorable for reasons that now haunt me in that very way. Jon was an incredibly careful driver. Maybe it was just that he always felt the need to protect me and ensure my safety while I was a passenger, but I never once felt the need to perch nervously on the edge of my seat as I do with other drivers prone to road rage. Imagine, then, my surprise when he returned home only an hour or so after leaving for what we expected to be a full day of work and told me he'd been in an accident. I woke up, groggy and confused, to see him standing there at the foot of the bed - had I accidentally slept through the entire day? No, as it turned out, Jon had been trying to drive onto Fort Bragg during the morning rush via the access gate everyone is required to pass through before entering any military installation. A lady in front of him had realized at the last moment that she'd forgotten her ID card and promptly pulled a U-turn into multiple oncoming lanes of traffic. It caused Jon to swerve out of her way and into a guard rail at the side of the road, which was then compounded by the fact that another driver in the immediately vicinity also swerved to avoid the chaos and ended up rear-ending the car in front of him. It took forever, of course, to clean up the mess and caused Jon to miss several hours of mandatory training on his very first day of work. His new car was a wreck, but thankfully, he was just fine. It seemed like a rather auspicious beginning at the infamous Fort Bragg - just how auspicious, however, I would not truly appreciate until almost two years later.

On the day of our wedding, I woke up to gray skies and an incredibly painful cut inside my lip that made smiling rather difficult and uncomfortable. Great, I thought, on the one day when I already expect to smile so much that it hurts! I still recall the tiny sliver of doubt that permeated my thoughts due to that seemingly insignificant cut - I worried incessantly that it meant something. I wondered if it was a bad omen or, as I hoped was the case, if I was maybe just being overly analytical and jumpy on what would ultimately be the happiest day of my life. Later that day, despite hoping for an outdoor wedding, we had to abandon that plan when it poured down with rain so hard that the raindrops bounced off the pavement and ricocheted off window panes. They say rain on your wedding day is lucky...but I wonder how much is too much. I didn't see rain like that again until I celebrated our first wedding anniversary without my husband at the restaurant where we had brought in the New Year together back in 2006. When I walked into the restaurant at the beginning of the night, it was beautiful and sunny and there was not a cloud in the sky. When I left only a couple of hours later, however, the heavens opened up and it poured with a fury that brought back memories of that same day just one year earlier. I've always thought it was like Jon's tears telling me he wished so much he could have been there to hold me and toast to one incredible year using the beautiful engraved glass from which we took our first drink as husband and wife on our wedding day.

When I lost Jon ten months after our beautiful wedding, I was still in that giddy stage of excitement whenever I introduced myself as his wife. The term “husband” was so shiny and new; although it had been almost five years since I first met the man who would become the love of my life, the ink had barely dried on the paper consecrating our vows before the future we were promised was suddenly and inexplicably snatched away. Some days I feel like I’m just treading water here, like I’m just barely making it through the day versus actually living. Living…we do it every second of every day, but what does it really mean anyway? How can I truly live without my heart and my soul? Sometimes I try to comfort myself with the thought that Jon is at peace in heaven, though I can’t help but dwell simultaneously on how long it might be before I can join him there. At the lowest of my lows, I plead with God to just take me now in the place of some other poor person who would otherwise be forced to leave this world much too soon due to some unforeseeable, tragic event. I'm already living my worst nightmare, the one thing I said I'd never want to do, so I try to bargain with Him and ask Him to please give that other person a little more time with their loved ones before shattering their world in the way mine has already been forever changed. When I was fourteen years old and fell in love with the movie Titanic (okay, maybe “became obsessed” is a more accurate description), I was always brought to tears by the final scene in which a very elderly Kate is finally reunited with her beloved Jack in the afterlife many, many years after they were forced to say goodbye to each other at sea. It strikes me as ironic now. Did I know when I was fourteen that that would be me one day? No, of course not, how could I? Oh to be young and blissfully ignorant again! But when I look back now with the benefit of hindsight, do I wish more than anything that I could still indulge in the luxury of shedding a few distant tears rather than experiencing first-hand the searing pain of living out the reality? Yes. Yes times a million.

I’ve always thought it somewhat pretentious and a little ridiculous when people wear sunglasses inside. It’s never really bright enough to justify the need to make such a flashy fashion statement. But as I made my way home from Washington, D.C. after spending this past Memorial Day weekend with my husband at Arlington National Cemetery, I had to make an exception…for myself. The tears would not stop, no matter what I did to try and distract myself. Everything served as a reminder of the fact that my love, my sweetheart, my soul friend could not come with me. That night, as I lay awake in my empty bed back in Columbus, exhausted but searching for sleep, I was reminded for the millionth time of a night many moons ago when I lay in my usual position (my head on Jon’s chest, his arm wrapped around me) while he slept peacefully. It was as I listened to the steady thump of his heartbeat that the possibility of losing that comforting sound first crept into my mind – this is just too good to be true, I thought, and life is so fragile...what will I do if the bubble ever bursts? As quickly as it came, I pushed the thought away, convinced that it would never happen to us. His heart will always beat, I told myself, he’s too good of a man for God to take him away anytime soon. We had so much still to do together in this life - a good and just God would never punish us for simply being happy and in love...right?  Little did I know that my mini premonition would later come back to haunt me on many nights of yearning desperately for the beautiful sound of his heartbeat. Although I can hear it perfectly in my mind, to experience it in real time would be joy to my heart and food to my soul.

One of my close friends in college once told me that I should try living in the present a little more often since I was always so excited about what the future would hold for Jon and I; I couldn't wait to be able to wake up with him every single morning, to buy that little house with the white picket fence, and to have the children we dreamed of raising together. Ironically, you might say I now live for the past...and the farther away we get from it, the more I tend to panic that I'll forget the details that made it all so magical. Jon once told me that no matter what difficulties we faced in life, we could always smile at the end of each day because we had each other. I didn't realize at the time how often I'd think back on his words and wish with every fiber of my being that he was here to remind me of the strength I once drew from those sentiments. To say that we don't realize how lucky we are until we have lost what matters most is an understatement. I've asked God many times over the past few years the dreaded question of why - why Jon? why us? - and so far, there is no answer. Maybe there never will be.  I ask now for another one of those mini premonitions - from Jon or from God - to tell me what I should do next with the life I have left.  I need a little guidance, a little helping hand to make it through the days, however many there may be, until I am reunited with him again in a world without all these tears and without all this pain.  When that premonition comes, I'll be ready. Just like I sensed within weeks after we started dating that Jon was the man I would marry, I'm trusting I'll know what I'm supposed to do in the here and now when the time is right.  This I hope and pray.