Can't Be Really Gone

© Lori Olsen 2001

Inspired by Tim McGraw’s: Can’t Be Really Gone

He couldn’t sleep. No matter how long he tried, he knew it would be impossible. The bed was empty, and inside he felt cold, but more than cold, he was alone. She was gone. He reached his hand out and touched her side of the bed, finally letting it rest on her pillow. He closed his eyes, and pictured her lying there beside him, her soft brown eyes dancing as she laughed.

He sat up in bed and wiped the stray tears that had bubbled to the surface along with the memory. Sitting on the side of the bed with his bare feet on the wooden floor, he looked around the room. Then he drew in his breath. She was everywhere in the room, filling up every space.

He stood up and smiled as the memories washed over him. His shirt was lying over the back of the chair. It was his shirt, but she always wore it to bed and he’d long since given up trying to reclaim it. From the start of their marriage, she’d always worn one of his shirts to bed. Her petite frame was always swallowed up in them,
but she would roll up the sleeves and laugh at the silliness of it all. He would laugh and tease her, but he loved seeing her in his shirt. In the mornings when she would hang it over the back of the chair after she dressed, he would wait till she was gone and then pick it up and smell in her clean scent before following her out of the room. He ran his fingers lightly over the fabric, leaving it lie exactly as she’d placed it that last morning.

Turning from the shirt, he looked around again, letting his eyes fall on the various objects. Her comb and brush on the vanity before the mirror, the simple ribbons she used to tie her hair back lying beside them. When they first met, her hair had been short, cut to disguise herself as a boy. As it grew he loved to surprise her with hair ribbons, and he knew that somewhere she had a box full of them, but that never stopped him from buying her more. Moving out of the room he walked down the hall, pausing outside little Jenny’s room. The youngest and their only girl, she was the apple of her father’s eye and her mother’s angel. The rocking chair he bought for her when she was expecting Peter was in Jenny’s room. They left it there, and sometimes in the night he could hear it creak against the floor as she held Jenny in her arms and lulled her back to sleep after a bad dream. He sat down and rocked, just to hear the familiar sound, then stood guiltily because that was ‘her’ chair.

Walking out of Jenny’s room he went downstairs to the main part of the house. Every turn and every room bombarded him with reminders of her. Her apron hanging on a peg in the kitchen, flour and dough from the biscuits she made along with a splash of gravy still showed. She hadn’t gotten the chance to wash it yet. The simple gingham check tablecloth she liked hung neatly on the table, a vase of flowers alone in the middle. She loved flowers and had picked them from her garden. The flowers were wilting now, but he couldn’t bring himself to throw them out.

In the parlor, beside her chair was her sewing basket. Her latest project rested neatly on the top, not yet finished. In the evenings they would sit in their matching chairs near the fire and talk about the day, their children, the past and their hopes for the future. Often during these talks she would have some project in her hand, working quietly on it. Other nights they would sit companionably and read. He sat down in his chair in front and picked up her book, the place marker near the end of the book.

Looking up from his seat at the door he saw her coat and hat on the rack near the door. Since their days riding together, she’d always worn a hat outside. She would keep it by the door, always in reach. He loved looking at her when she came walking over to the barn ready for a ride. She would put pants on, don her old coat and tuck her hair up underneath her hat, and get that look in her eye. Then together they would ride, flying across the countryside as they had in their youth.

Now all these things sat, silent still reminders to her. Nothing had been moved, they remained a shrine to her of sorts. The others had urged him to pack them away, so he wouldn’t be haunted by her presence. But he resisted, taking comfort in the fact that everything was just as she left them. He liked that the house felt like she could walk through the door any minute, and he knew if she did she would be angry that things were out of place.

“I love you, Lou,” he whispered into the dark. Only now it didn’t seem quite as dark, because she was all around him and it felt like she never left.

THE END