Work Text:
39
by Tayla
It's my birthday today. I'm 39 today.
Big whoop.
I joke about it. "Does anyone over 29 really enjoy birthdays anymore?" My mother laughed with me.
My sister gave me birthday smacks, and I screamed and struggled and made her stop at 29. And we laughed.
But am I really joking?
I look back and realize that the last birthday that was any kind of happy was 35. And that one was marred by our separation. The Vacation/Birthday getaway weekend was a last ditch effort. I should have known when it was delayed by one day by the hurricane.
Should have known.
I was tired and scared and closed off. And you? I suppose for you it was far too late to make any
difference.
Three months later you were gone.
I blink and four years have gone by.
Someday, not so very far into the future I will blink and you will have been gone for longer than we were married.
I will blink again and you will have been gone for longer than we lived together.
I will blink again and you will have been gone for longer than we even knew each other.
It is conceivable that one day, in the distant future, I will blink and you will have been gone for longer than you were alive. Which, on the one hand, is not very difficult to imagine since you were so young.
But on the other hand, I have already lived through four years of you being gone. How will it be when I am looking back at ten years of you being gone? Fifteen? Twenty? Thirty?
Thirty-six?
Will it still hurt so much? Or will I forget?
And which is better?
end